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Hi Everyone ..

Heres some more information about the medical benefits of Marijuana ..


Marijuana helps ease HIV nerve pain
Last Updated: Monday, February 12, 2007 | 6:27 PM ET
CBC News
Smoking marijuana helps relieve the aching, burning nerve pain associated with HIV, a clinical trial suggests.

People who smoked marijuana reduced their daily nerve pain by 34 per cent, compared with 17 per cent in a placebo group, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of the journal Neurology.

Dr. Donald Abrams and his team of researchers from San Francisco General Hospital in California randomly assigned 50 people with HIV-associated sensory neuropathy, the most common HIV nerve disorder, to either smoke marijuana or to smoke a placebo cigarette.

Participants smoked the joints or cigarettes three times a day for five days during the study, which ran from 2003 to 2005. All of the subjects had previously smoked marijuana, but they were not considered drug abusers, and they were told to stop before the study began.

None of the volunteers displayed serious side-effects.

"Smoking marijuana was well tolerated and effectively relieved chronic nerve pain from HIV-associated sensory neuropathy," said Abrams.

Continue Article

"Our findings show the amount of relief from smoking marijuana is comparable to relief provided by oral drugs currently used for chronic nerve pain."

Disabling complication
HIV-associated sensory neuropathy is a nerve pain that affects about one-third of those infected with HIV. It usually occurs in the feet, and can include tingling, numbness, the sensation of pins and needles, burning, or sharp, intense pain. When severe, the pain may make it difficult to stand or walk.

Currently, people with HIV and chronic nerve pain commonly take anticonvulsant drugs to ease pain, but some don't respond to the medication or cannot tolerate it, leading to an interest in alternatives.

"The results of this first study indicate that cannabis may indeed be useful in the amelioration of a very distressing, disabling, and difficult to treat complication of HIV," said Dr. Igor Grant, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

However, David Murray, the chief scientist at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the study was "not terribly convincing," because of methodological problems, such as the small sample size.

"People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs," said Murray. "Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?"

Dr. Mark Ware, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal who is conducting similar experiments, defended the statistical reliability of Abrams's study.

Abrams's study is one of the first recent clinical trials of medical marijuana to be done in the U.S., where use of the drug is debated fiercely.

Canadians have been able to apply for a licence to grow and smoke medicinal marijuana since 2001.

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Hope this helps ..

Best Wishes ..
Nodstar*

When naturally grown and with no chemical additives, the female Marijuana plant contains many marvelous medicinal properties, not to mention all of the many wonderful uses of the male plant known as hemp which was replaced by such things as toxic paints, varnishes and laquers.

Hemp can help save the planet as a renewable energy and product resource that will enrich the soil it is grown in, not like cotton which depletes the soil it is grown in.

Hemp could replace cotton to make clothes.

Nature is Not a Crime.

Man's laws are not considered universal law and the laws of man are not always just or righteous.

Thanks Nods,

Remember in 1978 when we all thought pot would be legal in 5 years?

Boy....how wrong can ya be!!

Still hoping....heh


peace, gan

Hiya Gan...

No kidding man ..

Seriously ..If you had said to me say 20 years ago ..."Marijuana will be even more illegal when we're old than it is now"...

I would have fallen down larfin ... sigh

It must be good for you .. otherwise why would the PTB demonise it so much ??

All the while promulgating medicines that have nasty side effects, are dangerous
to use in the long term, and ultimately only MANAGE symptoms without addressing the all important ..SOLUTION to the problem ..

The explanation is simple ... whilst they sell you drugs that only manage symptoms in the short term .they can keep their customers coming back for more ..

All the while demonising alternative herbal therapies as witch craft ..

This method of defamation is one that is used constantly in politics and advertising ..

Ennyhoo ..

I'll stop ranting now .. heh

Peace Out guys .

Nodstar*

This post has been edited by Nodstar on Feb 17 2007, 03:13 PM

California laws on Marijuana have improved somewhat as I grew up here.

Possession of under an ounce is just a ticket in California, and usually you can grow for your own personal use without a problem.

It's when you try and grow a plantation and make big bucks without others getting their cut is when you become a problem.


In my opinion...

Nature is Not a Crime!

Hey Mark and Gan ..

Mark .. your comment.

."California laws on Marijuana have improved somewhat as I grew up here."

Got me thinking .. since the 1970s in Oz .. Marijuana has been thoroughly and
continully demonised .. to the point where people are now convinced that they
should go into "rehab'' to recover from the effects of the demon marijuana ..LOL

Just before I left Oz ... a new kind of roadside breathaliser was introduced
that can detect the presence of THC in the blood as well as alcohol and other drugs ..

The upshot of this is another nail in the coffin of anyone who smokes marijuana .. your drivers license is affected by the penalty ..you lose points
off your license for being tested positive ...

While the gubmint promotes alcohol sales ( which net a nice steady profit for them in tariffs ..) and the use of ritalin ( translate amphetamine ) in children, and dangerous mind altering substances called anti depressants ..

In effect we have all become innocent criminals .



Heres a song about this from Ben Harper and the innocent criminals ..

Burn One Down ...

Let us burn one
From end to end
And pass it over
To me my friend
Burn it long, well burn it slow
To light me up before I go

If you dont like my fire
Then dont come around
Cause Im gonna burn one down
Yes Im gonna burn one down

My choice is what I choose to do
And if Im causing no harm
It shouldnt bother you
Your choice is who you choose to be
And if your causin no harm
Then youre alright with me

If you dont like my fire
Then dont come around
Cause Im gonna burn one down
Yes Im gonna burn one down

Herb the gift from the earth
And whats from the earth
Is of the greatest worth
So before you knock it try it first
Youll see its a blessing
And not a curse

If you dont like my fire
Then dont come around
Cause Im gonna burn one down
Yes Im gonna burn one down..





Peace,Love, and Mung beans ...
Nodstar*

This post has been edited by Nodstar on Feb 18 2007, 07:43 AM

Hi Mark ..

Heres some more info on marijuana research ..

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Researchers surprised to find no link between marijuana, lung cancer
Study's findings apply even to heavy pot smokers

Marc Kaufman, Washington Post

Friday, May 26, 2006




The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Dr. Donald Tashkin, a UCLA pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lit up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

"This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use," he said. "Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning."

Tashkin's group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers -- exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana use in their youth, when it is most frequently tried.

This article appeared on page A - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle


Hope this helps ..
Nodstar*

Great song Noddy...thanks for sharing it... u should add that to our Lyrics Category... it deserves its own thread...

These words say it so well....

Thanks Nods!

Hiya Pupp and Everyone ..

More info about the medical applications of Marijuana ..

Heres another article about Marijuana and HIV nerve pain ..
from rense ..

Marijuana - The Wonder Drug

rense.com

Lester Grinspoon
The Boston Globe
3-3-7

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need "proof" of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.

As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.

This is all good news, but it should not be news at all. In the 40-odd years I have been studying the medicinal uses of marijuana, I have learned that the recorded history of this medicine goes back to ancient times.

In the 19th century it became a well-established Western medicine whose versatility and safety were unquestioned. From 1840 to 1900, American and European medical journals published over 100 papers on the therapeutic uses of marijuana, also known as cannabis.

Our knowledge has advanced greatly over the years. Scientists have identified over 60 unique constituents in marijuana, called cannabinoids, and we have learned much about how they work. We have also learned that our own bodies produce similar chemicals, called endocannabinoids.

The mountain of accumulated anecdotal evidence that pointed the way to the present and other clinical studies also strongly suggests there are a number of other devastating disorders and symptoms for which marijuana has been used for centuries.

They deserve the same careful, methodologically sound research.

While few such studies have so far been completed, all have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe - safer than most medicines prescribed every day.

If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.

The pharmaceutical industry is scrambling to isolate cannabinoids and synthesize analogs and to package them in non-smokable forms. In time, companies will almost certainly come up with products and delivery systems that are more useful and less expensive than herbal marijuana.

However, the analogs they have produced so far are more expensive than herbal marijuana, and none has shown any improvement over the plant nature gave us to take orally or to smoke.

We live in an antismoking environment. But as a method of delivering certain medicinal compounds, smoking marijuana has some real advantages: The effect is almost instantaneous, allowing the patient to fine-tune his or her dose to get the needed relief without intoxication.

Smoked marijuana has never been demonstrated to have serious pulmonary consequences, but in any case the technology to inhale these cannabinoids without smoking marijuana already exists as vaporizers that allow for smoke-free inhalation.

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the U.S. government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana - and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use.

Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping outdated and destructive policies.

Such legislation would bring much-needed relief to millions suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and other debilitating illnesses.

Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is the coauthor of "Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine." This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.

Hope this helps ..
Nodstar*

This post has been edited by Nodstar on Mar 3 2007, 06:02 PM