The Medical Cannabis Guidebook. Mel Thomas

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      The following multiple-medicinal-use patent on a natural compound, which is illegal under patent statutes, was recently granted to the U.S. government by its own Patent Office:

      Excerpt from U.S. Patent #6630507:³³

      “Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of a wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuro-protectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Non-psychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuro-protective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH₃, and COCH₃.”

      This is a complete contradiction to the U.S. government’s officially stated policy with regard to medical cannabis use and clearly demonstrates that cannabis prohibition is not about protecting health–it’s about protecting corporate wealth.

      Apart from the nutritional and health benefits gained from non-psychoactive hemp seed and oils now legally available, there is overwhelming evidence that cannabis oil made from the illegal plant varieties can send many cancers into remission, particularly with regard to breast cancer. The antitumor effects of herbal cannabis and cannabis oil extracts have been well known since at least the 1970s, when the Medical College of Virginia reported on August 18, 1974, that marijuana’s psychoactive component, THC, slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36%.³⁴ Funded by the National Institutes of Health and tasked with finding evidence that cannabis damages the immune system, the study instead found that THC slowed the growth of these three types of cancer: The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further research was halted.

      In 1998, a research team at Madrid’s Complutense University discovered that THC could selectively induce programmed death in brain tumor cells without negatively impacting surrounding healthy cells.³⁵ Further studies reported in the August 15, 2004 issue of Cancer Research, the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, that cannabis constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumor biopsies.³⁶

      Led by Dr. Manuel Guzman, the Spanish team announced they had destroyed incurable brain cancer tumors in rats by injecting them with THC. This work still continues and the authors recently supplied the team with a quantity of their laboratory tested 1:1 (THC:CBD) oil containing 40% CBD with total active cannabinoids at 80%. This oil was made using the techniques described in this book, in later chapters, and research has shown that CBD (cannabidiol)–a nontoxic, non-psychoactive chemical compound found in the cannabis plant–acts as a more potent inhibitor of cancer cell growth than other cannabinoids, including THC. The compound is particularly efficacious in halting the spread of breast cancer cells by triggering apoptosis (programmed cell death).

      Scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco have also shown that CBD, can stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancers, stating:³⁷

      “We started by researching breast cancer, but now we’ve found that cannabidiol works with many kinds of aggressive cancers; brain, prostate and any kind in which these high levels of ID-1 are present.”

      Even if only anecdotal evidence exists regarding the efficacy of cannabis oil treatment on cancerous tumors in patients, then surely every cancer sufferer has the right to be informed about this and given the opportunity to try it. This is not a personal freedom argument but a discussion regarding the fundamental human right to life. Access to a potentially life-saving medication should not be subject to any laws whatsoever. People denied cannabis oil treatment have died of cancers that all of the available evidence suggests may have been entirely treatable. In the following chapters we’ll look at the basic history and makeup of the cannabis plant, how its beneficial contents can best be extracted and administered and we’ll also detail the nutritional benefits that can be derived from non-psychoactive varieties available such as hemp seeds and cold pressed hemp oils. The aim is to help people make their own informed decisions regarding cannabis use, regardless of the government’s refusal to supply this information or allow cannabis use.

       Maturing cannabis flower.

CHAPTER ONE

       The Cannabis Plant

      Cannabis sativa is a member of the Moraceae family and can grow to between 3 and 15 feet (1 and 4.5 meters), depending on the variety.¹ Landrace is the term used to describe a wild-growing cannabis strain that has evolved in the isolation of a specific geographic region. Over time, these isolated strains began to evolve their own distinct traits best suited for survival in their region. Cannabis strains as we know them today are the result of crossbreeding and hybridization of these distinct landraces.

      Hemp is the common name for plants of the entire genus C. sativa, although the term now refers only to cannabis strains cultivated for fiber and not drug crops. Botanists still cannot agree as to which family cannabis belongs; initially, it was classified as one of the Nettle family (Urticaceae), although this was based more upon visual characteristic. It was later reclassified into the Fig family (Moraceae). However, this is still causing disagreement, so cannabis is now classified as Cannabaceae, along with the genus of hop plants. In most studies, hemp and hops are not separated from each other, but are reported as hops/hemp or Cannabaceae.2

      Cannabis is dioecious; meaning that the plant will be either male or female. In unusual circumstances it can develop into a hermaphrodite (monoecious) plant; this means that both male and female flowers appear on the same plant. Only the female produces flowers containing significant amounts of cannabinoids. These flowers are referred to as “buds” and they are more potent if the female is unfertilized by the male. These flowers are also known as sensimilla, meaning seedless in Spanish. Males and hermaphrodites are of no use to the medical or recreational cannabis consumer so growers must ensure that they cultivate only female plants by either taking cuttings from an established female mother plant or by starting the crop with feminized seeds to guarantee an all-female crop.

      

       Young cannabis plant.

      To regulate its development, the plant reads the amount of light it receives using a hormone called phytochrome, which acts as a photoreceptor, and is basically a pigment that plants use to detect light. When a cannabis plant receives over 12 hours of uninterrupted СКАЧАТЬ