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Vice Blog

WEED DEALINGS - PAINLESS POSSIBILITIES

Recently I spoke to Brian Schmidt, a researcher at NYU's Capstone facility whose life is dedicated to oral cancer. He's trying to find medications that help his patients avoid the pain of their illness. For reasons that remain unclear, oral cancer is the most painful cancer. It is also difficult to treat the painful symptoms, so when Dr.Schmidt found out about the analgesic effects of cannabis at a pain conference he was prompted to put together his own study. Schmidt got a team together and went about testing the effects of cannabinoids as an analgesic on rats. However over the course of his study he realized that not only were cannabinoids helping to decrease pain, they also arrested the development of tumors. While great news, this meant that Dr. Schmidt had to do another study to answer the question that arose out of his first study: "Do cannabinoids ease pain because they decrease tumor size, or do cannabinoids ease pain because of an explicit analgesic effect?

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In order to answer the question Dr. Schmidt relied on existing CB (cannabinoid) and CBR (cannabinoid receptor) research. That meant that he tested THC—the most prominent cannabinoid, the one that early cultivators bred plants to be rich in—and CBD—a more recently-discovered cannabinoid, and the second most prominent. Because of legalities Dr.Schmidt used synthesized versions of the two cannabinoids, and they were administered both in the body of the rat, and in a cultured cancer growth. Consistently, Dr.Schmidt and his researchers found that the cannabinoids worked to agitate CBRs in skin cells across the cancer, and when the receptors are agitated they stimulate an immune response. "The cannabinoids in marijuana are very similar to the cannabinoids we produce endogenously. The only difference is that we don't make them in quantities anywhere near as concentrated as the cannabis plant."

His findings however, while compelling, have not provided a conclusion to his search for an effective cure. "Cannabis works at about a 30% rate, I need something that is between 60 and 80% if I'm going to recommend it to patients. I'm still a practicing doctor, so my concern lies in finding solutions for my patients." In other words, he's an oral cancer doctor, not a cannabis researcher. When I asked Dr. Schmidt whether a more concentrated dose could possibly provide a solution he was receptive to the suggestions, "…but no one is really doing this research. I haven't come across much research on the cannabinoids themselves."

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Remember how Nixon ignored the Shafer commission? You know how Nixon's decision to make marijuana a schedule one narcotic made it difficult for labs to do tests? Well, that has had a direct impact on how much we've been able to learn about the cannabis plant. But, what we have learned thus far, and of late is startling. A handful of cancer doctors have realized that cannabinoids could be very valuable in their search to find medications that combat cancer. These doctors don't have many resources on cannabinoids to consult, and there aren't many researchers that they can reach out to as specialists on cannabinoids. So they're doing whatever research they can, and the initial research is very promising.

Marijuana is not just a plant that makes us "high," it seems that the more clearly science sees cannabinoids the more compelling this taboo medicine becomes. When you step back and look at what's been happening with marijuana since the 70s, it's all really kind of twisted. Nixon makes it a schedule one drug based on falsified accounts of how dangerous it is, because it's a schedule one drug scientific studies are few and far between, and the medicinal potential goes unrecognized—then it's locked away and the keys are locked away with it. Think about it like this: A guy gets arrested for strangling someone, and he gets locked away. He isn't allowed to come to his trial, and he's convicted to life in prison. Forty years go by, and someone realizes that the guy who went to jail is a quadriplegic, and couldn't have possibly strangled anyone. Marijuana is a quadriplegic, but it's a magical healing quadriplegic.
As long as Americans have believed that marijuana has no medical value they've looked at it with a somewhat sideways eye, but that's beginning to change. It's all pretty straightforward: most of the stuff we've been told about marijuana is a farce, and the quicker we get comfortable with the new truth—that is based in fact—the quicker we can begin to see what's really going on inside this plant.

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All of the cannabis strains we know today are derived from a pool of landrace genetics from around the world. These plants were bred in secrecy, and breeders selected individuals based on THC concentration, and a certain aesthetic. Had they known about the other cannabinoids—which would have required testing cannabis in labs, which was illegal at the time because of President Nixon's decision to make it a schedule one narcotic—the original cultivators may have selected different phenotypes, and this would have given us a different insight into cannabinoids.
Essentially, we have to go back in time. If we're going to really find the full medical potential of marijuana it's going to take a new wave of breeders who are able to work closely with researchers. Together they will be able to analyze phenotypes at a chemical level, and make breeding selections based on quantified amounts of cannabinoids as opposed to making breeding selections based on how something looks, or how high you get when you smoke it.

People are going to smoke marijuana, and there's nothing that can be done about it as the failed War on Drugs has shown. However, what we've found is that if you banish marijuana because people want to get high, you also banish the medicinal properties. Why, in a culture where we support the recreational use of alcohol and tobacco—which both have negligible medicinal value compared to cannabis—do we balk at the thought of cannabis being accepted? It goes back to my previous piece on prohibition and the ages of the folks making the decisions. But, at this point the cat is out of the bag: cannabis is a powerful, natural, anti-cancer medicine, and it seems to have a whole wealth of other medicinal values that are yet to be discovered. So ask your senator, ask your governor, ask your representative: "What the fuck are we doing? How come I can buy beer to kill me and get prescribed synthetic medicines that cause side effects, but I can't get weed? "

ZACHARY G. MOLDOF

twitter.com/imzachg

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