First federal agency to acknowledge medical marijuana removes anti-tumor information from database
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Last week, The American Independent was first to report that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) had added a section on medical marijuana to its treatment database, making it the first federal agency to formally recognize marijuana’s medicinal properties. Now, NCI has altered the page, removing any mention of the evidence that marijuana can diminish and even reverse tumor growth.
In an edit that appeared Monday afternoon, NCI replaced a sentence about marijuana’s direct anti-tumor effect with one stating that it is prescribed mainly to battle nausea, pain and insomnia among cancer patients. The original passage, which was published on March 17, read:
The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.
The amended version reads:
The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Though no relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients who prescribe medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.
In its overview of the drug, NCI still acknowledges the following:
- Cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years prior to its current status as an illegal substance.
- Chemical components of Cannabis, called cannabinoids, activate specific receptors found throughout the body to produce pharmacologic effects, particularly in the central nervous system and the immune system.
- Cannabinoids may have benefits in the treatment of cancer-related side effects.
The American Independent is awaiting reply from NCI on the reasons for the change. An image of the page as it appeared prior to Monday’s edit can be seen here.
Why are we not just suing for reparations? Cannabis and cannabinoids are classified in Schedule I with drugs that have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”
This is demonstrably false.
A professional survey needs to be conducted to determine to what extent the profits of gas stations, supermarkets, pharmacies and liquor stores will increase by when they’re legally allowed to sell marijuana to adults. These corporations should be demanding the right to sell marijuana, not just for the good of their stakeholders, but in order to undermine drug dealers’ prices and drive them out of our communities and away from our children!
Marijuana has repeatedly been proven to NOT cause cancer, heart disease, brain damage, liver disease, emphysema, or any other significant health issue, and its addiction potential is about on par with coffee. In all respects, marijuana is far safer than beer and wine and should, at the very least, be controlled by exactly the same laws that we use for alcohol.
Our current marijuana prohibition empowers drug dealers and the Mexican drug cartels by preventing any form of legal competition to their activities. Instead of protecting children from marijuana, these laws create an environment of zero legal supply amidst massive and unrelenting demand and effectively serve to make our children LESS safe. It is *because* of the failings of the prohibition that our children now have easier access to marijuana than to alcohol! Our communities need legal adult marijuana sales for exactly the same reason they need legal alcohol and tobacco sales – to keep unscrupulous black-market criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children.
Parents work hard to keep drugs away from their children and they need effective, logic-based laws to help them with this. In order to greatly improve the safety of our children we need legal adult marijuana sales in gas stations and supermarkets at prices too low for drug dealers to match – just as beer and wine are sold today. Our laws should be based on logic, fact and reason, and NOT on ideological positions and unproven assumptions!
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