Cannabis prohibition, It's a State's rights issue. Who can argue and where do your interests lie?

Those questions aside, the medical cannabis debate is obviously making headway.



No need to worry about this "slippery slope" leading us down any dark paths. This is a narcotic drug for some and a kind medicine for many more.

There will never be rallying and protesting in the streets of people demanding "medical meth."



It's 2011 and California, like 15 other States and D.C., are right now getting up to a million dollars in tax revenue just taxing cannabis.

This is less like a slope and more like a blank check signed by Steve Jobs, or somebody ridiculously rich like a good pro-athlete. 

Every dollar of the earning could go towards addiction clinics and child mentoring, education instituions. 



Cannabis is a trillion dollar plant. It has much to offer us. And we have much to offer it. If only we took to cannabis, like we took to corn. The world would lighten up, really.



Millions of dollars could be made in farmers markets across the nation alone. Instead, we pay the D.E.A. to take our lunch money every year.  And here is the kicker, non-medical use is actually defined as "abuse." So, although cannabis is the least addictive drug to choose from (less than coffee, some say), every D.E.A. agent defines cannabis (marijuana) as a schedule one drug thus having a dangerously high potential of "abuse." In their books, all use is abuse and cannabis is the most abused, illicit drug. It's literally worth thousands by the pound. And did I mention it grows like a weed? 









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Cannabis is a herb that yields nutritional seed, dietary and industrial fiber, and curative essential oils.

Those oils heal what ails you, esp. if your pains are neurodegenerative and inflammatory (like arthritic and neuropathic).



These economical dry lands will be hit with a great flood of compassionate enterprise and new scientific discoveries, like cannabis tapping into our genetically inherited, passed down from the beginning of time, "endocannabinod physiological control network (circa Mechoulam, Ph.D.)."That fancy term was coined in the 90s by a team of researchers studying marijuana's affect on the brain. It led to the discovery of a signalling system of hormones and transmitters in our bodies. It's made of endocannabinoids and cannabionid receptors, also some other compounds responsible for assembly, transport, and recycling. Cannabis may help our bodies fight off the negative effects of stress and aging. In summary, cannabis does way more than calm ya down. At the heart of the matter, cannabis is right for mostly all of us and at almost no cost or risk.



And so we enbark on an adventure into the minds of man and the hearts of our intuitive nature. With hope on our backs, we are pulling cannabis up from the trenches. It's taken heat long enough. Now, it's time to put out some old fires, like racism and dependence on pills, deforestation, and foreign energy.



It's time for the Pot Republics to pop up like old Kentucky hempweed.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/07/the-pot-republic-one-sheriffs-quietly-radical-experiment.html

Privatized or for-profit prisons are only a couple decades old, but have grown like one giant malignancy over the past few years. This country has the world's largest prison population and a prison system dead set and pathologically fixated on expansion.  In the wake of this privatized prison industry, the pools of overpopulated prisoners are being harvested for cheap labor. Today's prison workers do more than press license plates. They print paper, process meat, make office furniture, missile parts, and even solar panels inadvertently stomping out competition.

This has the makings of a modern day collusion on the grandest scale. The system is built like a funnel. The vital energy source of this system, the people, are sucked into this legal vacuum and dispersed into the swollen pockets of industry executives, whose purpose is to see men as units to be invested upon, leveraged, and exploited.  Cannabis prohibition ties directly into this overgrowing prison population. Legalizing it on all levels would dramatically impact the drug war, which directly fills the industrial prison funnel. 

This system is built on the backs of drug users.  Some were busted with mandatory minimums. Others started small and were introduced to a system that hardens soft criminals and eventually got caught on three strikes.  Usually working for prison labor corporations means not a raise in salary, but a reduction in time served. That's not an exploitation, unless the laws were designed to increase business irrelevant of civil rights.  That's exactly what's happening today.  

We've made a business around incarcerating people for violating laws that impede on their civil rights. It seems that some of the architects, or law makers, are both representatives for the people and lobbyists for industry. What are their priorities? Who do they serve firstly? Read these two articles and get a better grip on what is being discussed. 

The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor
http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor

Top Private Prison Lobbyists in Texas
http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/top-private-prison-lobbyists-texas

People who smoke weed for fun probably enjoy eating for pleasure, too. One breakthrough study demonstrated how high-fat meals can stimulate hunger in virtually the same way that cannabis stimulates the munchies.

The researchers experimented on mice. They fed them meals either high in fat, protein, or carbohydrates and then observed the levels in the gut of endocannabinoids produced in response to each macromolecule. Basically, fat produced significantly higher amounts and stimulated a response that told the brain to tell the mice, "take another bite."

"According to the authors, rats that were allowed to consume, but not digest, a fatty meal had higher levels of endocannabinoids in their guts, compared with rats fed sugary and high-protein meals. "

To add perspective, many healthy foods, like hemp seeds and legumes, contain intrinsic amounts of fat. This fat contains more energy per gram than carbohydrates and aren't absorbed as quickly. Fats are a long-term, back-up source of fuel and not all of them are bad. Some of the kinds in hemp are called "essential."  The body recognizes the importance of fat and upon consumption slows down digestion for increased absorption time and tell the brain, "I like this and want more." (Side note: Cannabis inhibits gastric hyper-motility in the GI tract in patients with Crohn's disease and IBD. In other words, The gut responds to fats in cannabis by slowing down. These fats are the keys to recovery.)

When we eat overly processed, "junk" food overloaded with non-essential, bad fats,  it throws this evolutionary system off-balance. We then create excess fat, like a bear preparing for hibernation and the signals of hunger eventually overpower the signals of fullness, or satiety, which produces binge eating. Depression and binge-eating are also linked. Food, like cannabis, can stimulate appetite and joy. 

What we have in this society is a large number of overweight and depressed people, who commonly overeat and suffer from imbalances within this "cannabis-like" system that controls the gut and the brain. We're essentially feeding our engines the wrong fuel, industrialized food. 

Cannabis has shown us how the body responds to this industrialized food and therefore drug producers have a new toy in their tool box. Now, they can "clog up" the receptors that cannabis (and cannabis-like molecules activated by high-fat food) stimulates. 

In effect, drug designers want to develop drugs that inhibit the munchies. This is the story of the "cannabinoid receptor antagonist (blocker)" called Rimonabant. Not only did it block receptors in the gut, but also the brain. This not only blocked the munchies, but also the mentally euphoric high. After reports of suicide, anxiety, and depression emerged, the drug was pulled from the market. 

Now, let me take you down a one-sided path of open-mindedness that profiteers of pharmaceuticals won't readily accept, because it isn't designed to help them as much as those, whom they (the pharmaceutical companies) are designed to help, the consumers!

If we eliminate the processed foods high in fat and low in fiber (which is usually absent in junk food) and stimulate the brain's receptors with cannabis, maybe we can tackle the depression and anxiety which are also triggering people to feel the need and desire to overeat!

If you'd like to learn more about the studies that guided me on this rant, please see the links below.

Endocannabinoids: The Human Body's Marijuana-Like Chemicals That Make Fatty Foods Irresistible
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/05/endocannabinoids-fatty-food_n_890444.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=1125865,b=facebook

Why we love chips: The natural cannabis-like chemicals that drive our lust for junk food
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011463/Why-love-chips-The-natural-cannabis-like-chemicals-drive-lust-junk-food.html#ixzz1RG84a9IE

For the love of fat: Why we crave chips and fries

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43634952/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/love-fat-why-we-crave-chips-fries/?fb_ref=story_header&fb_source=profile_oneline

Marijuana Like Compounds In Gut Regulate Binge Eating Behavior

http://drsamgirgis.com/2011/07/11/marijuana-like-compounds-in-gut-regulate-binge-eating-behavior/

Reverse Engineering the Marijuana 'Munchies': What Causes Binge Eating?
http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/05/reverse-engineering-the-marijuana-munchies-what-causes-binge-eating/

Fatty Foods Release Similar Chemical to Marijuana

http://frugivoremag.com/2011/07/fatty-foods-release-similar-chemical-to-marijuana/

Endocannabinoid signal in the gut controls dietary fat intake

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1104675108.short

Cannabis has been used as a medicine for centuries. The use of cannabis-based medicines have been shown to relieve many symptoms and conditions, including but not limited to nausea, vomiting, pain, stress, inflammation, epilepsy, insomnia, and lack of appetite. Recently, an American mother has embarked on a crusade to bring this plant to the forefront of unconventional medicne, especially for autism.

Mieko Hester-Perez has done anything in her power to help her 10-year-old son, who was diagnosed with autism at a young age. She couldn't have imagined the impact marijuana has had on their lives. It's been anything, but destructive. "Marijuana saved my son's life," she says.

She uses her motherly baking skills to whip up some cannabis-infused chocolate, which she gives to Joey in tiny amounts of sweet recovery. Over the months, a frail and bewildered boy was brought back to life. Before trying cannabis, Joey's weight crashed to under 50 lbs and he was prescribed over 12 medications. Now, he is at a normal and healthy weight for his age and is only prescribed 2 medications.

His results have been anything short of miraculous. None of this would be possible, if it weren't for the healing properties of a schedule one drug.

For more information:

http://www.examiner.com/norml-in-madison/mieko-hester-perez-marijuana-saved-my-son-s-life-coming-to-berlin-wi-t-h-c-expo-sat-feb-6


Mieko is the CEO and founder of the Unconventional Foundation for Autism and works with professionals like Dr. Robert Melamede, CEO of Cannabis Science.
http://uf4a.org/
http://www.cannabisscience.com