What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana by Dr. Andrew Weil
"a-motivation [is] a cause of heavy marijuana smoking rather than the reverse"
Dr. Andrew Weil (Rubin & Comitas Ganja in Jamaica, 1975)
What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana
From The Natural Mind by Dr. Andrew Weil
(last half of chapter four pg. 86-97)
Because marijuana is such an unimpressive pharmacological agent, it is not a very interesting drug to study in a laboratory. Pharmacologists cannot get a handle on it with their methods, and because they cannot see the reality of the non-material state of consciousness that users experience, they are forced to design experimental situations very far removed from the real world in order to get measurable effects. There are three conditions under which marijuana can be shown to impair general psychological performance in laboratory subjects. They are:
1.by giving it to people who have never had it before;
2.by giving people very high doses that they are not used to
(or giving it orally to people used to smoking it); and
3.by giving people very hard things to do, especially things that they have never had a chance to practice while under the influence of the drug.
Under any of these three conditions, pharmacologists can demonstrate that marijuana impairs performance. And if we look at the work being done by NIMH-funded researchers, all of it fulfills one or more of these conditions. In addition, the tests being used by these scientists are designed to look for impairments of functions that have nothing to do with why marijuana users put themselves in an altered state of consciousness. People who get high on marijuana do not spontaneously try to do arithmetic problems or test their fine coordination.
If a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high
What pharmacologists cannot make sense of is that people who are high on marijuana cannot be shown, in objective terms, to be different from people who are not high. That is, if a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high. Now, this pattern of users performing better than nonusers is a general phenomenon associated with all psychoactive drugs. For example, an alcoholic will vastly outperform a nondrinker on any test if the two are equally intoxicated; he has learned to compensate for the effects of the drug on his nervous system. But compensation can proceed only so far until it runs up against a ceiling imposed by the pharmacological action of the drug on lower brain centers. Again, since marijuana has no clinically significant action on lower brain centers, compensation can reach 100 percent with practice.
These considerations mean that there are no answers to questions like, What does marijuana do to driving ability? The only possible answer is, It depends. It depends on the person - whether he is a marijuana user, whether he has practiced driving while under the influence of marijuana. In speaking to legislative and medical groups, I have stated a personal reaction to this question in the form of the decision I would make if I were given the choice of riding with one of the following four drivers:
1.a person who had never smoked marijuana before and just had;
2.a marijuana smoker who had never driven while high and was just about to;
3.a high marijuana smoker who had practiced driving while high; and
4.a person with any amount of alcohol in him.
Continued... deoxy.org/pdfa/marijuana.htm
www.drugwarfacts.org
US: Why I Support Medical Marijuana, by Dr. Andrew Weil
Stop The Federal War On Medical Marijuana by Dr. Andrew Weil
No Bad Drugs: The Newservice Interview: Dr. Andrew Weil
Feds wage war on cancer patients
Dr. Andrew Weil Commentary
Pot Smoker of The Month Dr. Andrew Weil
"I said, in The Natural Mind, that I often have the suspicion that everything that we do in the name of stopping the drug problem is the drug problem. It's not just the laws but the whole mentality that sees drugs as the problem and tries to fight them. By doing that I think we've made it all worse.
Whats the Straight Dope on Pot?
(Published 09/19/1997)
Marijuana, an ancient drug, is a product of Cannabis sativa, a plant long used to provide fiber, an edible seed, an edible oil and a medicine, as well as a psychoactive drug. Marijuana has been known in China, India and the Middle East as a medicine for thousands of years. In Western countries it was used as an appetite stimulant, muscle relaxant, painkiller, sedative and anti-convulsant for decades. Then, in 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act was enacted in order to discourage what was considered dangerous recreational use. The law stopped medical and food use as well...
I suggest you check out a great new book called "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts" by Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. (a distinguished sociologist) and John P. Morgan, M.D. (a pharmacologist) (The Lindesmith Center, 1997). The authors started with a list of common perceptions -- and misperceptions --
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts
Lester Grinspoon
Tod Mikuriya
Toronto Hemp Company (THC) - Information - Marijuana Myths
According to testimony before the US Congress by Dr. Andrew Weil, "a smoker would have to theoretically consume nearly 1500 Pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to induce a lethal response." By comparison, he adds that "eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response," and that aspirin "causes hundreds if not thousands of deaths each year."
Ralph Nader In the Public Interest DEA Bans Industrial Hemp Foods
Therapeutic Hemp Oil by Andrew Weil, M.D.
The nutritional composition of oil from the marijuana plant could be beneficial to your health. To most people, Cannabis sativa is synonymous with marijuana, but the plant's Latin name means the "useful hemp." Species designated sativa (useful) are usually among the most important of all crops. In fact, the utility of hemp is manifold: the plant has provided human beings with fiber, edible seeds, an edible oil, and medicine, not just a notorious mind-altering drug.
Natural Help For Depression by Dr. Andrew Weil
The Master Key to Self Healing.
Another option is to snack on toasted hemp seeds (which, by the way, aren't psychoactive). You can order hemp seeds from The Ohio Hempery , (800) BUY-HEMP.
Nutritious hemp oil is emerging as alternative to toxin-tainted fish.
New study finds mercury pollution is a serious health risk for those that eat fish.
www.hempfood.com
www.jackherer.com
MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PETITION
FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge
"Dr. Andrew Weil, a general medicine practitioner in Tucson, Arizona, who also teaches at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, accepts marijuana as having a medical use in the treatment of spasticity. In multiple sclerosis patients the muscles become tense and rigid because their nerve supply is interrupted. Marijuana relieves this spasticity in many patients, he has found. He would prescribe it to selected patients if it were legally available..."
Webster's Dictionary 1952
Bhang-(bang). n [Hind.from Sans.. bhanga,hemp]
An Indian variety of the common hemp, the resin of which is highly narcotic and intoxicant, and a popular Oriental stimulant, otherwise called hashish. Also employed in medicine, for its anodyne, hyponotic, and anti-spasmodic qualities; also spelled bang, beng.
Weil Says LSD Cured His Allergy
Andrew Weil on medical uses of Ecstasy, MDMA, by Dan Skeen
From Chocolate to Morphine
Dr. Andrew Weil
Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs.
Internationally, "the war on drugs" provides a cover for intervention. Domestically, it has little to do with drugs but a lot to do with distracting the population, increasing repression in the inner cities, and building support for the attack on civil liberties.
Noam Chomsky, "The war on (certain) drugs" is What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Stoned scientists
Dr. Andrew Weil
www.drweil.com
Mainstream Medicine's Serene Rebel
The New Face Of Medicine
Hemp TV: Dr. Andrew Weil on drug policy at Harvard's Zinberg ...
Full-Page New York Times Ad Urges Bush: Stop the War on Medical Marijuana
The Coalition for Compassionate Access
Marijuana Drug Czar Distorts Report
Astonishingly, Walters claims that the 1999 Institute of Medicine report didn't urge the government to allow seriously ill people legal access to medical marijuana on a case-by-case basis. What the institute did say about medical use of marijuana by AIDS and cancer patients was "nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and all can be mitigated by marijuana." Maybe these experts were duped. Maybe John Walters, unbeknown to us, has medical expertise beyond that of the world's leading physicians and researchers. Or maybe he's lying in a desperate attempt to save a collapsing policy.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA DOCTORS AND RELATED ORGANIZATIONS
How To Obtain A Physician Referral
How the War On Drugs Is Ending
People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be.
Terence McKenna
The Partnership for Drug Freedom in America supports the preservation and protection of the natural human right to freely choose our food, drink, spice, medicine, sacrament, fiber and other nourishments from the bountiful harvest of planet Earth.
The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension
Drug War Truce
Dr. Andrew Weil of the University of Arizona College of Medicine states, "There is not a shred of hope from history or from cross-culture studies to suggest that human beings can live without psychoactive substances." Bees drop to the ground after having nectar from certain orchards. Birds get drunk off berries and then fly into windows. After cats sniff certain plants they swing at imaginary objects. Certain range weeds will make cows shake, twitch, and stumble back for more. Elephants purposely get drunk on fermented fruits..."
Kindred Sites
"a-motivation [is] a cause of heavy marijuana smoking rather than the reverse"
Dr. Andrew Weil (Rubin & Comitas Ganja in Jamaica, 1975)
What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana
From The Natural Mind by Dr. Andrew Weil
(last half of chapter four pg. 86-97)
Because marijuana is such an unimpressive pharmacological agent, it is not a very interesting drug to study in a laboratory. Pharmacologists cannot get a handle on it with their methods, and because they cannot see the reality of the non-material state of consciousness that users experience, they are forced to design experimental situations very far removed from the real world in order to get measurable effects. There are three conditions under which marijuana can be shown to impair general psychological performance in laboratory subjects. They are:
1.by giving it to people who have never had it before;
2.by giving people very high doses that they are not used to
(or giving it orally to people used to smoking it); and
3.by giving people very hard things to do, especially things that they have never had a chance to practice while under the influence of the drug.
Under any of these three conditions, pharmacologists can demonstrate that marijuana impairs performance. And if we look at the work being done by NIMH-funded researchers, all of it fulfills one or more of these conditions. In addition, the tests being used by these scientists are designed to look for impairments of functions that have nothing to do with why marijuana users put themselves in an altered state of consciousness. People who get high on marijuana do not spontaneously try to do arithmetic problems or test their fine coordination.
If a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high
What pharmacologists cannot make sense of is that people who are high on marijuana cannot be shown, in objective terms, to be different from people who are not high. That is, if a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high. Now, this pattern of users performing better than nonusers is a general phenomenon associated with all psychoactive drugs. For example, an alcoholic will vastly outperform a nondrinker on any test if the two are equally intoxicated; he has learned to compensate for the effects of the drug on his nervous system. But compensation can proceed only so far until it runs up against a ceiling imposed by the pharmacological action of the drug on lower brain centers. Again, since marijuana has no clinically significant action on lower brain centers, compensation can reach 100 percent with practice.
These considerations mean that there are no answers to questions like, What does marijuana do to driving ability? The only possible answer is, It depends. It depends on the person - whether he is a marijuana user, whether he has practiced driving while under the influence of marijuana. In speaking to legislative and medical groups, I have stated a personal reaction to this question in the form of the decision I would make if I were given the choice of riding with one of the following four drivers:
1.a person who had never smoked marijuana before and just had;
2.a marijuana smoker who had never driven while high and was just about to;
3.a high marijuana smoker who had practiced driving while high; and
4.a person with any amount of alcohol in him.
Continued... deoxy.org/pdfa/marijuana.htm
www.drugwarfacts.org
US: Why I Support Medical Marijuana, by Dr. Andrew Weil
Stop The Federal War On Medical Marijuana by Dr. Andrew Weil
No Bad Drugs: The Newservice Interview: Dr. Andrew Weil
Feds wage war on cancer patients
Dr. Andrew Weil Commentary
Pot Smoker of The Month Dr. Andrew Weil
"I said, in The Natural Mind, that I often have the suspicion that everything that we do in the name of stopping the drug problem is the drug problem. It's not just the laws but the whole mentality that sees drugs as the problem and tries to fight them. By doing that I think we've made it all worse.
Whats the Straight Dope on Pot?
(Published 09/19/1997)
Marijuana, an ancient drug, is a product of Cannabis sativa, a plant long used to provide fiber, an edible seed, an edible oil and a medicine, as well as a psychoactive drug. Marijuana has been known in China, India and the Middle East as a medicine for thousands of years. In Western countries it was used as an appetite stimulant, muscle relaxant, painkiller, sedative and anti-convulsant for decades. Then, in 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act was enacted in order to discourage what was considered dangerous recreational use. The law stopped medical and food use as well...
I suggest you check out a great new book called "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts" by Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. (a distinguished sociologist) and John P. Morgan, M.D. (a pharmacologist) (The Lindesmith Center, 1997). The authors started with a list of common perceptions -- and misperceptions --
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts
Lester Grinspoon
Tod Mikuriya
Toronto Hemp Company (THC) - Information - Marijuana Myths
According to testimony before the US Congress by Dr. Andrew Weil, "a smoker would have to theoretically consume nearly 1500 Pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to induce a lethal response." By comparison, he adds that "eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response," and that aspirin "causes hundreds if not thousands of deaths each year."
Ralph Nader In the Public Interest DEA Bans Industrial Hemp Foods
Therapeutic Hemp Oil by Andrew Weil, M.D.
The nutritional composition of oil from the marijuana plant could be beneficial to your health. To most people, Cannabis sativa is synonymous with marijuana, but the plant's Latin name means the "useful hemp." Species designated sativa (useful) are usually among the most important of all crops. In fact, the utility of hemp is manifold: the plant has provided human beings with fiber, edible seeds, an edible oil, and medicine, not just a notorious mind-altering drug.
Natural Help For Depression by Dr. Andrew Weil
The Master Key to Self Healing.
Another option is to snack on toasted hemp seeds (which, by the way, aren't psychoactive). You can order hemp seeds from The Ohio Hempery , (800) BUY-HEMP.
Nutritious hemp oil is emerging as alternative to toxin-tainted fish.
New study finds mercury pollution is a serious health risk for those that eat fish.
www.hempfood.com
www.jackherer.com
MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PETITION
FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge
"Dr. Andrew Weil, a general medicine practitioner in Tucson, Arizona, who also teaches at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, accepts marijuana as having a medical use in the treatment of spasticity. In multiple sclerosis patients the muscles become tense and rigid because their nerve supply is interrupted. Marijuana relieves this spasticity in many patients, he has found. He would prescribe it to selected patients if it were legally available..."
Webster's Dictionary 1952
Bhang-(bang). n [Hind.from Sans.. bhanga,hemp]
An Indian variety of the common hemp, the resin of which is highly narcotic and intoxicant, and a popular Oriental stimulant, otherwise called hashish. Also employed in medicine, for its anodyne, hyponotic, and anti-spasmodic qualities; also spelled bang, beng.
Weil Says LSD Cured His Allergy
Andrew Weil on medical uses of Ecstasy, MDMA, by Dan Skeen
From Chocolate to Morphine
Dr. Andrew Weil
Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs.
Internationally, "the war on drugs" provides a cover for intervention. Domestically, it has little to do with drugs but a lot to do with distracting the population, increasing repression in the inner cities, and building support for the attack on civil liberties.
Noam Chomsky, "The war on (certain) drugs" is What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Stoned scientists
Dr. Andrew Weil
www.drweil.com
Mainstream Medicine's Serene Rebel
The New Face Of Medicine
Hemp TV: Dr. Andrew Weil on drug policy at Harvard's Zinberg ...
Full-Page New York Times Ad Urges Bush: Stop the War on Medical Marijuana
The Coalition for Compassionate Access
Marijuana Drug Czar Distorts Report
Astonishingly, Walters claims that the 1999 Institute of Medicine report didn't urge the government to allow seriously ill people legal access to medical marijuana on a case-by-case basis. What the institute did say about medical use of marijuana by AIDS and cancer patients was "nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and all can be mitigated by marijuana." Maybe these experts were duped. Maybe John Walters, unbeknown to us, has medical expertise beyond that of the world's leading physicians and researchers. Or maybe he's lying in a desperate attempt to save a collapsing policy.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA DOCTORS AND RELATED ORGANIZATIONS
How To Obtain A Physician Referral
How the War On Drugs Is Ending
People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be.
Terence McKenna
The Partnership for Drug Freedom in America supports the preservation and protection of the natural human right to freely choose our food, drink, spice, medicine, sacrament, fiber and other nourishments from the bountiful harvest of planet Earth.
The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension
Drug War Truce
Dr. Andrew Weil of the University of Arizona College of Medicine states, "There is not a shred of hope from history or from cross-culture studies to suggest that human beings can live without psychoactive substances." Bees drop to the ground after having nectar from certain orchards. Birds get drunk off berries and then fly into windows. After cats sniff certain plants they swing at imaginary objects. Certain range weeds will make cows shake, twitch, and stumble back for more. Elephants purposely get drunk on fermented fruits..."
Kindred Sites
