Making the Case for Medical Marijuana

[AquaMan]

Don't grow it in Texas. When the wildfires hit them the South winds blow the smoke up here. Everyone gets high and stops working, then the Fed sticks us with a dirty air violation.!

[custosnox]

Biggest problem is how we have shut down even the research on the chemicals that have the benefits.  I would just as soon take a pill with the proper stuff in it.  Don't have to smoke a joint to benefit from the stuff.


Plus what we miss out on for energy self sufficiency.  But we really aren't interested in that, are we?

C   Corn        200 bu/acre @ 56 lb/bushel   1200 lbs    .6 ton
S   Switchgrass   4-6 ton per acre             8,000 lbs   4 ton
H   Hemp            12-14 ton per acre          24,000 lbs  12 ton

During World War I - Biomass yield
WWI      German   50 gal/ton
      US      25 gal/ton - faster throughput

German   C   50 x .6      30 gal
      S   50 x 4      200 gal
      H   50 x 10   500 gal

US      C   25 x .6      15 gal
      S   25 x 4      100 gal
      H   25 x 10   250 gal


US oil useage   19,500,000 barrels/day (we are down from this)
Gallons          819,000,000 gallons/day
            
At 50 gal per ton, need 819,000,000/50 = 16,380,000 tons biomass per day.
At 14 ton per acre, need 16,380,000/14 = 1,170,000 acres per day equivalent of growing biomass.
At 365 days per year, need 27860 x 365 = 427,050,000 acres.
At 640 acres per square mile, need 10,167,858/640 = 667,266 square miles of growing biomass.

Area of state in square miles - just 8 states!

Nebraska    77,421 sq. miles
Kansas      82,264
South Dakota   77,353
Oklahoma   69,899
Texas      268,580
Wyoming   97,813
Montana   147,042
Sub total         820,372

Missouri   69,704
Virginia   42,774
Next Sub total         932,850

Even if we just used part of our farmland, and maybe some marginal land, we could easily cover today's needs.  And it would be very easy to just use MJ for part of our energy needs.  Suppose we only grow half... then we are at energy self-sufficiency.  No more foreign imports.

Yeah, off topic.  But it really IS a part of the total topic - stupid drug laws!

Why do you keep trying to push MJ as Hemp?  They are not the same, so stop trying to pretend they are.

[AquaMan]

Is hemp subject to the same status legally as marijuana?

[heironymouspasparagus]

Why do you keep trying to push MJ as Hemp?  They are not the same, so stop trying to pretend they are.

Cannabis sativa.  Either one or both or all of them or each of them or whatever....ALL should get off the criminal lists.  If so much difference, why will you be busted for hemp cultivation?  All imprisoned for just MJ or hemp should be out of prison.

The difference is so subtle as to be meaningless.  MJ has a few % (2 -20), hemp has very low % (less than 1).  C. sativa sativa is better fiber.  C sativa indica is better smoke.  And it is selective breeding, mostly since the 30's that has caused the big differentiation.

For energy production, it doesn't really matter which one you use - either or both will solve the problem, so if it can be a multi-use product, more power to it.  So again, why do we continue our inane, anal-retentive insanity??

[custosnox]

Legally Hemp is placed in the same classification as Marijuana, and it was placed their out of ignorance.  Simply put, it was put in the same classification as Marijuana because the law makers only knew that they were both Cannabis, without understanding the difference between the two.  Of course, I also think the pot smokers who push this issue of the "miracle plant" also over estimate it's abilities to the point of fantasy, but that is another argument all together.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Legally Hemp is placed in the same classification as Marijuana, and it was placed their out of ignorance.  Simply put, it was put in the same classification as Marijuana because the law makers only knew that they were both Cannabis, without understanding the difference between the two.  Of course, I also think the pot smokers who push this issue of the "miracle plant" also over estimate it's abilities to the point of fantasy, but that is another argument all together.

Well, if there is such a thing as a point of fantasy or an over estimation, let's hear it.  Exactly where in all the legalization arguments do the exaggerations exist?

Benefit to sick people?  Well documented by many users that there is a real live clinical benefit to pain relief, nausea relief, appetite action important to cancer patients to let them eat, pressure relief in eyes for glaucoma.  More than enough evidence to not only justify, but demand that larger, formal study of the plant be done.

Fuel?  We have hundreds if not thousands of years of documented experience regarding yields for cannabis S.  It IS the 'magic bullet' that we could use today to start to relieve our energy dependence on foreign supply.  But then, we could actually do that anyway if the oil companies would just drill and produce in the OTHER 75% of the lands they already have available and proven for drilling and production.

Paper?  Well, there is certainly enough room to add a little bit more growing space to provide for paper production.  It has been done before and could easily be done again.  PLUS save a whole bunch of trees in the process.  And we haven't even talked about how much room Canada has that would also be good for growing, and since they are so closely tied to us, it would benefit both.

Clothing?  Lots of clothing fiber already starting to show up.  Easier and cheaper to grow, less environmentally unfriendly that either cotton OR the popular synthetics (oil based) used today.

Cosmetic related?  I see all kinds of hemp derived 'stuff in bottles' at the department stores.  All garbage to me, but lots of people seem to get into that kind of thing.

Recreational use?  Well, we all are pretty much aware of the benefits and the FACT that the downsides are orders of magnitude (that means dramatically) less than the comparative alternative products.  (Any and all of the alternatively used recreational chemicals, including but not limited to; opiates - natural and synthetic, cigarettes, and all flavors of alcohol.)

I submit that it is a lot like aspirin - arguably one of the more important "miracle drugs" - in that this one item excels in so many different applications/uses.

I would like to see one single area pointed out where the hype of "miracle plant" goes even a little bit beyond the reality.  Got one??  
Come on now...you brought up the pot smokers pushing the issue of 'miracle plant' - a lot of non-smokers push the same issue (me!)...show just one exaggeration!

[AquaMan]

So, Hemp could be the Peanut of the 21st century ala George Washington Carver?

What would massive devotion to Hemp cultivation do to the soil? I wasn't joking about not having Texas grow it because of fires and air pollution. If we start to use it as a fuel source it would be more subject to the fluctuations of weather and fire than petroleum supplies are.

[Teatownclown]

Lighten up!

[Conan71]

Lighten up!

It would help my motherf@#king Tourette's?

Awesome!

[heironymouspasparagus]

So, Hemp could be the Peanut of the 21st century ala George Washington Carver?

What would massive devotion to Hemp cultivation do to the soil? I wasn't joking about not having Texas grow it because of fires and air pollution. If we start to use it as a fuel source it would be more subject to the fluctuations of weather and fire than petroleum supplies are.

That's why earlier in this post I mentioned using it as a partial solution.  In addition to wind, solar, and oil.  The more diversified the base sources, the less susceptible to major disruption.  Remember the 70's oil embargo - and the ensuing stupid panic??  Yeah, I know, contrived.  In exact same fashion as the Enron/Williams Co/Devon Energy contrived energy emergency in California.  If there are other sources to take up the slack, there is less disruption.  Always.

As far as the soil, well it grows pretty well in really mediocre soil...as well as good soil.  Doesn't require anywhere near the fertilizer that corn does.  Nor insecticides.  It is no "candy-donkey" plant that needs a lot of "hand holding" or coddling like cotton or corn.

[custosnox]

That's why earlier in this post I mentioned using it as a partial solution. 

This is what I meant by the overestimation of the ability of the plant.  Yes, it (hemp, not Marijuana, don't confuse the two) has a lot of uses, and is very versatile, but it is not the end all and be all of all of the problems we have.  Yet it is toted in such a way by so many of the pro Marijuana crowd (can we say coattails?) that it is given the appearance of being the final solution to 100% of today's woes (yes, Hyperbole, but not by much).  It has it's limitations, and, as you say, is only a partial solution. 

Personally, I think that Hemp should be completely legal and put into production.  In fact, and I'm not positive about this, but I could swear I read somewhere that Hemp cultivation is actually GOOD for the soil.  I think we would benefit from it immensely, and that the stupidity of those who made the whole kit and caboodle has truly hurt this country.  As far as Marijuana goes, the "medical" benefits are still greatly debated.  For every report that shows how it "helped" someone, you can find a like one comparing it to a placebo.  But at the same time, I don't think that we should be filling our prisons with pot-heads just because they want to get stoned.  It just gets me how it is supposedly non-addictive, yet smokers fight so hard to be able to smoke it. 

[heironymouspasparagus]

Personally, I think that Hemp should be completely legal and put into production.  In fact, and I'm not positive about this, but I could swear I read somewhere that Hemp cultivation is actually GOOD for the soil.  I think we would benefit from it immensely, and that the stupidity of those who made the whole kit and caboodle has truly hurt this country.  As far as Marijuana goes, the "medical" benefits are still greatly debated.  For every report that shows how it "helped" someone, you can find a like one comparing it to a placebo.  But at the same time, I don't think that we should be filling our prisons with pot-heads just because they want to get stoned.  It just gets me how it is supposedly non-addictive, yet smokers fight so hard to be able to smoke it. 

They are too mellow to fight too hard.  Otherwise you would see the kind of battles that occurred with alcohol prohibition.  And the absolute insanity of smokers when the first no smoking in public places - like airplanes - rules came about.  All that crap about "their rights" being trampled.  BS.  Biggest bunch of whiners in the world.

Good for the soil?  Don't know about that...it is not a legume, it is Cannabaceae.  My thought would be that the benefit to soil would be only for the organic matter residues it leaves.  It won't fix nitrogen like the legumes will.  The best plant in this country for soil?  Alfalfa by far.

Medical benefits...only real doubt is raised by the same kind of people who think we are not having increased climate volatility.  (Notice I did NOT say global warming, nor did I say that it was human made.  Reference the Vostok ice core data.)  The volatility is a fact.  The only question(s) are why/how/when/where.  What has already been answered.

Which means we should study the plant for a wide variety of possible uses.  And since it has no significant deleterious effects compared to other legal recreationals, then if we are going to claim to be a free society, there is no justification for prohibition.  And insanity to put people in prison for use/possession.  Not to mention a multi-billion dollar expense that we should be saving.

[Vashta Nerada]

Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration's high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush's record for medical-marijuana busts. "There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He's gone from first to worst."

The federal crackdown imperils the medical care of the estimated 730,000 patients nationwide – many of them seriously ill or dying – who rely on state-sanctioned marijuana recommended by their doctors. In addition, drug experts warn, the White House's war on law-abiding providers of medical marijuana will only drum up business for real criminals. "The administration is going after legal dispensaries and state and local authorities in ways that are going to push this stuff back underground again," says Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a former Republican senator who has urged the DEA to legalize medical marijuana, pulls no punches in describing the state of affairs produced by Obama's efforts to circumvent state law: "Utter chaos."

In its first two years, the Obama administration took a refreshingly sane approach to medical marijuana. Shortly after Obama took office, a senior drug-enforcement official pledged to Rolling Stone that the question of whether marijuana is medicine would now be determined by science, "not ideology." In March 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder emphasized that the Justice Department would only target medical-marijuana providers "who violate both federal and state law." The next morning, a headline in The New York Times read OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO STOP RAIDS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSERS. While all forms of marijuana would remain strictly illegal under federal law – the DEA ranks cannabis as a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin – the feds would respect state protections for providers of medical pot. Framing the Obama administration's new approach, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske famously declared, "We're not at war with people in this country."

That original hands-off policy was codified in a Justice Department memo written in October 2009 by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden. The so-called "Ogden memo" advised federal law-enforcement officials that the "rational use of its limited investigative and prosecutorial resources" meant that medical-marijuana patients and their "caregivers" who operate in "clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law" could be left alone.

At the same time, Ogden was concerned that the feds not "be made a fool of" by illegal drug traffickers. In that vein, his memo advised U.S. attorneys to focus on going after pot dispensaries that posed as medicinal but were actively engaged in criminal acts, such as selling to minors, possession of illegal firearms or money-laundering. The idea, as Holder put it, was to raid only those hardcore traffickers who "use medical-marijuana laws as a shield."

The Ogden memo sent a clear message to the states: The feds will only intervene if you allow pot dispensaries to operate as a front for criminal activity. States from New Mexico to Maine moved quickly to license and regulate dispensaries through their state health departments – giving medical marijuana unprecedented legitimacy. In California, which had allowed "caregivers" to operate dispensaries, medical pot blossomed into a $1.3 billion enterprise – shielded from federal blowback by the Ogden memo.

The administration's recognition of medical cannabis reached its high-water mark in July 2010, when the Department of Veterans Affairs validated it as a legitimate course of treatment for soldiers returning from the front lines. But it didn't take long for the fragile federal detente to begin to collapse. The reversal began at the Drug Enforcement Agency with Michele Leonhart, a holdover from the Bush administration who was renominated by Obama to head the DEA. An anti-medical-marijuana hard-liner, Leonhart had been rebuked in 2008 by House Judiciary chairman John Conyers for targeting dispensaries with tactics "typically reserved for the worst drug traffickers and kingpins." Her views on the larger drug war are so perverse, in fact, that last year she cited the slaughter of nearly 1,000 Mexican children by the drug cartels as a counterintuitive "sign of success in the fight against drugs."

In January 2011, weeks after Leonhart was confirmed, her agency updated a paper called "The DEA Position on Marijuana." With subject headings like THE FALLACY OF MARIJUANA FOR MEDICINAL USE and SMOKED MARIJUANA IS NOT MEDICINE, the paper simply regurgitated the Bush administration's ideological stance, in an attempt to walk back the Ogden memo. Sounding like Glenn Beck, the DEA even blamed "George Soros" and "a few billionaires, not broad grassroots support" for sustaining the medical-marijuana movement – even though polls show that 70 percent of Americans approve of medical pot.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216#ixzz1myjmGDLW

[Teatownclown]

I'm holding out hopes he gives in on States rights and may actually support Federal decrim. But he can't do that before the election. In fact, he must play hard ball for now!....

[patric]

I'm holding out hopes he gives in on States rights and may actually support Federal decrim. But he can't do that before the election. In fact, he must play hard ball for now!....

I'm figuring he's spent the last three and a half years figuring out who to pander to in order to get re-elected.  Once that is no longer a priority, there is a good chance he might actually accomplish something he promised.