patent

Talk to the Hand DEA- Quit Lying for Personal Gain

Talk to the hand has been a phrase used by kids, teenagers, and adults alike for years, however, more recently cannabis activists have been utilizing the phrase to educate the public about the documented proof that cannabis is medicine!

If you are part of the cannabis community or have friends in your social media circle that are cannacentric, chances are you have seen a different posts and profile pictures popping up that include a picture of someone’s hand with a patent number written upon it.

You see just recently the DEA announced that they would not be rescheduling cannabis or removing it from a categorization that puts it in the same danger level as heroin, cocaine, and other deadly drugs.

This has outraged cannabis activists and medical marijuana patients alike as our federal government holds not just one patent stating that cannabis has medicinal properties but several.

One of the excuses the DEA gave for not rescheduling cannabis was the fact that it has no medicinal properties.

If you take a simple look at these patents you can see for yourself that this is an outright lie as they have known that cannabis has medicinal values for several years now.

In fact, the federal government has been sending medical marijuana to 4 patients for decades to be used for medicinal purposes. If you are sick and tired of the government lying and deceiving people for their own monetary gain, I challenge you to tell them to talk to the hand. Learn more about these patents via the links below.

6630507

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Other patents are listed in more detail here.

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Can Marijuana Help with Cerebral Palsy?

Cerebral Palsy is an incurable congenital disorder of movement, muscle tone, or posture. Cerebral palsy is due to abnormal brain development, often before birth. Symptoms of cerebral palsy include difficulty walking, difficulty with bodily movements, stiff muscles, overactive reflexes, involuntary movements, muscle spams, stuttering, and more. According to Mayo Clinic seizures are also a common symptom of Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy is non-progressive meaning it is resistant to change unlike cancer which can go into remission. People with Cerebral Palsy are suffering from a debilitating condition with no hope for change.
Symptoms of Cerebral Palsy
However, marijuana has been found by some to ease the symptoms of cerebral palsy. Unfortunately, we still don’t see CP popping up on the qualifying conditions lists of any states with medical marijuana laws. The pain and seizures that may come with CP make some suffers eligible for medical marijuana in certain states.
According to the Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA), between 30 to 50 percent of children that have CP also have seizure disorders. With 17 million people with Cerebral Palsy worldwide this is a significant number of people who could benefit from medical marijuana. Seizure disorders already allow patients in several medical marijuana states to have access to medical marijuana. Although the research is limited there has been evidence to illustrate how medical marijuana has been able to help people with CP.
The studies… 
In one case study, Curtis Kile, a middle-aged man suffering from CP was experiencing severe muscle spasms from his condition. He now uses cannabis to relieve his spasms. “I don’t smoke a lot… a couple of hits off a pipe… or a joint. It relives my spasticity.” Without it he would be stuck in his wheelchair for multiple days in a row. Since he began smoking marijuana he’s been able to enjoy more of a regular life.
A 2011 study on people with cerebral palsy found that 63 percent of them suffer from chronic pain on a daily basis. Apparently, cannabis was found to be the most effective pain treatment among the patients surveyed. Even though only 5 percent of those patients had even used marijuana to treat their chronic pain. This illustrates how the pharmaceutical drugs are failing to aid sufferers of Cerebral Palsy.
In fact, Terri Argast, a 53-year old CP patient has found cannabis to have no negative side effects unlike her experience with the drugs she consumed in the past to reduce her muscle stiffness and pain. Before using marijuana she had to take several pharmaceutical drugs “just to be able to walk.” Marijuana has eased her “life-long struggle.”
What needs to be done
There is not currently enough research on cannabis and cerebral palsy for the medical establishment to recommend it to their patients. This is due to the Schedule I status of cannabis. Doctors cannot currently prescribe marijuana to any patients and only doctors in certain states can “recommend” marijuana to patients. Even fewers doctors can recommend it to patients suffering from CP. With no alternative forms of medication for sufferers of Cerebral Palsy, they should have access to medical marijuana.

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Medicare Has Seen a Decrease in Prescriptions Thanks to Cannabis

The pharmaceutical companies are starting to lose profits. Their eighty billion dollars a year plus in profits may be reduced to 70 billion dollars a year! According to an article in The Marijuana Times, prescription drug rates in states that have legalized access to medical marijuana are dropping. Medicaid has not seen the same amount of prescription drugs being prescribed to patients and there’s been up to a 25% drop in prescription drug-related overdoses in the states.
Not only are these prescription drug overdose or opiate-related overdoses dropping it is showing that people, in fact, would rather choose cannabis over prescription pills. This is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry has known would happen when marijuana was made legal. This is also why they have been working so diligently to try to synthesize or create in a laboratory a drug that does the same thing as marijuana does naturally. To this date, they have not been able to do this.
GW Pharmaceuticals is currently in the final testing stages of a synthetically developed cannabis drug to help with nausea. Unlike natural cannabis,  synthetic or man-made cannabis replicas made by pharmaceutical companies have hurt dozens of people. In England during a test trial of a synthetic base marijuana drug created in a laboratory much the same way methadone is 10 people went into comas and the program was stopped immediately. When it comes to pharmaceutical marijuana from giant corporations if I were you I’d stay away from anything they try to give me.
When something works, there is no need to try to fix it. When something is natural there is no reason to try to replicate a man-made version, especially when it comes to medicines and things that could potentially change life as we know it on Earth for the better.
image credit: Bigstock

Marijuana business

Zoning Battles for Recreational Marijuana Businesses in Oregon

Oregon voted to legalize recreational marijuana almost two years ago. However, the market is just now coming into focus. There are hundreds of dispensaries across the state that have opened their doors and there has already been millions of dollars in tax revenue generated from the hundreds of millions of dollars in recreational cannabis sales thus far.  Unfortunately, there is a battle still being faced by many business professionals looking to open extraction facilities, testing labs and other non-dispensary entities. The battle being faced is one of zoning laws.
Just last year in Jeff Smith and Cassie Heckencamp spent almost $1,000,000 to purchase 19 acres just east of Walterville Oregon. Their plan was to open a 5,00 square foot indoor recreational marijuana grow and to eventually purchase the adjacent 16-acre field for a 40,000 square foot outdoor grow. Unfortunately, less than two week later this land was zoned as rural residential by the Lane County Board of Commissioners. This means that any commercial recreational marijuana cultivation on lands outside of the city were banned making Jeff and Cassie’s business plan impossible.
Meanwhile in Cottage Grove Oregon, Paul Hampshire and Rub McConnell are facing backlash from the community after they acquired an empty lot next to Bohemia Park with intentions to open a Co2 Extraction facility. While they will not be selling any products on site and have stated they will be screening the property from view with the use of wooden fence and new foliage, the community is repulsed by the thought of there being a recreational marijuana business so close to a park that often has children playing in it. This has Cottage Grove contemplating the idea of adding restrictive buffer zones around schools and parks that would ban recreational marijuana businesses from operating in the area.
If you have plans to open a recreational marijuana business in the state of Oregon, I highly suggest you do your research before making any land purchases to insure that you will be able to move forward with your business plan successfully as zoning regulations/restrictions are still very vague at this time.
image credit: bigstockphoto.com

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Pot Saved My Life

 
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, which is defined by three criteria:
1.    A substance with high potential for abuse.
2.    A substance with no accepted medical value.
3.    A substance unsafe to use – even under medical supervision.
But the public perception of marijuana has shifted drastically over the years. In a 1969 Gallup opinion poll, only 12 percent of Americans were in favor of legalizing cannabis. Today, that number is closer to 58 percent, while a whopping 80 percent support it’s medicinal use.
For the first time since cannabis prohibition began, a clear majority of people believe in legalization. But for most of us, it’s just an opinion. We may feel strongly about it, or we may not.
Let me introduce you to some folks who do feel strongly about it. Very strongly, indeed.
Joy Williams is a 50 year old woman from Gladstone, MI who believes she owes her life to marijuana. A few years ago she weighed more than 400 pounds, and she was taking 42 prescription pills per day to manage her pain, anxiety and COPD. The drugs were slowly killing her – her liver and kidneys were failing, and her energy was non-existent. She spent nearly all day lying in bed.
In October of 2012, she replaced her prescriptions with medical marijuana, as part of an complete lifestyle overhaul (she also switched to a vegan diet). Since then she has lost 270 pounds. Her liver and kidneys are functioning normally. She is cured of COPD.
Most importantly, she is able to play with  her grand daughter, and enjoy her life and her time with her family.
And then there’s Jim Gilliam. In March of 2009, Jim published an open letter to President Obama on the Huffington Post, entitled “Pot Saved My Life, Mr. President.” Written in response to the President’s comments about marijuana policy, the letter describes Gilliam’s battle with cancer and radiation treatments, which left his lungs so scarred that he had to undergo a double lung transplant.
In the process, he nearly wasted away. His doctor diagnosed his weight loss as life-threatening, and wrote him a prescription for Marinol (a synthetic form of THC). Marinol enabled Jim to put on weight and get out of the danger zone. He concludes his letter by saying:

“Pot saved my life. It’s a miracle drug, even the crappy, non-organic kind made in a lab.”

Greg Scott of Ft. Lauderdale, FL was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, at a time when there was nothing that doctors could do for him. He turned to marijuana to manage his symptoms and strengthen his appetite, and credits cannabis with keeping him alive long enough to benefit from more modern medical treatments. As he testified before a Florida commission:

“Because I smoked pot, I lived.”

If you live in or near Los Angeles, CA then you have probably heard the story of Bill Rosendahl, the city councilman who was the first elected official to openly use pot while in office. Bill first used medical cannabis to help relieve the stinging pain of neuropathy in his feet. He continued to use it when late stage cancer began affecting the nerves in his back, causing debilitating pain. But with the help of marijuana, Rosendahl is sleeping through the night, sitting and walking without pain, and feeling more like his old self again.
Oh, yeah – and his cancer has gone into remission. He gives credit to cannabis, saying in an interview with Huff Post Live:

“Medical marijuana saved my life.”

Mr. Rosendahl isn’t the only one who has found pot to be an effective anti-cancer agent. There’s also Mike Cutler of the UK, a 63 year old grandfather who was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009. He received a transplant, only to find out that cancer had attacked his new liver, too. Doctors told him there was nothing else they could do. He turned to cannabis oil, and his symptoms disappeared. In May of this year, doctors told him the cancer cells had also disappeared.
Rick Simpson was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2003. He applied cannabis oil bandages to his skin spots and they cleared up in just days. He was so convinced by his own experience that he became something of a crusader, doing everything he can to spread the word about hemp oil and make it available to those in need – even to the point of facing criminal charges.
Dennis Hill is a biochemist who used cannabis butter and hemp oil to successfully treat malignant tumors. Dusty Frank used it to cure his prostate cancer. VICE magazine did a story about “Brave Mykayla” Comstock whose parents are treating her leukemia with cannabis oil. Dr. William Courtney told Huff Post Live about  an 8 month old infant whose inoperable brain tumor was drastically reduced by hemp oil – administered via pacifier.
I may not know the name of the baby Dr. Courtney is referring to, I do know the name Jayden David. 8 year old Jayden has a very rare form of epilepsy known as Dravet syndrome, which is unresponsive to all forms of “conventional” treatment. But two years ago he found relief from his debilitating seizures through CBD-rich hemp oil, and is now living a normal and active life.
Jayden’s case is very similar to that of Charlotte Figi, who suffers from the same condition. Her case was in the national spotlight last year, after being referenced by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in his public statement coming out in favor of medical marijuana. Cannabis oil has also helped kids with autism and muscular dystrophy, like Joey Hester-Perez, and also Smith-Magenis Syndrome, like Colin Ulrick.
These are lives saved by pot. These are children who are alive and healthy because of cannabis, and it’s incredible medicinal properties – which we are only beginning to explore and understand. These are men and women of all ages, who have been healed and found new hope, new strength and new life through marijuana.
Everyone has an opinion about marijuana, and most of us are in favor. But for these people and their families, it’s not just an opinion. It’s a conviction. Cannabis is not a Schedule 1 drug – it’s a medicine.
Pot saves lives. It saved their lives. And it can save thousands more, if we just give it a chance.

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Cannabis: Medicine for the Mind, Body and Soul

Cannabis has been cultivated and consumed by humans for thousands of years. It is one of the most powerful and versatile medicines in history, and has been used to treat everything from depression and anxiety, to cancer and malaria. And yet, at the time of this writing, it is still classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic by the U.S. government, and prohibited and demonized by most nations on earth.
In this article, I’d like to explore the many uses of cannabis as a medicine, not just for physical ailments, but a holistic medicine for the mind, body and soul. I’d like to help dispel the fear and the lies that have surrounded marijuana for more than a hundred years, and to help spread knowledge, understanding and acceptance of this miraculous plant, and the ways that it can contribute to our health and well-being, as individuals and as a society.
Good For the Body
According to legend, the Chinese emperor Shen-Nung penned what might have been the first encyclopedia of medicine around 2700 B.C. It listed hundreds of plants and minerals, along with their known medicinal uses. Among them was cannabis sativa, which was known as “Ma” in ancient China, and used to treat rheumatism, gout, malaria, constipation, stomach and intestinal problems, nutrient deficiencies, and cold symptoms. It was applied to ulcers and sores.
More than four thousand years later, we area still using marijuana to treat bodily illness, and we continue to discover new medicinal uses. Today, marijuana is prescribed as a treatment for glaucoma, epilepsy, inflammation, insomnia and tremors. It is used to relieve chronic pain and stress. It is the most effective way to suppress nausea and vomiting, and stimulate appetite, and it has saved the lives of patients with anorexia, or unable to eat due to cancer treatments and auto-immune disorders.
There is also a growing body of evidence that cannabis has powerful cancer fighting properties. At least twenty studies have been done which concluded that THC and cannabidiol can slow the growth of tumors, encourage apoptosis, and effectively treat many kinds of cancer, including brain, breast and lung cancer, leukemia and lymphoma. These claims have yet to be acknowledged by the medical mainstream, which is funded and largely controlled by profit-driven corporate interests.
A Joint A Day Keeps the Psychiatrist Away
Marijuana has long been associated with schizophrenia and mental illness, not because of scientific evidence, but mainly due to a propaganda campaign that dates back to “public service announcements” circulated by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the 1930s, and the hilariously awful film Reefer Madness.
The reality is that no causal link has ever been established between pot and mental illness. Surveys show that mentally ill people tend to use cannabis (and other drugs) more than the general population, but this can largely be explained as an attempt to self-medicate.
What the latest research actually suggests is that marijuana may in fact help treat depression, anxiety, bi-polar, PTSD, OCD, ADD, even addiction to opiates and other drugs, and all that with far less harmful side effects than the commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs. These studies are being proven in practice by people like Dr. Frank Lucido and Dr. Jeremy Spiegel, who are bravely blazing the trail by prescribing cannabis to their own patients.
And then of course you have millions of people around the world, myself included, who have found through our own informal experiments that smoking cannabis relieves boredom, depression and stress, and induces tranquility and happiness. I think I speak for all of us, when I say that we need no research studies, no doctors or scientists, to tell us what we already know firsthand.
Balm For The Soul
As long ago as 2000 B.C., the people of India had discovered the intoxicating properties of cannabis, and were using it as part of their religious worship, to induce visionary states. They would smoke buds or hashish (known as charas) in clay pipes (called chillums) or use it to prepare a bhang, a drink made with milk and spices.
Cannabis was also used as a sacrament by ancient Persians and Egyptians, by the nomadic Scythians and the old Germanic tribes of Europe. The methods and practices differ from culture to culture, but the common theme is this: the marijuana high induces a state of mind in which we are more sensitive to unseen, spiritual forces. It enables the mystic to shift from the ordinary, ego-centric state of consciousness, to a state more in tune with the infinite, and more receptive to inspiration, be it artistic or Divine.
Pot is still used that way today, despite local and international prohibition, most famously by the Rastafari movement in Jamaica, but also by modern fringe churches like the Santo Daime, the Church of the Universe, and the Way of Infinite Harmony. Not to mention millions around the world, myself included, who don’t belong to any of these churches, but who in the privacy of our own homes, or in the timeless temple of the great outdoors, continue to use marijuana as an aid to meditation and finding peace of mind.
Cannabis has played a key role in human culture, religion, medicine and industry from the very beginning. For thousands of years, it was used peacefully to make rope, paper and cloth, to heal the sick, to relax the mind and nourish the soul. Marijuana prohibition is a recent phenomenon, driven by fear and funded by corporate interests, in an effort to enforce the current social and economic order. But not for much longer!
Legalization is at hand. Cannabis is being rediscovered as a cure for many ills, both mental and physical, and being restored to it’s rightful place as a revered sacrament and doorway to the Divine, helping individuals to find and feel a sense of meaning and connection that is so needed in this day and age.
It’s about time.