Marijuana is a Schedule I drug.  That means, according to the federal government:

• it has “a high potential for abuse” (some 16 million “abusers” every month);
• it has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” (despite fifteen United States that do accept it and despite United States Federal Patent #6630507 describing its medical use);
• and there is no “accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision” (despite sending federal medical marijuana to four patients every month who use it safely under medical supervision).

But while the drug warriors were busy sounding the alarm about the new super-potent, wildly-addictive “Pot 2.0: It’s Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!”, according to Martha Rosenberg at CounterPunch, drug manufacturers were making billions in 2010 selling to Americans the following ten drugs that mimic some of marijuana’s medical effects yet are far more dangerous:

1. According to research compiled by our own Paul Armentano in the new edition of NORML’s Emerging Clinical Applications For Cannabis & Cannabinoids: A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature, 2000 — 2011, “[T]he use of a standardized extract of Cannabis sativa … evoked a total relief … in an experimental model of neuropathic pain“.  Pfizer‘s Lyrica, Mylan Pharmaceuticals‘ Topamax and GlaxoSmithKline‘s Lamictal are drugs that are commonly prescribed for pain and migraine.  Their side effects?

All three drugs increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors according to their mandated labels, in addition to the memory and hair loss patients report.

2. The use of cannabis as an anti-depressant has been anecdotally reported for decades and recent research shows that in low doses, it can have an anti-depressant effect, but it seems to reverse if one takes too high a dose.  Regardless, you’re better off with the cannabis than with the side effects of Eli Lilly‘s Prozac, GlaxoSmithKline‘s Paxil, Pfizer‘s Zoloft, or other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs):

In addition to 4,200 published reports of SSRI-related violence, including the Columbine, Red Lake and NIU shootings, SSRIs can cause serotonin syndrome and gastrointestinal bleeding when taken with certain drugs. Paxil is linked to birth defects.

3. Combine our first two conditions, pain and depression, which we’ve shown cannabis to be effective at treating, and now you have the conditions addressed by a class of drugs known as selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).  Pfizer‘s Effexor, Eli Lilly‘s Cymbalta, and Pfizer‘s Pristiq are commonly marketed in a cross-over fashion to both depression and pain sufferers, who get all the same risks of side-effects as the SSRI’s listed above, plus…

SNRI’s are also harder to quit than SSRIs. 739,000 web sites address “Effexor” and “withdrawal.”

4. Dr. Donald Tashkin found that people who smoke marijuana have not only less head, neck, and lung cancer risk than those who smoke cigarettes, but actually also have lower risk than those who don’t smoke at all.  Some of my friends have told me smoking marijuana helped address cravings as they were trying to quit smoking tobacco, but whether it actually helps medically is not known.  What is known is that Pfizer‘s popular anti-smoking drug Chantix is much more likely to affect your mental health:

After 397 FDA cases of possible psychosis, 227 domestic reports of suicidal behaviors and 28 actual suicides, the government banned pilots, air-traffic controllers and interstate truck and bus drivers from taking the antismoking drug Chantix in 2008.

5. Many a toker can relate that they use marijuana at the end of a long busy stressful day to relax and unwind, especially if they are having a tough time getting to sleep.  The popular sleeping pill, sanofi-aventis‘s Ambien, you may remember from the story of US Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashing his car in a fit of “sleep-driving”:

Law enforcement officials say it has increased traffic accidents from people who drive in a black out and don’t even recognize arresting officers.

6. THC may have the most powerful tumor-inhibiting properties known to medicine, something our government has been aware of since 1974.  There are at least four different scientific studies showing cannabinoids to inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells.  But then legal cannabis would severely curtail the sales of Astra-Zeneca‘s Tamoxifen breast cancer prevention drug:

As a breast cancer prevention drug, an American Journal of Medicine study found the average life expectancy increase from Tamoxifen was nine days. Public Citizen says for every case of breast cancer prevented on Tamoxifen there is a life-threatening case of blood clots, stroke or endometrial cancer.

7. ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) affects millions of Americans.  Recently new research has shown that cannabis can have very positive results for those trying to control their disorder.  However, we’re much more likely to hear of someone with ADHD using Novartis‘s Ritalin, Johnson & Johnson‘s Concerta, Eli Lilly‘s Strattera, Shire‘s Adderall, especially on children with ADHD:

ADHD drugs rob “kids of their right to be kids, their right to grow, their right to experience their full range of emotions, and their right to experience the world in its full hue of colors,” says Anatomy of an Epidemic author Robert Whitaker.

8. As strange as it may seem, many patients with asthma report using cannabis to help open their restricted airways.  Cannabis is a bronchodialator and can be used in a vaporized form to avoid the respiratory distress from cannabis smoke.  But cannabis is incapable of killing you, unlike the long-acting beta agonists (LABA) Foradil Aerolizer, GlaxoSmithKline‘s Serevent Diskus and Advair, and Astra-Zeneca‘s Symbicort often used to treat asthma symptoms:

Studies link them to an increase in asthma deaths, especially in African-Americans and children. They may have contributed to 5,000 deaths said Dr. David Graham at FDA hearings about the controversial asthma drugs.

9. Another set asthma control drugs known as leukotrine receptor agonists are also far more dangerous to you than vaporizing cannabis, like Merck‘s Singulair and Astra-Zeneca‘s Accolate.

Original FDA reviewers said asthma control “deteriorates” on Singulair and it may not be safe in children. Last month, Fox TV reported Singulair, Merck’s top selling drug, is suspected of producing aggression, hostility, irritability, anxiety, hallucinations and night-terrors in kids, symptoms that are being diagnosed as ADHD.

10. Finally, while not technically a medical use, many people use cannabis as a way to relax, have fun, and socialize with others.  Stress can be very damaging to one’s body and mind and cannabis is one of the most popular drugs used to combat it.  The most popular drug for socialization and relaxation, of course, is alcohol, marketed as Anheuser-Busch InBev‘s Budweiser, MillerCoors‘ Coors Light, Pabst‘s Blue Ribbon, and Boston Beer Co.’s Sam Adams.  While moderate consumption of alcohol may have some minor health benefits, habitual over-consumption, according to HealthCheck Systems, can lead to:

Arthritis - Increases risk of gouty arthritis
Cancer - Increases the risk of cancer in the liver, pancreas, rectum, breast, mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome – Causes physical and behavioral abnormalities in the fetus
Heart Disease – Raises blood pressure, blood lipids and the risk of stroke and heart disease in heavy drinkers. Heart disease is generally lower in light to moderate drinkers.
Hyperglycermia - Raises blood glucose
Hypoglycemia - Lowers blood glucose, especially for people with diabetes
Kidney Disease - Enlarges the kidneys, alters hormone functions, and increases the risk of kidney failure
Liver Disease – Causes fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis
Malnutrition - Increases the risk of protein-energy malnutrition,; low intakes of protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine, vitamin B6 and riboflavin, and impaired absorption of calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D and zinc.
Nervous Disorders – Causes neuropathy and dementia; impairs balance and memory
Obesity – Increases energy intake, but not a primary cause of obesity
Psychological disturbances – Causes depression, anxiety and insomnia

So why in the world would we prevent people from using the safe, natural, effective, non-toxic herb cannabis with so many proven benefits and so little risk of side effects?  Why would we force people to take a plethora of pills with proven dangerous side effects?  Why would we celebrate the use of poisonous alcohol and demonize the smoking of a benign weed?

2010 Reported Corporate Revenues:

Johnson & Johnson = $61.90 billion
Pfizer= $50.01 billion
GlaxoSmithKline = $45.83 billion
Novartis = $44.27 billion
Sanofi-Aventis = $41.99 billion
AstraZeneca = $32.81 billion
Merck & Co. = $27.43 billion
Eli Lilly = $21.84 billion
Anheuser-Busch InBev (2007) = $16.70 billion
MillerCoors = $3.03 billion
Pabst = $0.50 billion
Boston Beer Company = $0.46 billion
Every legal cannabis producing company combined = $0

Oh, wait, I remember…

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2009-02-16

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-02-16.mp3)

Today’s Stash guest, Cathy Jordan, gives us a fantastic interview, but her amytrophic lateral sclerosis can make understanding her speech difficult.  I have edited from two interviews with Cathy and her husband Bob and given you the best my audio processing and editing capabilities can manage.  You may remember Cathy from this video, and see more on cannabis and amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”) on YouTube at the Surviving ALS Channel:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more information visit MedicalCannabis.com and Cathy’s website at ALSandCannabis.com.

Also, Matt Simon from New Hampshire Common Sense joins us to give us the run-down on marijuana law reform efforts in the Granite State.

As my British friends say, “spot on!”  Radley Balko at The Agitator has nailed it with a sledgehammer:

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

Go read the whole thing, it’s brilliant, especially the “let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen . . . is also a proud pot smoker” part.  The comments are pretty good, too, especially this one from Eric Ogunbase:

You know who I feel bad for? Everyone who competed against him in the pool.

“You mean I’ve been training my whole life for these events and I STILL got my ass kicked by a dude who smokes the chronic?!”

Also, my diary at DailyKos could use some comments and recommendations.  Let’s bump this one up!

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Olympic great Michael Phelps has acknowledged ”regrettable” behavior and ”bad judgment” after a photo in a British newspaper showed him smoking marijuana.

In a statement released to The Associated Press, the swimmer who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Games conceded the authenticity of the exclusive picture published Sunday by the tabloid News of the World.

Phelps said: ”I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”

via Phelps Apologizes for Marijuana Use – NYTimes.com.

Youthful and inappropriate.  Childish things, as our president might say.  ”It will not happen again.”  Not to get all Clintonian on you, Mike, but does “it” refer to “smoking marijuana” or does “it” refer to “photos surfacing in newspapers showing you smoking marijuana”?

I’ll never understand the mindset that accepts as rational the idea that these world class athletes – Michael Phelps, Ricky Williams, Ross Rebagliati, those Russian sumo, etc. - can dedicate their entire lives to eating right, working out, honing their bodies and minds to the pinnacle of their sport, but should they wish to relax and unwind, they’re forced to ingest a hard liquid drug that has noticably deleterious effects on health and athletic ability (Max McGee notwithstanding) rather than a mild herb that doesn’t seem to  have affected their abilities whatsoever.

Even more perplexing is the notion that, in the name of “sports medicine”, these athletes are accustomed to taking all manner of narcotic pain killers and other pharmaceutical cocktails that aid performance or mitigate injury, but are addicting (Brett Favre, *cough*,) and wreak havoc on the liver and kidneys, yet if we catch them smoking weed we have to mete out severe punishment (Santonio Holmes, notwithstanding).

As I look at the coverage on Huffington Post (admittedly, a liberal website) almost all comments are “it’s well past time to legalize it” and “so what” and “didn’t hurt Phelps’ performance any”.  Oh, an Obama brother pot bust and an eight-time gold medalist bong photo following ten days of growing drumbeat over President Obama’s non-response to the Tahoe Raid… somebody really did get me a swell birthday present!

News of the World in the UK is reporting that Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps is one of us!

THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.

In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong.

And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER.

Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed from the bong during two days of partying with students last November, a quiet time in the swimming calendar when athletes would not expect to get tested for drugs.

As he basked in his hero status, Phelps knocked back beers and shots of spirits. And when a student offered him the glass bong engraved with red writing, he did not hesitate, says our source.

Our source said: “You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do.

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

The US Olympics Committee, who have pledged to clamp down on drug use, refused to comment, as did USA Swimming and Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman.

More surprising still was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s refusal to comment, given that they introduced the four-year ban on sport’s drug users.

Spokesman Clifford Bloxham offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us.

In return, he asked that we kill Phelps’ bong picture. Bloxham said: “It’s seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.”

So, you wanna explain to me how marijuana smoking will make one a lethargic, unmotivated loser who will never get anywhere in life?  This should be fun, watching sponsors and Olympic and USA Swimming officials trip all over themselves.  I expect to see a special exemption or a sudden new rule that lets firt time offenders skate with some sort of class and community service.  Does anybody really think they are going to end Michael Phelps’ career, the greatest Olympian ever, and a huge marketing and endorsement cash cow, for a picture of him doing something that isn’t even criminal in thirteen states?

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Marijuana law reform is a civil rights struggle.  I will not attempt to equate this struggle to those of minorities, women, or gays and lesbians; however, there are some parallels among our fight and theirs and, indeed, some threads of drug law injustice are woven directly into the struggles of these groups.  The prohibition of drugs was one of the tools of oppression – the “Negroes” for their cocaine, the “Chinamen” for their opium, and the Mexicans for their marihuana.  It remains so today – while people use drugs at about the same rate regardless of race, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and serve longer sentences for drug use than white people.

Aside from the racist nature of the origins and applications, cannabis prohibition itself is an unjust law.  First consider that it isn’t merely against the law to possess, cultivate, traffic, buy, and consume marijuana – it is against the law to be marijuana.  Federal and state law enforcement spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours flying helicopters attempting to spot cannabis growing out in the wild.  Ninety-eight percent of what is seized is known as “feral hemp”, which is wild ditchweed with unsmokably-low levels of THC.  Officials rip up and destroy every plant they see whether it is owned or tended by any human, whether or not it could possibly intoxicate any human.   Logically, then, the ultimate goal of marijuana prohibition is not to simply stop humans from using it for intoxication, but to eradicate the species cannabis sativa L. from the earth!

Think of that: our official policy is the extinction of a species of life.  Certainly that’s not entirely new.  We’re dedicated to the extinction of all manner of microscopic life, after all, but that is a justifiable policy for self-preservation – we kill bugs that kill us.  I cannot think of another plant or animal we treat like cannabis.  Deadly plants like nightshade and belladonna are legal, annoying plants like poison ivy and poison oak are legal, even intoxicating plants like coca and poppy are legal when cultivated for prescription medications.  But the cannabis plant, the plant that cannot kill you is completely illegal*.  The plant that can provide the food, clothing, shelter, and medicine humans need to survive is illegal.  Nature itself is illegal.  How much more contrary to eternal law and natural law could this unjust prohibition law be?

The fight against cannabis prohibition, against this unjust law, is a civil rights fight.  This declaration will offend some people who will point to four centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, to lynchings and cross burnings, and to beatings and firehoses and condemn my declaration as making light of the plight of those who were truly oppressed.  I do not make light of those struggles, but I also recognize that civil rights are not a zero sum game and the degree and manner in which one is being oppressed are not what make the fight against oppression a just one.  Dr. King dreamed of a day when children would be judged by not by the color of their skin but the content of their character; I dream of a day when workers are judged not by the metabolites in their urine but the quality of their work.

Later in King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. …

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. …

The unjust law of marijuana prohibition is difference made legal.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our intoxicant, but does not bind itself to forgo their intoxicant.  The majority compels our minority forgo our medicine, but does not bind itself to forgo their medicine.  The majority compels our minority to forgo their religious sacrament, but does not bind itself to forgo their religious sacrament.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our source of food, fuel, and fiber, but does not bind itself to forgo their sources.

The majority may argue that they do not prohibit intoxication, medication, religious sacrament, or food, fuel, and fiber cultivation, so long as it doesn’t involve marijuana.  This to me sounds like the argument against same-sex marriage rights, that gays and lesbians are just as free to marry someone of the opposite sex as everybody else.  If we are given a right, but then proscribed from exercising that right in the manner that benefits us without a valid reason from the majority, it is not really a right.  When intoxication, medication, and sacrament are legal rights, but we are proscribed from using a demonstrably safer intoxicant, medicine, and sacrament, that is difference made legal.

No, we do not face the firehoses and the dogs and the lynchings, nor do we suffer in as great of numbers as did the African Americans Dr. King so graciously led in the years before my birth.  Our oppression is more subtle and codified into laws that restrict our housing, employment, and educational opportunities.  We do not tremble in fear of the midnight ride of white-robed vigilante Klansmen; our terror comes in the form of midnight no-knock raids of body-armored SWAT teams.

Like the civil rights struggles of the past, we work to change laws that oppress people, laws that enjoy support from the majority and are rationalized by tradition, religion, and junk science.  Unlike the civil rights struggles of the past, our constituency is an invisible group defined by lifestyle, not genetics.  That choice to use cannabis should not disqualify our fight to be treated as equals under the law.  After all, the choice to worship the God of your understanding is not genetic, it is a lifestyle choice as well, and our law recognizes that one cannot be discriminated against for that choice.  In fact, it is a bit ironic that one’s choice of God, a belief that cannot be proven by science to beneficial, is a protected right, yet one’s choice of cannabis, a plant that can be proven by science to be beneficial, is a federal crime.

The freedom to worship, of course, is an explicit right recognized by our First Amendment, but its foundation is in the inalienable rights given to us by our Creator, among them being Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness.  If that last one – the Pursuit of Happiness – doesn’t give me the right to smoke a joint so long as I don’t affect anyone else’s Life and Liberty, then the Constitution isn’t worth the hemp paper on which it was drafted.

Also from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

Today’s freedom fighters are the people like Eddy Lepp and Charles Lynch, providing aid and comfort to the sick and dying by growing and supplying them with medicine, only to face the rest of their natural lives behind bars because what they did was “illegal”.

Today’s “whites-only” establishments are the “drug-free” workplaces keep cannabis users confined to low-paying part-time or temp service jobs, while the rest of the workers are allowed all the alcohol, nicotine, and prescription medications they desire.

Today’s lynchings are the Rachel Hoffmans and Jonathan Magbies who are murdered by police negligence, solely over their use of cannabis.  Today’s institutionalized discrimination is the over 20 million in my lifetime whose lives are marked with the scarlet letter of a drug conviction, affecting their child custody, government assistance, college financial aid, employment opportunities, professional licenses, voting rights, and liberty.

The prohibition of cannabis ultimately degrades human personality and is against moral law.  It is an unjust law that cannot stand, and we have a moral responsibility to disobey it.  In doing so, we express the highest respect for the law.  On this day when we recognize the greatness of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, and on tomorrow, when we see part of that dream fulfilled, remember that we don’t fight to “make pot legal so you can get high”; we fight because the Pursuit of Happiness is our right and caging us for our method of pursuit is unjust.

Smoking pot is our civil right!

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

* I recognize that marijuana is legally grown at ElSohly’s lab at the University of Mississippi.  But consider that marijuana’s two purposes – to supply five people grandfathered in to the IND program and to provide marijuana for studies to prove how awful marijuana is to justify its prohibition.  In this metaphor it would be akin to saving a few vials of polio virus so you could use them to make vaccines.