WEED DEALINGS - UNLOCKING BUDDHA

Where do you fit into the marijuana equation? Are you a patient? Are you an advocate? Do you have a relative who works in the industry? Are you an opponent? Do you think marijuana could heal many of our ills? Do you think it will corrupt our nation? Whatever your stance, I can tell you that none of us know enough about this plant to pass final judgment. What we do know is that there is still much to be studied, and much to be discussed. We know of no known cases of lung cancer caused by marijuana, according to Dr. Donald Tashkin, who is one of the premiere anti-marijuana medical researchers. In fact, pot's been shown to stop the growth of tumors. The nation is still waiting to see the laboratory results.

I spoke briefly with some psychologists I met in San Francisco yesterday. They work at a Veteran's hospital where they treat patients with PTSD. I asked if they ever recommend marijuana, and they said that they don't. After talking a bit longer, they revealed that many of their patients choose to medicate on their own, and they've gleaned a bit of information from some studies based on these patients' accounts. For some patients, it aggravates depression. For others, it alleviates many symptoms--but the doctors haven't been able to understand how or why. This is because marijuana has always been difficult to study in detail. Or at least it was until 215 passed.

Today, 15 years after 215, the amount of emerging information has increased from a trickle to a steady flow. Still, though we know more now than we've known at any point in the past, we still know so little. The funny thing is, ignorance was never an issue until I got to California. In prohibition states, we somehow didn't realize--or didn't care--that we knew almost nothing about the plant. It never occurred to us that marijuana needed to be studied clinically. The complicated process involved in getting the plant from soil to sandwich bag, and its storied history were totally unknown. Drugs come from the black market: it was that simple. D.A.R.E. taught us that.

All those years we'd just burn it, breathe it in, breathe it out, and get affected, but never really need to know more than that. There were no fucks to be given of who, when, where, what, why, or how. All we needed to know was that we were getting krippy--not some reggie--and we would smoke it. Oh, and then there were "mids" too ( I still can't for the life of me figure out what mids really were). Outdoor was called Christmas bud, but we had no clue that it was outdoor. We just knew it was cheaper than krippy, better than reggie, and it came around Christmas time. It's kinda crazy, especially when I think about how health conscious I was otherwise. I was just smoking these green "buds"—I didn't realize they were flowers—and enjoying how it made me feel and think. When the pot's contraband, smokers usually only worry about getting high, and while getting high is the shit, there is something much more involved, and even better, happening here in California.

For the first time marijuana is beginning to develop a reputation as an incredibly complex plant, not just as an illegal substance. Patients want to know more about their medicine so that they can understand and tailor their experience. Patients want to know where their medicine comes from, its genetic history, why growers make certain decisions, etc. It wont be long before much more is known about this plant. Science wants to understand the plant in order to quantify how it affects us, and in order to unlock its secrets. There is a whole lot of learning ahead of us. In light of this, I'm going to use the next couple of weeks to bundle up information on various topics I feel are fundamental. But, by all means, feel free to ask if there's a particular topic you'd like covered.

ZACH G MOLDOF

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