NORTH BAY BOH E MI A N | AUGUST 22– 28 , 20 1 2 | BO H E M I AN.COM
18 Straight Dope ( 17 a new book. Smoke Signals, a vast compendium on cannabis by Healdsburg resident Martin Lee, is just out from Scribner. Diminutive with a shock of madscientist hair and a perpetual look of bemusement, Lee is an investigative journalist and one of the founders of the organization FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). Equal parts social history, compelling research and political commentary, Smoke Signals is populated with the artists, writers and thinkers for whom cannabis lit a green fuse of inspiration—from Balzac to Baudelaire, the Beatles to Bob Dylan—as well as the scientists and activists who have doggedly fought to liberate the perennially misunderstood Dona Juanita. In his initial research, Lee was simply trying to understand why California law enforcement continues to harass and bust medical marijuana patients after the passage of Proposition 215, which legalized use of the herb (with a doctor’s prescription) for a handful of ailments. Along the way, he learned of the plant’s “rich cultural history involving poetry, music, science, medicine, law and many other elements.” He also discovered groundbreaking research into the medical use of cannabis. “The science is amazing and little known outside of academic circles,” says Lee. “I felt it important to draw attention to marijuana’s underreported medicinal attributes.” The pot narrative began 6,000 years ago. First cultivated in the Hindu Kush region near China, invading Aryan tribes brought it to India where it was associated with the Hindu god Shiva, and was smoked, ingested and made into fuel, cloth and rope. After observing its usefulness in the East, W. B. O’Shaughnessy introduced cannabis to the West in the 1800s, where it was listed in The United States Pharmacopeia and the National Formulary until the 1930s. Prescribed for over a hundred ailments, marijuana was ingested by our grandparents in the cough remedies, nervines and
analgesics common in the day and bought from such upstanding establishments as Sears, Roebuck and Company. Lee’s book describes how during the Great Depression the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics found itself without budget or scapegoat, inspiring the agency’s director, Harry Anslinger, to fashion himself into a righteous anti-pot crusader, erroneously classifying the plant as a narcotic and fabricating the reefer madness propaganda that today is lampooned on T-shirts and posters. Anslinger gave his governmentsanctioned agenda a blatantly racist top-spin. “Reefer,” he said, “makes darkies think they are as good as white men,” causes “white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes” and inspires the creation of “Satanic music of Jazz and Swing.” The bureau also linked the herb with insanity and claimed a direct correlation between marijuana and violence, and even death. The U.S. government’s policy on cannabis has hardly budged in 80 years, despite the findings of numerous committees, here and in Britain, such as the La Guardia and Wootton reports, and results from the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, headed by Raymond Shafer in the early 1970s. All confirm what generations of marijuana users have always known: that there is no connection between pot and any illness or disorder (other than a tendency among some slackers toward excessively vegetal behavior).
also discovered a vital chemicalsignaling system in the body with which THC interacts. Composed of naturally produced molecules called endocannabinoids (often called “the body’s own marijuana”) and their corresponding receptor sites, this unique system influences appetite, mood, memory and pain sensation. Here’s the magic: marijuana contains its own inherent cannabinoids that mimic and enhance those in the body with potency and complexity. Like a pantheon of superheroes, these phytocannabinoids and their sidekicks—the terpenes and flavanoids—create an “entourage effect,” a team effort that regulates, modulates, stimulates and protects virtually every cell in the body. While the THC in marijuana has been shown to have powerful biological effects on the body, especially in the areas of pain and inflammation, cannabidiol is now taking center stage. Recent findings based on preclinical and human studies show that CBD has anti-inflammatory, antipsychotic, anticonvulsant, anti-tumorigenic and analgesic properties. Cannabidiol kicks serious booty against cancer, as well as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and multiple sclerosis. It helps prevent and treat heart disease, diabetes and stroke, and appears to improve such psychological conditions as schizophrenia, social anxiety disorder, depression and ADHD, often working better than the drugs typically prescribed, and with virtually no side effects. Cannabidiol has even been shown in vitro to be effective against the difficult-to-treat bacterial infection MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). One of those on the forefront of CBD science, Dr. Sean D. McAllister, works at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, where his studies have
One user describes smoking CBD as ‘marijuana with a seat belt.’
Good Green Medicine Modern research in medical marijuana began in 1964, with the isolation and synthesis of marijuana’s controversial molecule, delta-9tetrahydrocannabinol—better known as THC—by Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam, who
shown cannabidiol’s devastating effect on human cancer cells. Like a ninja assassin, CBD targets these renegade cells and systemically weakens, starves, stops them from spreading and reproducing, and, McAllister reports, ultimately kills them off. “What’s different here [versus] conventional cancer drugs,” says McAllister, “is that cannabinoids have a very low toxicity profile, so they cause few side effects.” McAllister found that CBD behaves differently than THC in the body. “The CBD molecule itself does not interact efficiently with endocannabinoid receptors,” he explains. “However, it does interact with other biological pathways.” In his cancer studies, McAllister used synthetic CBD produced by a British firm for research purposes, but he is interested in continuing his work with a whole plant extract. Currently, he’s testing the hypothesis that THC and CBD work in concert, and mentions evidence showing that the terpenes and flavanoids in whole cannabis also have a modulating effect. “There are many anecdotal reports on the usefulness of the whole marijuana plant,” says McAllister. “Preclinical evidence backs them up.” Unfortunately, nobody has yet offered funding to McAllister for whole-plant cannabis research. “There is a history among pharmaceutical companies not to get into plant extracts because they are so hard to patent,” he said. Sativex is the only clinically tested and standardized whole-plant cannabis extract currently available on the world market. Manufactured by GW Pharmaceuticals in a secret location somewhere in the English countryside, it is approved for use in Britain, France and Canada, though not in the United States. Sativex contains a one-to-one ratio of CBD to THC, radically different than currently popular strains with their skyrocketing THC content and often negligible CBD. The company has animated videos that illustrate the difference between treating illness using synthetic drugs (side effects) and cannabinoids (few side effects).