PROP. 19 OFFERS MAJOR POTENTIAL FOR SOME CANCER PATIENTS

Tens of Thousands of Sick People Throughout California Find Relief
From Scores of Ailments by Using Cannabis Because This Plant Has So
Many Healing Qualities.

Ten years ago I wrote - and AlterNet published - the very first
bylined news story about the active ingredients in marijuana
destroying cancerous tumors. The article was entitled, "Pot Shrinks
Tumors; Government Knew in '74."

Much to its credit, AlterNet has archived the story for a decade and
the link still gets picked up and reposted to websites around the
world. You can read it here. http://www.alternet.org/story/9257

After I wrote the story, and won a 2000 Project Censored award for
doing so, my frustration at not seeing the facts in the article
reported and discussed in the mainstream media eventually led to my
giving up a 20-year journalism career in disgust.

Now, with California voters on the eve of deciding whether the Golden
State will legalize adult cannabis use, I feel the need to point out
some important facts that are getting short shrift in the debate over
Proposition 19, the "tax and regulate" cannabis initiative.

If California legalizes marijuana, it will be fitting, since
California was the very first state in the Union to make cannabis
possession and cultivation illegal nearly 100 years ago, back in
1913. Prior to that, cannabis was the active ingredient in many
common medicines, for everything from migraines to arthritis to colic.

That's right: during the 1800s my great-grandparents' generation used
to give cannabis extract to their babies to soothe them.

These days, of course, if a person dares to give cannabis in any form
to their own child, for whatever reason, they face jail time and
having their kids taken away. But that's a subject for another article.

What begs discussion on the occasion of California's historic vote,
which the whole world is watching, is that cannabis has been shown in
hundreds of laboratory studies over the past ten years not only to be
physiologically harmless, but also to be the most potent anti-cancer
agent found in nature. No other natural substance holds the
cancer-stopping power of cannabis and that's a proven fact.

In addition, cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana,
shrink and prevent the spread of tumors far more effectively than
synthetic chemotherapy agents, for the simple reason that they
destroy cancer cells without damaging healthy cells, a feat that
widely prescribed chemotherapy cocktails can't duplicate.

Two unlikely journalists have led the way in publicizing research on
the cancer-fighting powers of cannabis, filling a ten-year void left
by the mainstream media. One is Paul Armentano, a frequent
contributor to AlterNet and spokesman for NORML, the nation's oldest
pot legalization organization. Paul's diligent coverage of every type
of cannabis research is exemplified by this article about the
potential of cannabis as a cancer treatment and this story about the
huge number of laboratory studies already done on marijuana.

The other pioneering cannabis scribe is Granny Storm Crow, the
pseudonym of a retired teacher's aide in her '60s who every year
publishes a compendium of cannabis research as it applies to a vast
range of illnesses, both mental and physical. This year her list of
thousands of cannabis studies runs to 420 pages, with research
specifically addressing cancer appearing on pages 70-97. You can find
it here.
http://www.mountainmedicals.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/grannys_latest_list.pdf

California voters need to know that the plant they are voting on is
not just something people like to smoke while watching their favorite
YouTube videos. Tens of thousands of sick people throughout
California find relief from scores of ailments by using cannabis
because this plant has so many healing qualities, in addition to its
relatively mild psychoactive properties.

In fact, many medical marijuana users ingest cannabis in forms that
do not get them "high" at all, such as skin creams, oils,
suppositories and many edible forms of the plant.

Proposition 19 is not just about "smoking weed to get high." It's
about opening the door to a full, uncensored discussion of the many
benefits of marijuana and its botanical cousin, industrial hemp,
which were freely cultivated for 400 years in America prior to their
ill-conceived federal prohibition in 1937. As Justice Clarence Thomas
wrote in a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, "In the early days of the
Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit
the local cultivation, possession and consumption of marijuana."

If cannabinoids are the most potent of all anti-cancer agents, as
over ten years of laboratory studies document, then the citizens of
California need to think about that before they vote on Proposition
19. Californians who choose to support cannabis prohibition, notably
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the "No on Prop. 19" effort, must
also be willing to accept responsibility for restricting their fellow
citizens' access to a harmless substance you can grow in your garden
that is proven to destroy, and prevent, deadly cancers.