As seen in Issue #10
 
1. Long-term marijuana use is associated with lower risks of certain cancers, especially head and neck cancer. According to the results of a population-based case-control study conducted by investigators at Rhode Island’s Brown University and published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, the authors of the study reported, “After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of cannabis use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma” compared to subjects who never used cannabis. Researchers further reported that subjects who smoked cannabis and consumed alcohol and tobacco (two conclusive high risk factors for head and neck cancers) also experienced a reduced cancer risk compared to non-cannabis users. Similarly, a 2006 UCLA study of more than 2,200 subjects reported that cannabis smoking proved to have a cancer preventive effect.

 
2. The majority of Americans acknowledge that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco. Despite over 70years of government propaganda alleging that cannabis is far more dangerous than alcohol, the reality is that few Americans believe it. According to an August 2010 national Rasmussen poll, fewer than one in five Americans believe that consuming cannabis is more dangerous than drinking alcohol. By contrast, fifty percent of respondents, including the majority of those who said that they drank alcohol, rated the use of marijuana to be less dangerous than booze.

 
3. The enforcement of cannabis prohibition is racially discriminatory. Minorities, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, disproportionately bear the brunt of marijuana arrests despite using cannabis at rates similar to – or in some cases, less frequently – than whites. For example, an August 2010 study commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance reported that African Americans are arrested for marijuana possession offenses in California at more than twice the rate of Caucasians. Young blacks use marijuana at lower rates than young whites. Yet from 2004 through 2008, in every one of the 25 largest counties in California, blacks were arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites, typically at double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites. Arrest figures from New York City, the marijuana arrest capitol of the world, tell a similar tale. In 2009, New York City police made 46,400 lowest level marijuana possession arrests involving cases where cannabis was either used or, more often than not, possessed in public. Of those arrested 54 percent were African American, 33 percent were Hispanic, and only ten percent were Caucasian. Nationally, the black arrest rate for marijuana offenses is 2.5 times the wasn’t until this year that civil rights organizations like the California chapter of the NAACP and the Latino Voters League finally began talking about the racially motivated nature of marijuana law enforcement. For the most part, editors and reporters for the MSM have still yet to notice.

 
4. Cannabis may be helpful, not harmful, to people with mental illnesses, particularly schizophrenia. For years now the mainstream media has run rampant with reports that smoking cannabis causes or exacerbates mental illness. Yet several overlooked studies published as recent as early this year indicate that cannabis use has been helpful to patients with mental diseases like schizophrenia. In May 2010 a Canadian Journal of Nursing Research reported male schizophrenic subjects consumed cannabis “as a means of satisfying the schizophrenia-related need for relaxation, sense of self-worth, and distraction. in 2008 in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing also reported that many schizophrenic patients obtain relief from cannabis, finding that subjects consumed cannabis to reduce anxiety, mitigate memories of childhood trauma, enhance cognition, and “improve their mental state.”

 
5. Recent studies have confirmed an ancient chinese remedy stating that rather than causing absent-mindedness, cannabis could be a treatment for it. The concept of medical marijuana is not a new one. A Chinese pharmacy book written about 2700 BCE, was probably the first to mention cannabis as a medicine for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, malaria, constipation, and (ironically) absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness is typically one of the first symptoms that comes to mind when thinking about long term cannabis users. This is probably a result of the redundant and exhaustive litany of false propoganda that has been pumped throughthe mainstream media for a few decades now.

 
According to the recent research of Dr. Gary Wenk, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at The Ohio State University, cannabis’ proven ability to stimulate nuerogenesis (cell building) in the brain clearly helps to preserve and protect memories. Dr. Wenk’s studies showed that this nuerogenesis becomes particularly beneficial as we age.

How could a substance that clearly impairs memory while people are under its effects protect their brains from the consequences of aging? The answer has everything to do with the way that young and old brains function and a series of age-related changes in brain chemistry. When we are very young, stimulating the brain’s marijuana receptors can interfere with making memories. However, later in life, the brain gradually displays increasing evidence of inflammation and a dramatic decline in the production of new neurons, called neurogenesis, that are important for making new memories. Dr. Wenk’s research has demonstrated that stimulating the brain’s cannabinoid receptors offers protection by reducing brain inflammation and stimulating neurogenesis.