Why the FDA’s Position on Marijuana is Lickspittle
The United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) takes a position regarding the medical use of cannabis that amounts to illogical, stupid, no-good lickspittle. The FDA’s position when it comes to medical marijuana is that, due to a lack of “clinical data,” the plant, Cannabis sativa, L., is not “effective or safe in treating chronic, painful conditions.”
The FDA takes this position despite the conclusion of America’s leading scientists. For example, a 1999 report from the FDA’s own scientists at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that marijuana has medical benefits even in smoked form. According to John Benson, one of the authors of the IOM report and professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska, the science or “clinical data” is “in” on marijuana as medicine: “We thought there was sufficient evidence at that time [1999] to justify the statement that it had benefits in patients for pain, for the relief of nausea and vomiting from, for example, chemotherapy for cancer, or AIDS.” Also, Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, states flatly: “The fact is there are circumstances where smoked marijuana may be helpful to patients who are desperately ill.”
What, then, best explains the FDA’s position? Politics. This means, specifically, that the FDA is looking to benefit friends and harm enemies. Hint: the friends of the FDA are not the People of the United States who are endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The friends of the FDA are pharmaceutical companies; like Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals (SAP).
SAP is a company that has patented a synthetic derivative of the plant Cannabis sativa, L. and made it do the opposite of what nature intended it to do. Natural cannabis causes relief. SAP’s manufactured pill causes suffering, e.g., weight-loss, nausea, anxiety, headaches, upper respiratory tract infections, depression, and psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, the FDA is poised to approve of SAP’s unnatural, anti-marijuana pill as a weight-loss cure-all drug. Ironic how the “clinical data” does not show that the plant marijuana is safe, but does show how marijuana's synthetic opposite is dangerous (and the plant is outlawed while the pills are welcomed).
The FDA’s politics might make sense in totalitarian regimes or dictatorships, but it makes no sense in the United States of America. More accurately, close ties with the pharmaceutical industry have trumped any and all sense of common sense by the FDA when it comes to marijuana. The people who run SAP cannot patent a plant like Cannabis sativa, L., so they patent its synthetic antidote instead. Because there is no money in medical marijuana, the FDA does not recognize it—they are involved in a conspiracy with the drug companies, and the goal is to prevent people from growing a less-regulated, inexpensive plant instead of buying more regulated, costly pills.
The bottom-line is that the FDA supports the likes of the executives at SAP who make collectively (per year) $35,314,708.00 legally overseeing the production of pills. Meanwhile, the FDA works to undermine those individuals who make pennies in comparison compassionately providing marijuana flowers to the sick and dying. The worst infraction of decency in this whole story, however, is that the person who ultimately leads the FDA used to “smoke pot” for fun, but doesn’t want to admit it due to a fear of "sending the wrong message" to the kids. That is lickspittle.
Kenneth Michael White is an attorney and the author of “The Beginning of Today: The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937” and “Buck” (both by PublishAmerica 2004). Visit www.thebeginningoftoday.com for more information.
The FDA takes this position despite the conclusion of America’s leading scientists. For example, a 1999 report from the FDA’s own scientists at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that marijuana has medical benefits even in smoked form. According to John Benson, one of the authors of the IOM report and professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska, the science or “clinical data” is “in” on marijuana as medicine: “We thought there was sufficient evidence at that time [1999] to justify the statement that it had benefits in patients for pain, for the relief of nausea and vomiting from, for example, chemotherapy for cancer, or AIDS.” Also, Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, states flatly: “The fact is there are circumstances where smoked marijuana may be helpful to patients who are desperately ill.”
What, then, best explains the FDA’s position? Politics. This means, specifically, that the FDA is looking to benefit friends and harm enemies. Hint: the friends of the FDA are not the People of the United States who are endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The friends of the FDA are pharmaceutical companies; like Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals (SAP).
SAP is a company that has patented a synthetic derivative of the plant Cannabis sativa, L. and made it do the opposite of what nature intended it to do. Natural cannabis causes relief. SAP’s manufactured pill causes suffering, e.g., weight-loss, nausea, anxiety, headaches, upper respiratory tract infections, depression, and psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, the FDA is poised to approve of SAP’s unnatural, anti-marijuana pill as a weight-loss cure-all drug. Ironic how the “clinical data” does not show that the plant marijuana is safe, but does show how marijuana's synthetic opposite is dangerous (and the plant is outlawed while the pills are welcomed).
The FDA’s politics might make sense in totalitarian regimes or dictatorships, but it makes no sense in the United States of America. More accurately, close ties with the pharmaceutical industry have trumped any and all sense of common sense by the FDA when it comes to marijuana. The people who run SAP cannot patent a plant like Cannabis sativa, L., so they patent its synthetic antidote instead. Because there is no money in medical marijuana, the FDA does not recognize it—they are involved in a conspiracy with the drug companies, and the goal is to prevent people from growing a less-regulated, inexpensive plant instead of buying more regulated, costly pills.
The bottom-line is that the FDA supports the likes of the executives at SAP who make collectively (per year) $35,314,708.00 legally overseeing the production of pills. Meanwhile, the FDA works to undermine those individuals who make pennies in comparison compassionately providing marijuana flowers to the sick and dying. The worst infraction of decency in this whole story, however, is that the person who ultimately leads the FDA used to “smoke pot” for fun, but doesn’t want to admit it due to a fear of "sending the wrong message" to the kids. That is lickspittle.
Kenneth Michael White is an attorney and the author of “The Beginning of Today: The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937” and “Buck” (both by PublishAmerica 2004). Visit www.thebeginningoftoday.com for more information.
posted by Kenneth Michael White | 4:45 PM
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