The Medical Cannabis Guidebook. Mel Thomas
fictitious stories connecting marijuana use and crime. The manipulation continues to this day, as former CBS News president Richard Salant explained when discussing the media’s role in manipulating the masses: “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”3
Cannabis prohibition is indisputably the result of a corrupt conspiracy founded on lies, propaganda and misinformation that for decades has denied society access to a benign and highly beneficial medicinal plant.
Female cannabis plant in flower.
Cannabis has been used medically for millennia.4 An article published in The Economist on April 27, 2006, under the heading, “Marijuana is medically useful, whether politicians like it or not,” stated:
“If Marijuana was unknown, and bio-prospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia; many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body.”5
The medicinal use of cannabis predates written history. Cannabis preparations have traditionally been used as treatments for a wide variety of conditions for thousands of years in India, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa and South America. Furthermore, evidence of medicinal cannabis use dating from 1600 BCE has been found in Egypt, where it was used as a fumigant, topical salve and suppository.6
One of the earliest accounts of medical cannabis use can be found in the Chinese pharmacopoeia text Pen-Tsao Kang-Mu (The Great Herbal), which was written in 100 CE, but which actually dates back to the Emperor Shen-Nung in 2800 BCE.7 The author Li Shih Chen referred to works from previous writers who for centuries regarded cannabis and its seeds as both a food and medicine. This early text correctly identifies the flowering tops of cannabis plants (Ma-fen) as the most useful and potent for the production of medicines, and recommends cannabis to treat menstrual fatigue, fevers, arthritis and malaria, as well as being effective as an analgesic. In the second century CE, Chinese surgeon Hua Tuo is documented as using an anesthetic made from cannabis resin and wine (Ma-yo) to perform painless complex surgical procedures, including limb amputations.
The Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides traveled throughout the Roman and Greek empires to obtain material for his publication Materia Medica, which includes references to the plant Cannabis Sativa L. (from the Greek word kannabis), described as useful in the manufacturing of rope, with the juice of the seeds reported to be effective for treating earaches and diminishing sexual desire.8 Materia Medica was translated and published throughout the known world and was used as a medical reference resource up until the 16th Century. It was a precursor to modern pharmacopoeias and is one of the most influential herbalist books ever written.
America’s very first law concerning cannabis was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. Far from prohibiting cannabis, the law stated that all farmers were “ordered” to grow Indian hemp seed.9 The U.S. Census of 1850 records 8,327 cannabis plantations in excess of 2,000 acres, all producing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and rope. Cannabis first appeared in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia in 1851 (3rd edition) and until prohibition was introduced, cannabis was the primary treatment for over 100 separate illnesses and diseases. By the time the 12th edition of the Pharmacopeia was published, cannabis had been officially removed and its use in medical research had been halted.
In the 1930s, the U.S. federal government backed the campaign of Harry Anslinger and his newly formed Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger was a corrupt, racist bigot who in order to build up his new organization sought to generate fear of cannabis use through propaganda and lies. Anslinger created nationwide concern over a problem that did not exist by demonizing marijuana through spurious tales of crime, violence and insanity. The Bureau of Narcotics promoted what they called the “Gore Files”; wild “reefer madness” tales of murder, violence, loose morals and the effects cannabis had on the “degenerate races,” which cynically exploited the endemic racism that was prevalent at the time. By associating marijuana use with ethnic minorities he ensured that the majority of white Americans would be sympathetic to any planned prohibition.
Plant in early stage of flowering.
The Following Quotes Are From Anslinger’s “Gore Files”:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”10
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”11
“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”12
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”13
“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”14
“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”15
The Bureau of Narcotics had a powerful and willing ally in the media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his chain of national newspapers. To Hearst, hemp paper was unwanted competition and he readily published lurid anti-cannabis propaganda from the Bureau’s “Gore Files”, printing headlines such as:
“Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days - Hashish goads users to bloodlust.”16
“Marihuana influenced negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows, and look at a white woman twice.”
Anti-cannabis propaganda from 1936.
“Marihuana is responsible for the raping of white women by crazed negroes.”
“Three fourths of the crimes of violence in this country today are committed by dope slaves, that is a matter of cold record.”17
Freshly ground cannabis.
Hearst and Anslinger were joined in the conspiracy by the Dupont chemical corporation, and in 1937 Anslinger presented to Congress his Marijuana Tax Act.18 Apart from some opposition from William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association, the bill was passed after very little discussion, and cannabis was effectively prohibited. Most people did not realize that the “evil marijuana drug” that was referred to in the tax act was in fact the cannabis plant that had been essential to the early settlers and was a useful and well-known medicine.
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