Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Illegal Medicinal Plants on the Homestead

I wrote this some time ago and posted it on the Backwoods Home forum. It is posted here for informational/educational purposes. All opinions are my own.


Opium poppies and Marijuana...will you or would you grow them on your homestead for medicinal use?

Lets tackle opium poppies first...



Today, people search the ‘Net for naturally-occurring medicines. A patchwork quilt of information suggests this quest is as old as time. Records indicate a variety of plant drugs were used by early civilizations. These peoples sought out the psychological boost of alcohol, tobacco or opium.

There were several variations of the benefits from a plant-derivative intoxication. The drug-induced state was sometimes used to see visions of the future. As medical knowledge expanded by discovery and conjecture, it was believed that one could remove the mental or physical symptoms that were caused by an imbalance of the Ancient Greek humors of blood, bile and phlegm by cleansing superfluous humors from the brain. One natural medicine in particular can be dated back to the earliest human settlements: the opium poppy Papaver Somniferum.

The earliest relationship between people and the opium poppy dates back to the Sumerians of approximately 3300 B.C. The Sumerians were one of the world’s first organized faming communities. They harvested the opium poppy as one of their many main crops. The Sumerians are credited with the invention of writing in the Middle East. They recorded using the opium poppy Papaver Somniferum for medicine and pleasure. The Sumerians called Papaver Somniferum the “plant of joy”. They used opium from the poppy to induce the same intoxicated and relaxed conditions as the manufacture of beer from barley crops. The poppy plant was also commonly used and traded at this time for its value as a supply of food, animal fodder oil and fuel.

The value of opium from the Papaver Somniferum poppy spread along trading routes from the Persian Gulf all the way to Greece. The records of the Greek physician Hippocrates contain prescriptions for the healing power of opium to cure insomnia. Other physicians would later agree with Hippocrates’ views on opium. Galen advocated eating opium as well as vegetable therapies. Dioscorides described how opium mixed with a liquid was a valuable medicine for added strength. Dioscorides described how the pod of the poppy could be crushed and mixed with the liquid. He is credited with proposing that the word “nepenthes” in a passage from Homer’s Oddessy may have been a drug mixture that included opium.

The apparent magic of the poppy’s ability to induce a drowsy state comes from morphine that is the principal active ingredient in opium. Raw opium contains a concentration of three to twenty percent morphine depending on its cultivation and processing.
The most common means of taking opium was called a liquid elixir. The raw opium milk found in the seed pod was mixed with wine or water. This liquid did not cure the patient but the dreamy euphoric state helped lessen the patient’s pain. The early Greeks believed that the physical world around them was tightly connected to the quality of life provided by the gods. The abundance of poppy seeds in the dried poppy pod was seen as a sign of fertility by the Greeks.

The poppy spread east to India and China along trading routes during the seventh century. The Chinese welcomed the wonder of the poppy seed mixed with bamboo juice. The Chinese felt this mixture offered a tremendous healing power.

Present day findings have classified opium as a drug that dulls the senses and has listed opium as a narcotic. As narcotics opium, morphine and heroin are drugs tat relieve pain, relax spasms, reduce fevers and induce sleep.

Up to this point, the spread of the poppy seed had been very slow over land-based trading routes. The European development of ocean-going sailing ships rapidly expanded the introduction of opium into England and the United States. The wealthy class in Britain regularly consumed opium to relieve pain. Members of the British Royalty took opium to relieve a variety of aliments.

As use of opium spread, it was used to “treat” piles, chitis, cholera, dysentery, bronchitis, earaches and measles. The opium products calmed the patients and the temporary relief from pain caused an appearance of regaining good health. At this time, opium was called a ‘stimulant” because opium was considered to be a jump-start to well-being.

The search for medicines that could at least temporarily relieve pain in the 1700 and 1800s was sought by every developing nation. Opium was commonly consumed to get some relief from dropsy, consumption (tuberculosis) and rheumatism (rheumatoid arthritis). Britain and the United States imported hundreds of thousands of pounds of opium to meet the demand.

In these two countries the people preferred taking opium as a liquid known a s “Laudanum” or “black drop”. Laudanum was usually an opium-alcohol mixture. Another variation of Laudanum, Laudanum Cydoniatum, was made from a mixture of opium and vinegar. In Britain, Laudanum was very inexpensive and could be bought as easily as acetaminophen today. It was even sold in grocery stores as a medically-acknowledged temporary relief from coughing and pain. Records of bills from San Francisco to Vancouver show opium to be considered a grocery staple along with sugar, rice and tea.

Another form of use was a pill composed of opium, sweetened with saffron, castor, ambergris, musk and nutmeg to disguise the bitter opium taste. The opium pill was considered so safe that pregnant women could use it to control morning sickness.

In the 19th century opium was commonly listed as one of the ingredients in a wide range of patent medicines. A product called Ayers Cherry Pectoral contained opium as one of its key ingredients. This product was readily available to thousands of British and American parents to sooth babies who were crying due to teething, hunger or pains of childhood. Cough syrups in the mid-nineteenth century usually contained opium. Opium is still considered to be unsurpassed as a cough suppressant.

In 1931 Louis Lewin recorded opiates as a drug that sedated mental activity. He classified this sedation as “Euphorica”. Today the chemical properties of Papaver Somniferum are well documented, including images of changes to the brain activity

Now, the raw product has been time-proven for thousands of years as a VERY effective medicine to treat:
Severe coughing, severe nausea, pain of all types, insomnia, muscle spasms, severe diarrhea and other ills. Raw opium latex, packed into a wound can stop sepsis and other infections in their tracks!

Opiates are addictive and the unrefined raw form can become addictive as well, though usually not at the rate such refined products as heroin and morphine are. The side effects, when raw opium is used for occasional medicinal purposes, are by far less than the side effects one would or could experience from the use of common OTC (over-the-counter) medications. (Read the back of that bottle of Tylenol or Robitussion sometime)

Will I grow opium poppies when I get my land?
Absolutely.
The benefits far outweigh the risks in my book. I have grown them before and used them for medicinal purposes.
Cultivation and harvesting is simple and the seeds are easily available. A few opium poppies growing even in a suburban neighborhood are unlikely to attract any undue attention from local law enforcement.
A huge field of them on a farm would be another matter indeed!
I don't intend to sell, refine or distribute any of the products derived from growing them, they would be for medicinal use only for myself and for farm animals that needed it.

Now...onto Marijuana...Cannabis Sativa, Herb, Weed, Pot, MaryJane....so many names, so many rumors....

C'mon...most of us tried it...or still use it. I don't, but that is mainly because I don not have a need to and I am not a great proponent of *recreational* use of any intoxicant. When I used it in high school, my grades didn't drop, I had an active social and extra-curricular life and I never went out and committed a crime because of it. So much for the current commercials screaming out of our t.v.s!

And there's this small article (NOT publicized by the DEA or the US gov't....)

Quote:

A synthetic substance similar to ones found in marijuana stimulates cell growth in regions of the brain associated with anxiety and depression, pointing the way for new treatments for these diseases, according to University of Saskatchewan medical research published today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Xia Zhang, an associate professor in the U of S neuropsychiatry research unit, led the team that tested the effects of HU-210, a potent synthetic cannabinoid similar to a group of compounds found in marijuana. The synthetic version is about 100 times as powerful as THC, the compound responsible for the high experienced by recreational users.

The team found that rats treated with HU-210 on a regular basis showed neurogenesis - the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. This region of the brain is associated with learning and memory, as well as anxiety and depression.

The effect is the opposite of most legal and illicit drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and cocaine.

Most 'drugs of abuse' suppress neurogenesis, Zhang says.Only marijuana promotes neurogenesis.

Current theory states that depression may be sparked when too few new brain cells are grown in the hippocampus. It is unclear whether anxiety is part of this process, but if true, HU-210 could offer a treatment for both mood disorders by stimulating the growth of new brain cells.

But Zhang cautions that HU-210 is only one of many cannabinoids. His previous work with marijuana shows that while the plant may contain medicinal compounds, they come in the same package as those that cause symptoms such as acute memory impairment, addiction, and withdrawal. Also, the HU-210 used in the study is highly purified.

This is a very potent cannabinoid oil, Zhang says. &It's not something that would be available on the street.

Marijuana has been used for recreational and medicinal purposes for centuries, evoking public interest and controversy along the way. As a medicine, the plant is used to ease pain in multiple sclerosis patients, combat nausea in cancer patients, and stimulate appetite in people afflicted with AIDS. It has also been used to treat epilepsy and stroke.

Zhang's work is the latest product of the U of S Neural Systems and Plasticity Research Group, a multidisciplinary effort by researchers from the Colleges of Arts and Science, Engineering, Kinesiology, Medicine, Pharmacy and Nutrition, and Veterinary Medicine. The group collaborates to study the function of neural systems, from nerves to brain, in living organisms. In particular, they look at how these systems change over time with experience.

Zhang's research is supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), as well as a CIHR New Investigator Award. The Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation provided funding support to establish the Neural Systems and Plasticity Research Group, as well as post-doctoral fellowship awards to research team members Wen Jiang and Shao-Ping Ji. -- ©University of Saskatchewan


Lets look at one section of it again :

Marijuana has been used for recreational and medicinal purposes for centuries, evoking public interest and controversy along the way. As a medicine, the plant is used to ease pain in multiple sclerosis patients, combat nausea in cancer patients, and stimulate appetite in people afflicted with AIDS. It has also been used to treat epilepsy and stroke.

The history of cannabis products and their use has been long, colorful and varied. To the agriculturist, cannabis is a fiber crop; to the physician, it is an enigma; to the user, a euphoriant; to the police, a menace; to the trafficker, a source of profitable danger; to the convict or parolee and his family, a source of sorrow (Mikuriya, 1969: 34). The fact is that cannabis has been held simultaneously in high and low esteem at various times throughout recorded history, particularly in our own times.

The volume of information available on the medical application of cannabis is considerable. Occasionally certain references have been condensed or deleted, but this should not detract from the completeness of the report.

This historical survey of the medical uses of marijuana is introduced by abroad overview of its use, including brief notes on current and projected research, and then considers specific historical settings and circumstances in ancient China, moving on to Egypt, India, Greece, Africa, and the Western World.

Cannabis sativa has been used therapeutically from the earliest records, nearly 5,000 years ago, to the present day (Mikuriya, 1969: 34) and its products have been widely noted for their effects, both physiological and psychological, throughout the world. Although the Chinese and Indian cultures knew about the properties of this drug from very early times, this information did not become general in the Near and Middle East until after the fifth century A.D., when travelers, traders and adventurers began to carry knowledge of the drug westward to Persia and Arabia.

Historians claim that cannabis was first employed in these countries as an antiseptic and analgesic. Other medical uses were later developed and spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Several years after the return of Napoleon's army from Egypt, cannabis became widely accepted by Western medical practitioners. Previously, it had had limited use for such purposes as the treatment of burns. The scientific members of Napoleon's forces were interested in the drug's pain relieving and sedative effects. It was used during, and to a greater extent, following his rule in France, especially after 1840 when the work of such physicians as O'Shaughnessy, Aubert-Roche, and Moreau de Tours drew wide attention to this drug.

With the rise of the literary movement of the 1840-1860 period in France (Gautier, Baudelaire, Dumas, etc.), cannabis became somewhat popular as an intoxicant of the intellectual classes.

In the United States, medical interest in cannabis use was evidenced in 1860 by the convening of a Committee on Cannabis Indica of the Ohio State Medical Society, which reported on its therapeutic applications (McMeens, 1860: 1). Between the period 1840-1890, Walton states that more than 100 articles were published recommending cannabis for one disorder or another.

Concern about cannabis as an intoxicant led the government of India to establish the India Hemp Commission of 1893-94 to examine the entire question of cannabis use in India.

Paralleling the question over cannabis use in the latter half of the 19th century was the growing medical use of other medications superior to cannabis in their effects and more easily controlled as to dose. Consequently, medical use of cannabis declined and cannabis began to lose support of the medical profession.

During the years between 1856-1937, cannabis lost its image as a medicine and was left with a disreputable image as an intoxicant. Strong public reaction coupled with a campaign in the public press led to a federal anti-marihuana law in 1937. (The drug was illegal in many states before 1937.) The issue of medical use remained active, however, and Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Counsel to the AMA, an opponent of cannabis use and the only physician to be a witness at the Taxation of Marihuana hearings, stated:

There are exceptions in treatment in which cannabis cannot apparently be successfully subsituted for. The work of Pascal seems to show that Indian Hemp has remarkable properties in revealing the subconscious; hence, it can be used for psychological, psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic research (Hearings, House of Representatives, 1937: 91).

Although cannabis drugs are generally regarded as obsolete and rarely used in western medicine today, cannabis is ;still used extensively in the Ayruvedic, Unani and Tibbi systems of medicine of the Indian-Pakastani subcontinent (The Cannabis Problem, 1962: 27). The Pharmacopoeias of India mention cannabis use in the recent past. Two preparations of cannabis, a liquid extract and a tincture, are listed in the 1954 and 1966 Pharmacopoeias of India which contain descriptions of cannabis and its extract and how it is made (Chopra & Chopra, 1957: 9).

A more recent source makes reference to the fact that "in contemporary India and Pakistan, there continues to be widespread indigenous medical, 'quasi-medical,' and illicit use of both opium and cannabis" (Chopra & Chopra, 1957: 12-13). Bouquet notes that hemp resin is occasionally used in the native medicines of the countries where it is collected. He points especially to India where,
the medical systems . . . make much use of cannabis as a sedative, hypnotic, analgesic, anti-spasmodic and anti-hemorrhoidal
(Bulletin on Narcotics, 1962:27).

According to the Canadian Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs:

There is no currently accepted medical use of cannabis in North America outside of an experimental context. Although cannabis has been reported to produce an array of possibly useful medical effects, these have either not been adequately investigated, or can be replaced by using other more readily available and convenient drugs. The natural product's variability in potency and instability over time are among the factors which have led to its disfavor in Western 20th century medicine.... cannabis has often been employed in the past, and is currently used illicitly in North America, to reduce the secondary symptoms and suffering caused by the flue and the common cold. These . . . alleged therapeutic properties of cannabis have not been adequately studied in a scientific context, and their general medical potential remains a matter of conjecture
(1970: 74).

Similar statements regarding cannabis are to be found in Marijuana, edited by Erich Goode, and in the textbook Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics by Goodman and Gilman (1970: 300). Concerning therapeutic uses, the latter states:

Although cannabis was once used for a wide variety of clinical disorders and has even been demonstrated to have antibacterial activity, there are at present no well substantiated indications for its use. It is no longer an official drug. Preparations are rarely available (cannabis preparation and synthetic THC are obtainable only for research purposes), and prescriptions are regulated by special tax laws.


The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare report to Congress in 1971, Marijuana and Health, repeats the statement of the Canadian Interim Report of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, and states: There is no currently accepted medical use of cannabis in the United States outside of an experimental context (DHEW: 1971: 27). Allen Geller and Maxwell Boas (1969: 4) think that cannabis' unsavory reputation has largely stymied further research.

Despite the many statements discounting cannabis' therapeutic usefulness, some authorities maintain that its medical value might be reborn through further research and/or use. David Solomon, in his foreword to The Marihuana Papers (1968: xxi) argues that:

Marihuana should be accorded the medical status it once had in this country as a legitimate prescription item. After 1937, with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act and subsequent federal and state legislation, it became virtually impossible for physicians to obtain or prescribe marihuana preparations for their patients. Thus, the medical profession was denied access to a versatile pharmaceutical tool with a history of therapeutic utility going back thousands of years.


In a 1970 article,Pot Facing Stringent Scientific Examination , reference is made to Dr. Par who states that there are three areas in which chemical and animal experiments are under way:

(1) Analgesia-mood elevation plus analgesic power may make useful drug.

(2) Blood pressure reduction-hypertension may be helped by new drugs which lower the blood pressure by what seems to be action on the central nervous system.

(3) Psychotherapeutic-new compounds are antidepressants and antianxiety drugs (Culliton: 1970).

Mikuriya cites it studies concerning cannabis funded by the National Institute of Mental Health in 1961. The studies were either specialized animal experiments, part of an observational sociologic study of a number of drugs, or explorations of chemical detection methods(Mikuriya, 1969: 38).

Feinglass has pointed to four general categories into which the clinical studies of marijuana could be divided (1968: 206-208). They are:

1. Anticonvulsant effects-treatment of tetanus, convulsions of rabies, epilepsy, and infant convulsions.
2. Psychotherapeutic actions - appetite-stimulation, treatment of depression, and as a sedative and hypnotic in reducing anxiety; treatment of addiction.
3. Antibiotic properties.
4. Pain-affecting power.

Grinspoon suggests:

Very little research attention has been given to the possibility that marihuana might protect some people from psychosis. Among users of the drug, the proportion of people with neuroses or personality disorders is usually higher than in the general population; one might therefore expect the incidence of psychoses also to be higher in this group. The fact that it is not suggests that for some mentally disturbed people, the escape provided by the drug may serve to prevent a psychotic breakdown
(1969: 24).

Mikuriya lists many possible therapeutic uses of THC and similar products in his paper Marihuana in Medicine: Past, Present and Future.
He includes:
Analgesic-hypnotic, appetite stimulant, antiepileptic, antispasmodic, prophylactic and treatment of the neuralgias, including migraine and tic douloureaux, antidepressant-tranquillizer, anti-asthmatic, oxytocic, anti-tussive, topical anesthetic, withdrawal agent for opiate and alcohol addiction, child birth analgesic, and antibiotic (1968: 39).

China

The oldest known therapeutic description Of cannabis was by the Emperor Shen-Nung in the 28th century B.C. in China, where the plant had long been grown for fiber. He prescribed cannabis for beri-beri, constipation, "female weakness", gout, malaria, rheumatism and absentmindedness (Bloomquist, 1968: 19).

Egypt

In Egypt, in the 20th century B.C., cannabis was used to treat sore eyes. Additional medical usage was not reported until much later.

India

Prior to the 10th century B.C., bhang, a cannabis preparation, was used as an anesthetic and antiphlegmatic in India. In the second century A.D., a Chinese physician, Hoa-Tho, prescribed it as an analgesic in surgical procedures (Mikuriya, 1969: 34).

From the 10th century B.C. up to 1945 (and even to the present time), cannabis has been used in India to treat a wide variety of human maladies. The drug is highly regarded by some medical practitioners in that country.

The religious use of cannabis in India is thought to have preceded its medical use (Blum and Associates, II, 1969: 73; Snyder, 1970: 125). The religious use of cannabis is to help "the user to free his mind from worldly distractions and to concentrate on the Supreme Being" (Barber, 1970: 80).

Cannabis is used in Hindu and Sikh temples and at Mohammedan shrines. Besides using the drug as an aid to meditation, it is also used to overcome hunger and thirst by the religious mendicants. In Nepal, it is distributed on certain feast days at the temples of all Shiva followers (Blum & Associates, 1969, 11: 63).

The Hindus spoke of the drug as the "heavenly guide", "the soother of grief". Considered holy, it was described as a sacred grass during the Vedic period (Fort, 1969: 15). A reference to cannabis in Hindu scriptures is the following:

To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy. A guardian lives in bhang ... Bhang is the joy giver, the sky filer, the heavenly guide, the poor man's heaven, the soother of grief ... No god or man is as good as the religious drinker of Mang. The students of the scriptures of Benares are given bhang before they sit to study. At Benares, Ujjain and other holy places, yogis take deep draughts of Mang that they may center their thoughts on the Eternal . . . By the help of Mang ascetics pass days without food or drink. The supporting power of Mang has brought many a Hindu family safe through the miseries of famine
(Snyder, 1970: 125).

Greece

In ancient Greece, cannabis was used as a remedy for earache, edema, and inflammation (Robinson, 1946: 382-383).

Africa

Cannabis was used in Africa to restore appetite and to relieve pain of hemorrhoids, its antiseptic uses were also known to certain African native tribes (O'Shaughnessy, 1842: 431). Various other uses, in a number of countries, included the treatment of tetanus, hydrophobia, delirium tremens, infantile convulsions, neuralgia and other nervous disorders, cholera, menorrhagia, rheumatism, hay fever, asthma, skin diseases, and protracted labor during childbirth.
The 19th Century

Documents of the 19th century report on the use of cannabis to control diarrhea in cholera and to stimulate appetite. In his reports of the late 1830's and early 1840's, O'Shaughnessy (1842: 431) stated that tetanus could be arrested and cured when treated with extra large doses of cannabis.

John Bell, M.D., Boston, reported enthusiastically in 1857, about the effects of cannabis in the control of mental and emotional disorders as opposed to the use of moral discipline to restrain the mentally ill. Similarly, in 1858, Moureau. de Tours reported several case histories of manic and depressive disorders treated with hashish (Walton, 1938: 3).

The Ohio State Medical Society's Committee on Cannabis Indica, convened in 1860, reported that their respondents claimed cannabis successfully treated neuralgic pain, dysmenorhea, uterine hemorrhage, hysteria, delirium tremens, mania, palsy, whooping cough, infantile convulsions, asthma, gonorrhea, nervous rheumatism, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, tetanus, epilepsy and appetite stimulation (McMeens, 1860: 1).

The India Hemp Commission (1894: 174) likewise was informed of similar medicinal uses for cannabis. Specific reports included the use of cannabis as an analgesic, a restorer of energy, a hemostat, an ecbolic, and an antidiaretic. Cannabis was also mentioned as an aid in treating hay fever, cholera, dysentery, gonorrhea, diabetes, impotence, urinary incontinence, swelling of the testicles, granulation of open sores, and chronic ulcers. Other beneficial effects attributed to cannabis were prevention of insomnia, relief of anxiety, protection against cholera, alleviation of hunger and as an aid to concentration of attention.

MEDICAL USES IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Despite the fact that marijuana was made illegal in the United States in 1937, research has continued on the medical uses of marijuana. The findings include various possible medical applications of cannabis and its chemical derivatives.

One of the most recent and interesting findings (Frank, 1972) concerns the effect of cannabis in reducing interocular pressure. It was found that as the dose of marijuana increased, the pressure within the eye decreased by up to 30%. This occurred in normal persons as well as in those with glaucoma, a disease of the eye in which increased interocular pressure may cause blindness. Much more research is necessary in connection with this experimental clinical finding before final judgment can be passed on such a possible therapeutic value.

During the past 20 years in western medicine, marijuana has been assigned antibiotic activity; as a result, several studies relating to this possibility have been undertaken. H. B. M. Murphy (1963: 20) reported investigations in Eastern Europe. He stated that it is alleged to be active against gram positive organisms at 1/100,000 dilution, but to be largely inactivated by plasma, so that prospects for its use appear to be, confined to E. N. T. (ear, nose and throat) and skin infections.

Dr. J. Kabelikovi (1952: 500-503) and his coworkers carried out tests on rats, which were similar to tests carried out with penicillin in vitro. The alcohol extract of cannabis was bacterially effective against many gram-positive and one gram-negative microorganisms. It was also found that a paste form of external application was successful. According to Kabelikovi, from a study of 2,000 herbs by Czechoslovakian scientists it was found that cannabis indica (the Indian Hemp) was the most promising in the realm of antibiotics.

In a 1959 publication of Pharmacie, Krejci stated: ;From the flowering tips and leaves of hemp, cannabis sativa var indica bred in Middle Europe, were extracted a phenol and an acid fraction. From the acid fraction, two acids were obtained, of which one preserved its antibiotic properties (p. 349). In another Czechoslovakian publication, Krejci (1961: 1351-1353) referred to two additional samples with antibiotic activity.

Sample I in Fig. 1 has been sufficiently identified as cannabidiolic acid and sample 9 as cannabidiol. Both fractions show antibiotic activity. The results of tests lead us to conclude that the antibacterial action of cannabis sativa is not identical to the hashish effect found, for example, in tetrahydrocannabinol. However, it was established that cannabis sativa is effective as an antibiotic for local infections.


Kabelik, Krejci, and Santavy (1960: 13) include in Cannabis as a Medicant, the various microorganisms against which cannabis is effective.

Proof could be furnished that the cannabis extracts produce a very satisfactory antibacterial effect upon the following microbes: staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, steptococcus alpha haemolyticus, streptococcus beta haemolyticus, enterococcus, diplococcus pneumonia, B. anthracis, and corynebacterium diptheriae i.e., all of them gram-positive microorganisms. Noteworthy is the effect upon staphylococcus aureaus strains, which are resistant to penicillin and to other antibiotics.

Currently, several states have become more *enlightened* as to the medicinal uses of marijuana...California being prominent among them and Cannabis Sativa is prescribed for the many ills for which it is effective, from glaucoma to pain management and many more.

From Time Magazine:

While 13 states permit the limited sale of marijuana for medical use, and polls show a steady increase in the number of Americans who favor legalization, federal law still bans the cultivation, sale, or possession of marijuana. In fact, the feds still classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, one that has no "currently accepted medical use" in the United States.

But supporters of legalization may have been handed their most convincing argument yet: the bummer economy. Advocates argue that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities. Not surprisingly, the idea is getting traction in California, home to both the nation"s largest supply of domestically grown marijuana (worth a estimated $14 billion a year) and to the country"s biggest state budget deficit (more than $26 billion).


So...without boring you to tears by posting more accounts of doctors and scientists that praise the medical efficacy of cannabis...let us continue...

It is easy to cultivate. Effects vary wildly of the end product due to cultivation.
However, this is one plant that will NOT pass as a decorative accent to your flower bed! A single plant growing in mid-cornfield can be spotted by searching LEOs due to it's unique heat signature on infra-red cameras.
Growing this for your medicine chest usually requires a little indoor horticulture. And a great deal of discretion.

I have always preferred to prepare this herbal treatment as a tea, rather than smoking it. As a tea, it focuses the effects on the body and doesn't give one the *head high* experienced by smoking.

As seen in the previous medical accounts, the uses are widespread...from glaucoma to arthritis to migraines to epilepsy...all legitimate conditions that could be treated by marijuana, if not for the gov't. crusade against it.

Will I grow it?
Again, absolutely.
I have seen first hand how effective a treatment it can be for several conditions, and since arthritis runs strong in my family, I plan on being able to sip a cup of tea to help out with the aches and pains of that condition should it ever strike me. As with opium poppies, the side effects are far less than those of medically prescribed treatments or even OTC medications.

People...if the crap hits the fan, you better realize that all those alphabet soup agencies such as the DEA, FBI, etc. will go kaput. So will your local pharmacy.
Get your knowledge NOW...you may need it later.
Maybe you don't want to go out and be *Johnny Poppyseed*...but don't you think it more advisable to have the knowledge but not need it than to need the knowledge and not have it?

3 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more. I have been getting deep into reading about herbs and plants and the myriad of treatments and cures that have been used for eons. I am generally interested, but have become engrossed as I am researching ways to heal myself and can't get enough info absorbed into my brain fast enough.

    I'm starting to get very frustrated about how certain things I would like to use on myself are illegal in the USA. I don't mean marijuana. Any plant used for recreation I could easily get. I'm talking about uncommon things that are usually only available in their countries of origin because of our laws or trade restrictions.

    Anyway, I won't blab. Liked what you wrote about the crap we endure because of greed and bribes and everything in between.

    Good luck in your agricultural endeavors.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Lamb, this one caught my eye, excellent research my dear.
    I've grown a type of poppy, and harvested something. I'm not sure we had the right variety though. (roommate's idea and seeds) It was several years ago, I've been meaning to try again with something I was certain was the correct variety.
    I've grown the green too, medicinal quality, in a basement. If you ever need advice for such an endeavor, you just holler. (quietly) :D

    I too will be growing both again someday. R. Arthritis runs in my family, I also find that vaporizing is helpful to control my moderate asthma. It's antibacterial properties are extremely interesting to me as well, but I've never had enough of the stuff (or enough need) to try any of the remedies.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The seeds online shop specialized in special rarities seeds as well as common plants from all around the world. We provide a wide range of medicinal plants, seeds of ornamental plants, tropical and ethnobotanical species, as well as some vegetable seeds and rare curiosities.

    Dilan Munter
    2072 Godfrey Road
    New York, NY 10029
    212-534-5314
    dilamunter@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete

Because of a couple of rude people that left comments that included links to porn pages and such, I have been forced to start moderating comments again.