Cultural Baggage, August 23, 2009

Broadcasting on the Drug Truth Network, this is Cultural Baggage.

It’s not only inhumane, it is really fundamentally un-American….. ‘NO MORE’ ‘DRUG WAR’ ‘NO MORE’ ‘DRUG WAR’ ‘NO MORE’ ‘DRUG WAR’ ‘NO MORE’ ‘DRUG WAR’

My Name is Dean Becker. I don’t condone or encourage the use of any drugs, legal or illegal. I report the unvarnished truth about the pharmaceutical, banking, prison and judicial nightmare that feeds on eternal drug war.
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Hello, my friends. Welcome to this edition of Cultural Baggage. My name is Dean Becker. We’re soon going to be talking to our guest for this program. He is editor of O’Shaughnessy’s: The Journal Of Cannabis In Clinical Practice.

But first up, I want to talk about the fact that, the problems with marijuana - medical marijuana in particular, are nation wide and one such instance of problems, created by our policy, is taking place in New Jersey. Here to talk about it is Nurse Ken Wolski.
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This is Ken Wolski from the Coalition for Medical Marijuana - New Jersey.

Dean Becker: We See the horrible fallout from the process, what it does to certain people caught up in this charade, if you will, that tries to deny the use of Medical Marijuana and you have a situation like that up there in New Jersey. Why don’t you tell us about it?

Ken Wolski: Yes, we certainly do, Dean. The situation you are referring to is, the case of John Ray Wilson. He’s a 36 year old gentlemen from Somerville, New Jersey who has Multiple Sclerosis. He has no health insurance. He has no access to medical care. Basically he’s on his own.

He was so desperate to find relief from his Multiple Sclerosis, that he used ‘Bee Sting Therapy’. He allowed live bees to sting him, in an attempt to relieve the symptoms - the pain and muscle spasticity of Multiple Sclerosis. Then he heard Montel Williams talking about Medical Marijuana and relieving his MS symptoms and John tried Medical Marijuana and found that it was very effective for his condition.

So he was growing some plants in his back yard and he was discovered this last year, just about a year ago. He was arrested and he’s facing a trial right now, in Somerville. He was growing seventeen plants. He was growing them outdoors so he had a grow supply that would last him all year long. They got him with operating a drug production facility and he does face twenty years in prison.

The judge recently ruled, Dean, that this John Wilson may not even tell the jury that he had Multiple Sclerosis. He ruled that his medical condition was irrelevant to the fact that he was growing marijuana. This is Wilson’s only defense, it’s the only reason he was using marijuana The only reason he was growing marijuana was to treat his Multiple Sclerosis, and now he’s not able to tell the jury that.

Dean Becker: We’ve been talking with Ken Wolski, a nurse based up in the New Jersey area. Ken, if folks up in the Northeast would like to learn more, perhaps get involved to do what they can, please point them to your website.

Ken Wolski: Thank you, Dean. Yes, we’re the Coalition for Medical Marijuana - New Jersey and our website is cmmnj.org. We’re in 501(c)3, non-profit organization. We’re incorporated in the State of New Jersey and if you go to our website and just put your email address in, we’d be happy to send you, about twice monthly, updates on the issue in New Jersey.

New Jersey is actually pretty close to passing a Medical Marijuana bill. We may very well get a bill passed into the law by the end of the year and we may become the fourteenth state to legalize Medical Marijuana. But unfortunately, it’s not going to help John Wilson.
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Dean Becker: Alright. There are thousands of John Wilson’s across America. They don’t get the publicity and the focus like this gentleman did, but here to talk about the information which will eventually and hopefully soon, begin to sway this situation is the editor of O’Shaughnessy’s, Mr. Fred Gardner. Are you with us, sir?

Mr. Fred Gardner: I am, Dean. Can you hear me?

Dean Becker: I hear you just fine. Thank you for joining us.

Mr. Fred Gardner: My pleasure.

Dean Becker: Yeah, Fred. O’Shaughnessy’s, let’s just talk about, what is O’Shaughnessy’s?

Mr. Fred Gardner: O’Shaughnessy’s is a journal that pro-cannabis doctors share among themselves. It’s a specialty journal for the growing group of specialists who have focused their practices on Cannabis Therapeutics.

They are learning more and more about how different strains seem to affect different symptoms and different conditions and they’re learning more about the body’s own cannabinoid system, which most doctors never learn about. Because they don’t teach it in pharmacy classes and medical school and the drug company reps who come around and continue their medical education, of course don’t say that there’s an herb with these medical properties that would make Prozac and opioids... It would make a big dent in pharmaceutical drug sales.

Dean Becker: Exactly right. Many folks talk about it is their influence through, let’s face it, the contributions they make to these elected officials, that keeps this topic from being given proper focus.

Mr. Fred Gardner: You’re being very polite with say, ‘contributions’ they give them. They own these politicians. The drug companies, they’re as powerful as the oil companies. They’re interlocked with the oil companies, through the chemical companies, food companies, agro business. They combine through their banks and through their interlocking directorates. It’s the ‘Big Corporate’ structure of America that we’re up against.

Dean Becker: Exactly right and you’re right. I am being kind. OK, now. I was amazed. Last time, I think it was this Spring, I was out in California attending some event - I think I was just taking the course there at Oaksterdam University…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Um-hmm.

Dean Becker: …and these gentlemen came, and I don’t have their name in front of me, but they had started a scientific analysis of Cannabis. That was being put onto the marketplace and many of the dispensaries are now making use of their services…

Mr. Fred Gardner: You’re referring to the Analytic Test Lab that started in California?

Dean Becker: Yes, sir.

Mr. Fred Gardner: Um-hmm. Two young entrepreneurs, they had both been growing medical marijuana, had gotten busted, challenged the… They were growing for medical collectives so they had a valid defense and they’re going to succeed in California, with that. One already has and the other expects it to prevail soon.

But they were both young dads and they realized they wanted a different niche for themselves within the industry. One of them was scientifically inclined and he spent a little over a year leaning Analytical Chemistry and leaning how to operate the very sophisticated Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer - the gear that they use to identify what substances are in the given samples that the dispensaries send them.

They are testing for safety purposes to make sure that there are no pathogenic molds on these products that the people are going to then ingest and inhale and they‘re also testing for potency. For the prevalence of certain cannabinoids, in the plant.

As you know and probably many of your listeners know, THC which is often called the active ingredient in marijuana, is not the only active ingredient in marijuana. It’s the predominant ingredient, because it’s been breed for the plants for generations. It’s been breed to maximize psycho-activity.

But there’s another cannabinoid called Cannabidiol, that has many of the same anti-spasm, anti-pain, anti-nausea effects, without any psychoactive effect. In fact, it has a negative effect… It cancels out the THC effects. So we may soon develop a strain in California that has many of the medical effects, without any of the psychoactive effects.

Dean Becker: Thank you. Friends, we are speaking with Mr. Fred Gardner. He’s editor of O’Shaughnessy’s. I want to alert the listeners out there to something. This week, due to our scheduling situation, we’re going to try something new. I’m going to talk with Fred for half this program and then we’ll give you a chance, the listeners, to call in your questions and comments.

Please write down these numbers. Locally, you can call (713) 526-5738 or you can call toll free from anywhere in North America, by calling 1-877-9-420 420 {information repeated for listeners} We’ll have a half hour break. We will move to our Century of Lies program, where our guest will be Officer Neal Franklin, member of LEAP. Just had a major Op-ed published in the Washington Post.

But, we are talking to Fred Gardner. Fred, I’m looking down the list of the selected contents on the latest edition of O’Shaughnessy’s and I see one here that catches my attention. Cannabis for Autism Spectrum Disorder by Dr. Philip A. Denney.

Mr. Fred Gardner: Um-hmm.

Dean Becker: Tell us about that?

Mr. Fred Gardner: Well, Dr. Denney has written up two case notes, patients that he had… In both cases, it was the parents who came to him and said that they had problem children who were acting out and nothing seemed to work. Of course the schools had sent… tried every drug know to Western medicine, from Ritalin to the SSRI’s to Risperdal, Seroquel, these anti-psychotics and atypical anti-psychotics, and the parents knew enough from their own experience, to think that marijuana might have a calming affect.

Both these cases, that Dr. Denney wrote up, have had a miraculous effect and all the other California specialists who have authorized it’s use by children, who were… this is really violent autism - kids who had to be restrained, many hours of the day and it was a night and day transformation, when they were using Cannabis - which the parents provided for them in cookies and in controlled situations.

Dean Becker: OK now, Fred. I’m looking here that also page thirteen, Dr. Donald Tashkin reiterates…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Oh, that’s a very important story…

Dean Becker: …smoking Cannabis…

Mr. Fred Gardner: …very important.

Dean Becker: Tell us about it, Fred.

Mr. Fred Gardner: Well, Donald Tashkin is the UCLA Pulmonologist who’s work in… The Drug Czars and the prohibitionists use his work, his experiments from the seventies, eighties and nineties, to claim that marijuana smoking caused cancer and Tashkin himself, assumed that it did. Cause here’s what he found.

When he took micro-photo micrographs of lung tissue, he saw cells that were damaged; that were disorganized; that were obviously abnormal cells. So he thought that indicated that they were pre-cancerous. Secondly, when he analyzed the components of marijuana smoke, he found known carcinogens - including Benzpyrene, predominant among them.

So with seeing the damage that it did to the cells and knowing the contents of the smoke, he assumed that marijuana smoking caused cancer. But there were some contradictory studies. There was a study of fifteen thousand Kaiser patients that indicated that the marijuana smokers did not have a higher incidence of lung cancer.

So Tashkin decided to do his own study, with the backing of NIDA and UCLA and it was a gold standard study with eleven hundred cancer victims and eleven hundred controls who were matched for age, sex, income, race. All the… so that you knew that the two groups had similar experience in life and exposure to possible causes.

When he looked at the data he found, to his surprise, that the group of smokers had a slightly lower cancer rate and cancer of the lungs and head and neck. As I say, he is the Pulmonologist; he’s the establishment and it was when he concluded that smoking Cannabis does not cause lung cancer, this was a huge story. It was NIDA, which had sponsored his work for decades, buried this study in their own PR journal, which is called NIDA Notes.

So the editors of America, when they get NIDA Notes, they’re looking for the important stuff, they don’t see it in NIDA Notes and they… It just went ‘Bye’ and nobody has picked it up. Smoking Cannabis does not cause lung cancer. In fact, it has a protective effect. The cells don’t metastasize. They either die off or the antioxidant properties in the smoke, counteract any tendency toward cancer.

Dean Becker: There’s so much more we need to talk about. But Fred, we’re going to take a ninety second break and when we come back, we’re going to take the listener calls. Locally (713) 526-5738...

Mr. Fred Gardner: You want me to hang on for that?

Dean Becker: Oh, yes please, Fred. We want you to take these questions…

Mr. Fred Gardner: OK.

Dean Becker: …here in about ninety seconds and on North American continent you can dial toll free, 1-877-9-420 420 and we’ll be right back. Hang on, Fred.
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It’s time to play: "Name That Drug - By It’s Side Effects!"

Loss of personal freedom, family and possessions. Ineligible for government funding, education, licensing, housing or employment. Loss of aggressive mind set in a dangerous world. This drug’s peaceful, easy feeling can be habit forming.

(((gong)))

Time's up! The answer: Doobie, jimmy, joint, reefer, spliff, jibber, jay, biffa, jazz, blunt, steege, greener, cracker, hogger, bone, carrot, maryjane, marijuana, cannabis sativa.

Made by God. Prohibited by man.
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Hey, this is Tommy Chong, telling everybody, “Don’t let free speech go ‘Up In Smoke’, man.”
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The following report courtesy of New Jerseys largest newspaper, The Star Ledger.

Reporter: For John Wilson, these protesters are a welcome site. Like him, many of them have Multiple Sclerosis and like him, they say using marijuana helps with the pain. A judge ruled that personal use is not a legal defense in New Jersey.

Supporter: When he’s ask to put his hand on the Bible and say that he‘s going to give, ’The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, he’s not allowed to tell the whole truth.

Reporter: At the same time, New Jersey is considering legalizing Medical Marijuana. Advocates say that John’s case is the nightmare scenario, that a medical marijuana bill would avoid.

Supporter: I run the risk of being arrested. I run the risk of loosing my nursing license. Even saying this out loud I’m a little frightened. But somebody has to say it.

Supporter: It’s right in my reach. There it is and yet I can’t have it and I still don’t understand why.

Supporter: You’re better off being a crooked politician. You’ve got a much better chance of not being charged with anything.
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Alright, my friends. You are listening to Cultural Baggage. I am Dean Becker. Our guest is Fred Gardner, the editor of O’Shaughnessy’s and we’re looking for your calls. We have some lines open. Please give us a call at (713) 526-5738 or if you’re listening on the web at KPFT.org, you can call toll free to 1-877-9-420 420.

Dean Becker: Fred, are you still with us?

Mr. Fred Gardner: I’m with you.

Dean Becker: OK. Let’s go to line one. We have a call from Leonard. Your thoughts?

Leonard: Yes, good afternoon. I was looking at a special on cable and there’s a town in California that takes prescription marijuana and they ship it, as well. Now what I can’t understand about our simple minded government who seems to do everything, kind of like, ass backwards and a major one you can see is FEMA.

But my point is this, if marijuana doesn’t make you walk into a bar and make you think you could whoop everybody in the bar…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Um-hmm.

Leonard: …doesn’t make you just jump on people and rob people, you don’t have to break into peoples’ houses for it. If you don’t have it, you just don’t have it. You may desire it, but it doesn’t have any second effects, like crack and speed and all the rest of those chemicals.

Dean Becker: Leonard, Leonard, you make a very profound point. Let’s let Fred answer that. Go ahead, sir.

Leonard: The way I see it, marijuana is not a drug. Drugs are made in laboratories. Marijuana is natural. OK, Fred.

Dean Becker: Thank you, Leonard. Very good thoughts….

Mr. Fred Gardner: I agree with every point that Leonard made. He makes the distinction between the kind of desperate craving that drives people to break and enter and rob to get the drugs, where there’s an addiction situation and the marijuana craving is akin to coffee. I’d say it’s less than the coffee craving.

When Californians travel and have to give up marijuana so they can go to other states or Europe and come back and discuss it, they always say, ‘Oh, I didn’t have any for eight days. I stopped thinking about it.’ It’s not an intense craving.

Dean Becker: No he-bee gee-bee’s. No shakes. Nothing like that.

Mr. Fred Gardner: No.

Dean Becker: OK. Let’s go to Vivian, line two. You’re on the air.

Vivian: Hi. Yes, I was just wondering. You were talking about the effects of marijuana on the autism children and they were intaking the marijuana through ingestion…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Um-hmm.

Vivian: …and I was wondering about the studies that you were discussing about the cancer causing effects, whether or not there was cancer followed by the marijuana…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Cancer reducing anti-cancer effect.

Vivian: …would that be ingestion of the marijuana through smoking it? Through being rolled in a joint with papers or through a pipe? How was that….?

Mr. Fred Gardner: Maybe… can I talk? Am I on, Dean?

Dean Becker: You are. Go ahead, Fred.

Mr. Fred Gardner: There may be two different experiments that we’re talking about. Tashkin’s experiment was about smoked marijuana, specifically involving grown-ups. The case study involving childhood use of autism involved a different delivery system, in which it was melted in butter or oil and then incorporated into a cookie.

It’s a different process and it’s actually a different compound that goes into the body, when it goes through the liver, when it’s oral root and the effects last between four and eight hours, depending on the amount and the individual, when it’s eaten. But they take longer to come on. It takes about forty-five minutes to an hour to come on and then they last four to six hours.

For some uses, the smoked form is the ideal form for nausea. Marijuana is the only medication that we have for nausea. There are no… well, there are some pharmaceutical products that…

Vivian: I was specifically wondering about… for the study that was done for the cancer and the lung tissue. Was that delivery through smoking out of a pipe or you know, there’s toxins and carcinogens in rolling papers…

Mr. Fred Gardner: That’s right.

Vivian: …and was that taken into account, the rolling papers or was it smoked through a pipe?

Mr. Fred Gardner: I don’t know if you have access to the web, but if you Google Donald Tashkin, you can probably find the Lung Cancer Study, the 2005 study. I think they just measured… they called it ‘joint years‘. They’d ask people, ‘How many years have you been smoking?’

Vivian: OK.

Mr. Fred Gardner: But it was about the gross amount that they had smoked over time. Not about papers or anything like that.

Dean Becker: Vivian, thank you for a very profound question. I want to respond a little bit, myself. I interviewed Dr. Donald Tashkin. I guess it’s now been a year and a half ago and if you go to the archives, go to drugtruth.net. Click on the archives, look for guests - Donald Tashkin. You’ll see that, or you can hear that interview with him, where in his own words, he’s underlining what Fred has been putting forward here. This is a very profound discovery. Is it not, Fred?

Mr. Fred Gardner: Yes, and unexpected that this anti-cancer effect of Cannabis is an unexpected effect. But more and more studies are showing that it has anti-oxidant properties and somehow in lungs, it kills the cells so that they die off instead of metastasizing and becoming cancerous.

Dean Becker: OK, my friends. We got a couple more lines open. We probably have time for two or three calls. Our number (713) 526-5738 or you can dial toll free here in North America, 1-877-9-420 420. Let’s go to Ron on line three. Hello, Ron. You’re on the air.

Ron: Yes, good evening. This is Ron Martin here…

Dean Becker: Hi, Ron.

Ron: …and I have testimonial for the medical uses of marijuana, myself. I had lung cancer, excuse me - not lung cancer, prostate cancer in 1997. They gave me some pills to take home, I think they were the ones that Rush Limbaugh got busted for, but I took those home. I took those once. I felt absolutely, remarkably weird and took them, threw them away and used the marijuana that I kept in my own house and for that time, I was taking it for six weeks and for those six weeks, I was no problems, whatsoever. I know of other people who have Fibromyalgia that took it and completely had the problem under control…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Did you have other treatment for Prostrate Cancer or did you have radiation or surgery…

Ron: I had the surgery… It wasn’t just the marijuana, the listeners should know that.

Mr. Fred Gardner: Say that again, sir. Please.

Ron: It was the marijuana, plus the surgery.

Mr. Fred Gardner: The marijuana used for pain and in your recovery.

Ron: Yes, that and ~~~~ .

Mr. Fred Gardner: Right.

Dean Becker: Yeah, and it’s amazing how many ways marijuana can be of benefit medically. Is it not, Fred?

Mr. Fred Gardner: It is. The scientists now know the reason why it affects so many symptoms and so many conditions. They call it the ‘Master Modulator’ of the body. It’s basically setting the rate at which all the other neurotransmitters are firing. In other words, you’ve heard of serotonin and norepinephrine and adrenalin and all the chemicals that get released in the body, in responses to stresses and the needs of the body.

These all fire slowly or fast, depending on the situation. The body’s own marijuana is kind of the conductor that can slow that down or speed it up and it’s sensing the needs of other tissues and other systems and it will modulate the rate at which other neurotransmitters are being set and that’s why it affects everything from mood to physical pain.

Dean Becker: Alright. Ron, thank you so much. I tell you what, we’re going to take one more call. Dave, on line one. You’re on the air.

Dave: Hello?

Dean Becker: Dave, you’re on the air.

Dave: Yeah. Thanks, man. You know, I’ve had brain injury and I have this really bad pain in my left side and I’ve been smoking. Pot is the only way I can sleep at night and I don’t know what the diagnosis is, really. But I just wanted to let you know that there’s no other way I can deal with this pain and this burning, except for smoking pot. So, I don’t know if anyone wants to respond, or not.

Dean Becker: Fred, go ahead. Your thoughts?

Mr. Fred Gardner: I hear this testimony all the time. I’m here in California, where people in these situations have access to Medical Marijuana and can legally go to a doctor and get a recommendation and obtain it and my heart just breaks when I hear stories from New Jersey or Nebraska or Texas, of people who have to sneak around and hope for the best and hope a police officer’s not going to show up at the door for some reason and live in fear and live in terror. Actually terrorized by our own government, in trying to medicate.

Dean Becker: Yeah. It’s just crazy. Now Fred, we got just less than two minutes. I want to quickly talk about this story I learned about through Prison Legal News. Century of Lies, next week, we’ll be featuring their editor, Mr. Paul Wright. But they’re talking about the family of Jonathan Magbie, was awarded four point six million dollars for the death of their quadriplegic son, in a District of Columbia prison for smoking Medical Marijuana. Your thoughts, Fred? Wrap it up for us.

Mr. Fred Gardner: Well, it’s an American tragedy. I’m glad the family’s getting some money, but what kind of judge could have sent a quadriplegic to prison for marijuana? In our current issue we have a story about a Washington D.C. Judge, back in the seventies, who recognized it as using it for glaucoma was a valid use. This is somebody who would have gone blind if he didn’t have marijuana and a far sighted judge back in the seventies recognized that. This judge was just… What can I say, Dean? A factious.

Dean Becker: Yeah. Her name, Judge Judith Retchin…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Judge Judy? …..to Judge Judy on T.V.

Dean Becker: Jonathan Magbie was arrested by D.C. police, when they pulled him over. He drove with a straw. The man had no… but he apparently was very good at driving but, he was paralyzed from the neck down at the age of four and when he admitted to the Judge, Retchin, that he bought the marijuana, she imposed a ten day sentence, because he said he would continue smoking marijuana to alleviate the pain from his medical condition. It’s outrageous, isn’t it?

Mr. Fred Gardner: Yep. It’s outrageous. By the way, another Judge Judy - the one on television, she was on a book tour in Australia and she said that she thought, ‘Patients with AIDS should just die.’ and that was recorded, and she comes back to America and she has a fine career. Nobody holds it against her. The people that the system wants to keep, they keep and the people that the system wants to destroy, they destroy. It doesn’t really matter what you say.

Dean Becker: Alright. Fred, thank you so much…

Mr. Fred Gardner: Thank you, Dean. You’re doing great work and so brave to be in Texas, behind the line.

Dean Becker: The gulag filling station of Planet Earth. Yep. Fred Gardner, Editor of O’Shaughnessy’s and check it out online. It’s…

Mr. Fred Gardner: We have a simpler website now. It’s www.pcmd4u.org

Dean Becker: Fred, I got to go, buddy. Thank you so much.

Mr. Fred Gardner: Bye, Dean.

Dean Becker: My friends, I remind you once again, that because of prohibition, you don’t know what’s in that bag, do you? …and that’s because of this policy of prohibition. Peace.

To the Drug Truth Network listeners around the world, this is Dean Becker for Cultural Baggage and the unvarnished truth.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.
Tap dancing on the edge on an abyss.

Submitted by: C. Assenberg of www.marijuanafactorfiction.org