The BULLSHITTERS are laying it on thick at the Miami Herald

[RainDog]

Last edited Sun Jun 15, 2014, 02:33 PM - Edit history (2)

et tu, Miami Herald? Why in the (bleep) does a major newspaper in a major city post such garbage uncritically? Honestly, should you trust getting your news from a paper that reprints lies that are as old and fossilized as the statues at the Vizcaya?

And who is David Murray, the author of this ditty? A fellow at The Hudson Institute.. supposedly a forward-thinking repository... begun by a man who was considered one of the inspirations for Dr. Strangelove because the founder, Herman Kahn, applied Nash's game theory to nuclear war...and decided it was winnable. OF COURSE someone there is expounding upon the lies of the DEA and pretending they're fact. Of course someone from there thinks the drug war is winnable - if only we arrest enough Americans and build enough private prisons...amirite? high fives all around for the neverending trillion dollars wasted drug war! It's made some people rich or rich enough... like this guy writing this pile of garbage.

But while the voices of residents and legislators are being heard, one crucial group has been left out of a debate — the scientific community that is assessing marijuana’s efficacy as a medical treatment.

What does this community have to say about marijuana being sold at dispensaries before it is proven effective through the FDA’s drug approval process? According to a recent study by Yale Medical School published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May, there are very real risks associated with treating marijuana as a medical treatment, including structural brain damage, an irreversible lowering of the IQ, respiratory damage and increased risk of psychotic disorders.

When the study came out I, and others here, said... here it comes, the propaganda onslaught, and sure enough, every Billy Bob Jo Junior in law enforcement, and those institutes and agencies who love them some LE, has stepped up to claim as holy gospel a study that in no way indicated causation of anything. This rube, too, claims proof of terrible, horrible, no good very bad outcomes if this nation tries reefer sanity rather than reefer madness. Because of a studied promoted by the very same people that have told the very same lies for years.

EVEN THE EDITOR OF A MAJOR ONLINE SCIENCE PUBLISHER called out the freaking propaganda on that one - he saw it was coming too.

Since the DEA, the FDA, and the NIDA have conspired to exclude marijuana studies from those receiving approval, other nations have had to do the work that America used to be able to proudly proclaim as its own - unbiased scientific research not deformed by drug warrior Inquisitionists. Well, there was that time Reagan did get a scientist to suffocate Bonzo and claim that suffocating an animal demonstrated that marijuana was bad.. but it was the research that was bad... research that wasn't released for peer review until some 6 years later by force of a FOIA and was found to be a fraud. What sort of junk science needs to be hidden from review? The kind drug warriors promote.

And that's the kind of science this guy is promoting.

But there is plenty of evidence that marijuana has medicinal value. Otherwise it wouldn't be approved for use for MS in 10 other nations. This guy could look in this drug policy forum and find link after link to studies that have indicated a therapeutic use for marijuana. In fact, LaGuardia disproved your drug warrior ass lies in the 1940s - and yet you're still at it. What a racket!!!! How much money have these people scammed from the American people with their lying lies? Trillions, we know that. It pays well to lie, obviously, or we wouldn't see it so often from "powerful and important thinkers" like this guy.

With another bedtime for bonzo story for the reefer madness crowd.

But some American doctors have been able to do research on pulmonary aspects of marijuana. Did this policy institute "visonary" bother to read the work of Donald Tashkin? ...the doctor who has done the most research on this topic in the U.S. and has stated marijuana is not causally related to lung cancer - in fact, those who smoke mj have lower rates of lung cancer, even better than those who don't smoke anything? You know, the ones with thousands of patients, not twenty students that you're using to make a claim, Mr. Murray?

(the links are all here in the drug policy forum.)

If this person really gives a shit about the science, why doesn't he acknowledge that studies were published in the 1940s that indicated marijuana was useful for epileptic seizures - and then ask why the federal govt. didn't act on this? They certainly knew about it. The study was found in Anslinger's files. Why, the American people should ask, do people like Mr. Murray and others support harming the American people because they suffer from reefer madness? Shouldn't those with this madness be locked away, and not those who tell the truth about their propaganda?

Here the Rand study guy, from the Rand Institute offshoot, pulls out the REAL reason he wants voters to say no to medical marijuana -

Who actually uses these facilities? Participants in the study found them to be overwhelmingly male (73 percent), substantially unemployed (31 percent), largely reporting “chronic pain” (58 percent) as their medical condition (nearly half of them already having a prescription for opiates), with another 44 percent reporting either a mental or sleep disorder as their reason for needing marijuana.

To date, there is no compelling clinical need for what smoked marijuana purports to do; the medical conditions for which it might be applied are already treated by non-marijuana medicines that have been found safe, effective and without risk of abuse.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/12/4174571/medical-marijuana-no-proven-clinical.html#storylink=cpy

Yes. Once again the unemployed are the only people who want or need medical marijuana (if you're getting a sniff of Paul Ryan "making" scrotum sweat about now, yeah.) As McCamy Taylor, a doctor, wrote here earlier, doctors (as well as this guy) are bigots toward people with health problems. If you have major chronic pain - or "chronic pain" as this ass puts it, no medicine for you, sir! No pain relief for you. You should suffer and you should also not be prescribed opiate medication because you're just going to sell it - and, no, I will not put that cart behind the horse and ask if an adequate safety net, adequate health care, adequate people in positions of power might mitigate some of the problems for those with chronic pain.. because it's really just "chronic pain." Or just... they want the chronic, right? Oh, and look, another lie to claim that opiates are not more likely to be abused, because they actually create dependency, while marijuana is as addictive as coffee.

One guy with chronic pain, back in the 1990s, choked on his own vomit because upstanding men like you, Mr. Murray, were saying the same things about men like him... except back then, the period that was at the end of the death sentence for Peter McWilliams was that he was gay and, thus, he deserved it - according to other important and powerful think tanky men like you, Mr. Murray.

Just go ask Bush Sr., who made sure he shut down the federal compassionate investigative care program so that gays wouldn't be asking for marijuana from the government. How repulsive can you get, to be a President that works to increase the suffering of people with cancer - because they're gay? As repulsive as Bush and Reagan... and, frankly, Clinton.

Oh, but those guys with "chronic pain" already have prescriptions for opiates, prescribed by a doctor for "chronic pain?" Well, don't let the reality that cannabis can help mitigate the use of stronger and addictive opiates stop you from defaming entire populations of Americans with actual illness... or "chronic pain" - right, Mr. Murray? Don't let the reality that opiates have been under such scrutiny it is hard to believe doctors are out there writing scripts and tossing them to patients like confetti because, hey, those guys with "chronic pain" aren't working... maybe the chronic pain might have something to do with it, but why ask that question when you can try to smear every woman with breast cancer and every child with epilepsy and every daughter with MS because we all know who reallllly uses medical marijuana, right? Those with "chronic pain."

David Murray was chief scientist at the White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy and is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Substance Abuse Policy Research. Which White House? I've looked but can't find it. Is he embarrassed to say which administration he worked for?

This "reputable" and "upstanding" "authority" on this subject regurgitates the same old Reagan-era lie that marijuana has no medical value at the end of his editorial. That's an outright lie. Even Gil Kerlikowske had to admit that was a lie.

In 2009, the American Medical Association, the largest physician organization in the U.S., admitted that marijuana has medical value.

So, what's your medical speciality, Mr. Murray?

What do you know that you could share with the American Medical Association, Dr. Donald Tashkin, GW Pharmaceuticals and its leading researcher, Roger Pertwee, 10 other nations with fewer lunatics running the asylum, apparently, Dr. Robert Melamede, Dr. Guzman, with his studies of humans with gliomas, the FDA, which fast tracked a study on cannabis and pediatric epilepsy after Dr. Sanja Gupta shared the reality that you and your friends have lied to the American public all these years and continue to do so here.

Seems like all you know is how to repeat the lies you've been paid to tell for far too long.

This nation is so over people like you. Go away.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. $$$$$

Have you any idea how much money in law enforcement would go away if pot were legal?

[RainDog]

2. If it's anywhere near the number of typos I had to correct

I'd say... a lot. LOL.

I know it's unreasonable for Americans to think we should not be arrested and put in prison for wanting to use an herb rather than a synthetic drug in certain situations.

Surely we can all recognize how reasonable it is to have more prisoners per capita than China - while we call ourselves the land of the free...

[Bluenorthwest]

3. If? You could look to Colorado and get an actual answer to that question.

Have you? How much? What are the actual results in Colorado thus far?

[mountain grammy]

5. I live in Colorado and have held a red card for 6 years..

I'm lucky. I don't have MS, cancer, epilepsy, or any of the other debilitating diseases people are coming here for. I am just a 66 year old pot smoker who uses it for all the aches and pains and sleeplessness that go along with life.
My MM doc recommends smoking vapor or edibles, but then says there is absolutely no evidence of any relationship between smoking pot and lung cancer. He's happy that I quit perfectly legal and lethal cigarettes 10 years ago and has advised me about alcohol and pain killer abuse, since those are also legal but lethal.

How's Colorado doing? Just fine, thanks! We've had a flurry of negative news reports about edibles. A kid jumped off a balcony after eating a cookie and a man shot his wife after eating candy. And then there's the idiot, Maureen Dowd. Of course, those are the headlines. The real truth never seems to follow. I do have an issue with those who think they can make extract without taking proper safety precautions, causing fires, but still not any where near as prevalent as the death and destruction caused by drunk driving. Those of us who have always used pot know the truth as we watch friends die after years of alcohol or pharmaceutical use.

[freebrew]

4. He said:

"Oh, but those guys with "chronic pain" already have prescriptions for opiates, prescribed by a doctor"

Uh, no. The dea and le are putting the squeeze on those drugs cause they MIGHT be addictive, oh the horror.

[hunter]

6. The "War" on drugs needs to end now.

People with chronic pain and other health problems find drugs like cannabis and simple opiates effective

Addiction is merely a health problem too, not a criminal failing, whether it involves legal drugs like nicotine or alcohol, or "illegal" drugs.

The war between drug gangsters and drug warriors solve no social problems, they only create more, harming innocent people in the crossfire, ruining the lives of people whose only "crime" was suffering.

K&R this post.

The drug warriors, and the gangsters, and the pharmaceutical corporations pushing more dangerous but highly profitable pills, they all need to go away.

[mountain grammy]

7. Thank you, RainDog! I agree with every word you wrote because you are 100% correct!

and I noticed no typos. I think you got them all.

[RainDog]

8. LOL

My fingers were my mouth and the typos were flecks of spittle because, when I read this guy this morning, I just said... I'm tired of this shit, thus, rant with typos.

It's just outrageous to know that you can access legal medical cannabis while in another state someone can be sent to prison for the same.

That's like "separate but not equal" based upon the number of backward thinking people in a state.

The situation in Florida is quite the fight with Adelson pumping money into GOP coffers to both win the governorship and keep medical marijuana away from the many retirees who have moved to Florida for ages.

Yes, can't have someone get pain relief from swelling and inflammation from arthitis. They might do something wild like eat an ice cream cone later in the day. All those retirees should suffer! It's the American way!

[RainDog]

9. For reference

Here's the editorial called Bungling the Cannabis Story

Correlation does not equal causation, and a single exam cannot show a trend over time. Basic stuff, right?

But judging by coverage of a study just out in the Journal of Neuroscience, these are apparently foreign concepts for many folks in the media.

me: he's being nice and not saying, outright, that the media are complicit in the drug war in the same way they were complicit in promoting the lies that Iraq had WMDs and "yellow cake" as a faked Niger Embassy claim stated.

In the study, researchers at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital and Northwestern University in Chicago performed MRI brain scans on 20 young adult "casual" marijuana users and 20 age- and sex-matched nonusers. They found that, in the users, gray matter densities in the nucleus accumbens were higher than in controls, and the right amygdala and left nucleus accumbens were shaped differently.

Interesting, but remember that these findings only reflected differences between the marijuana users and controls at a single point in time. The researchers did not, could not, demonstrate that the differences resulted from marijuana smoking or even that the "abnormalities" relative to controls reflected changes from some earlier state.

BRAVO to John Gever for calling out the propaganda. Go to the link here and read the headlines from all the "papers of note" across the U.S.

They look like Pavlov's dogs, salivating when the DEA rings their bell to tell them to publish propaganda... just in time to push back when Dr. Sanjay Gupta said, on national and international television, that the DEA and EVERY AGENCY IN THE FEDERAL GOVT. had lied to the American people for more than 50 years....that's just since Nixon's "war on drugs" began, which Reagan escalated, and no Democrats seriously challenged because they didn't want to look soft on crime...

Come on, America, aren't you tired of this same old shit, over and over again, on issue after issue in this nation? It's the SAME TIRED SCRIPT, time after time. Act tough. Beat up on some veteran with chronic pain. Pretend you're not lying because to do so would call attention to the reality that the entire drug war has been one long litany of lies.

GET OUT AND VOTE to get rid of the lying liars.

[RainDog]

10. More research is available on cannabis than many FDA-approved drugs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fda-drug-approvals-based-on-varied-data-study-finds/2014/01/21/b12d0712-82be-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html

The Food and Drug Administration must bless any new drugs as “safe and effective” before they wind up in pharmacy aisles or prescribed to patients. But the ways in which the agency arrives at those approvals “vary widely in their thoroughness,” according to an analysis by researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine.

“Not all FDA approvals are created equally,” said Nicholas Downing, lead author of the study, which examined nearly 200 new drug approvals between 2005 and 2012.

Researchers found broad differences in the data it took to get a thumbs up from FDA. For instance, the agency required that many new drugs prove themselves in large, high-quality clinical trials. But about a third won approval on the basis of a single clinical trial, and many other trials involved small groups of patients and shorter durations. Only about 40 percent of approvals included trials in which the new drug was compared with existing drugs on the market.

For cannabis?

20,000 published studies or reviews in the scientific literature referencing the cannabis plant and its cannabinoids, nearly half of which were published within the last five years, according to a keyword search on PubMed Central, the government repository for peer-reviewed scientific research.

Of these, more than 100 are controlled clinical trials assessing the therapeutic efficacy of cannabinoids for a variety of indications.

A 2006 review of 72 of these trials, conducted between the years 1975 and 2004, identifies ten distinct pathologies for which controlled studies on cannabinoids have been published

In fact, a 2008 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association reported that cannabis-based drugs were associated with virtually no elevated incidences of serious adverse side-effects in over 30 years of investigative use.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/24615512-452/pot-holds-no-medical-mysteries.html#.U1nRFK1dXQU

So, since cannabis has more scientific validity than many FDA drugs, why didn't Mr. Murray write an editorial calling for the FDA to pull all those drugs from the marketplace? I bet some of them were even for "chronic pain."

[RainDog]

11. Cannabis-derived medication gets "orphan drug" approval by FDA

again, after Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked about the FDA's lying lies.

http://www.epilepsyresearch.org.uk/cannabis-derived-dravet-syndrome-drug-gets-us-orphan-drug-approval/

Epidiolex, a medicine that uses cannabidiol (CBD) as an active ingredient, has been designated an orphan drug for Dravet syndrome by the US Food and Drug Administration, giving manufacturer GW Pharmaceuticals the go-ahead to run a clinical development programme next year.

CBD is a non-psychoactive compound derived from the cannabis plant. In GW Pharmaceuticals’ formulation, it is administered orally, as a liquid.

The orphan drug designation means it is recognised as a potential therapy for a condition that only affects a small number of people – in this case a rare form of paediatric epilepsy.

...GW Pharmaceuticals expects to begin a formal clinical development programme for Epidiolex in 2014. In the meantime, some US paediatric epilepsy specialists will be able to treat patients with the drug immediately thanks to seven Investigational New Drug (IND) applications granted to the firm by the FDA.

[RainDog]

12. Irv Rosenfeld, in Miami, has chronic pain from tumors that grow on his bones

Last edited Sun Jun 15, 2014, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)

He testified recently in Penn. during medical marijuana hearings. I guess Mr. Murray was too busy wielding his drug warrior dumbchucks to speak with Rosenfeld, a stock broker in Miami who attributes his very life to his ability to smoke copious amounts of marijuana, daily, while going about his work, teaching sailing, and testifying before committees about the value of medical marijuana.

Irvin Rosenfeld (in testimony before the Senate in Penn.) held up a tin filled with hundreds of marijuana cigarettes in Senate Hearing Room 1 and told the committee that the medicine saved his life. The Florida stock broker has been using medical marijuana since the '70s to treat a bone tumor disorder.

"There was a program that started in 1977, Robert Randall was the first patient, I was number two. I was able to prove that this medicine worked better than the conventional medicines for me and somehow I won hearings before the FDA and I became the second patient. It is difficult because the Federal Government does not want people to understand that they are giving it out, so they really kind of kept it quiet," said Irvin Rosenfeld, Federal Medical Cannabis Patient.

The Federal Government considers marijuana a schedule one drug. "The Federal Government says it is schedule one and has no medical benefit, which is a hypocrisy. They have been giving it to me for this long and I am doing fantastic. I have not had a tumor grow or a new one develop since I was 21 and I am 61-years-old, " said Rosenfeld.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11702168

If Mr. Murray could have his way, Rosenfeld would be dead now, too. Like Peter McWilliams.

[RainDog]

13. Sandra Welch, PhD: Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Virginia Commonwealth U

at a conference on cannabis as therapeutic medicine found a synergistic effect through cannabis that required fewer opiate drugs for acute and chronic pain.

Reference: Lynch, M. E., & Clark, A. J. (2003). Cannabis reduces opioid dose in the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain. J Pain Symptom Manage, 25(6), 496-498.

[RainDog]

14. Dr. Geoffrey Guy, President of GW Pharma

GW Pharma has introduced the first plant-based whole plant cannabis medicines to the 10 nations around the world that currently approve of whole-plant cannabis Sativex for various issues, sometimes off label, as doctors do, but most especially for MS.