From NORML SHOW LIVE #841 (1/20/2012), Harvard Emeritus Associate Professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon joins us via Skype for an exclusive interview. Topics include his friend, Dr. Carl Sagan, the idea of “recreational” vs. “medical” marijuana use, the opinion “all use is medical”, Allen St. Pierre’s “farce” comments on medical marijuana industry, and medical psychedelics.

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Cannabis Conversations

• Harvard Emeritus Dr. Lester Grinspoon on his friend Carl Sagan, the pharmaceuticalization of medical marijuana, “All use is medical”, and the medical marijuana industry (full interview here)

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• Rockin’ Friday: Slightly Stoopid – “No Cocaine”

Cultivator’s Corner with High Times’ Sr. Cultivation Editor Danny Danko

• Curing: what’s the “best way” and is there a “quick dry” method that wont ruin your herb?
• Breeding: If you take standard male pollen to a “feminized” or hermaphoridite plant will the result still be a stable seed?
• Can you please explain the difference between sea of green and screen of green?
• What is the best way to use the 12 plant max in California?
• What’s the best situation for maintaining a mother plant, i.e. lights, temp, etc.
• How big do clones have to be in order to make them flower to determine the sex of the main plant?
• Aren’t you working on a strain book? When does it come out and how can I get a copy?
• We have been cultivating the shorter, buddy, bushier strains of cannabis for indoor grows; do you think the new 5×5 restrictions (in California’s Prop 19) will make stars out of the taller, lankier strains?

NORML Newsmakers

• Oregon NORML’s Madeline Martinez announces the Grand Re-Opening of the World Famous Cannabis Café

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Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine (with special guest Dr. Lester Grinspoon)

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• I have heard that cannabis will slow the progression of type 2 diabetes is the true?

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• Live in-studio visit with Oregon medical marijuana patient diagnosed with renal coloboma (one of 27 in the world) who requires a kidney transplant, but is denied because of his medical marijuana use.

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I’

Grassroots Activism

• John Doe from JohnDoeRadio.com reports on latest Colorado efforts to take down dispensaries and clinics

(New York Times) Dr. Jean Talleyrand, who founded MediCann, a network in Oakland of 20 clinics who authorize patients to use the drug, said his staff members had treated as many as 50 patients ages 14 to 18 who had A.D.H.D. Bay Area doctors have been at the forefront of the fierce debate about medical marijuana, winning tolerance for people with grave illnesses like terminal cancer and AIDS. Yet as these doctors use their discretion more liberally, such support — even here — may be harder to muster, especially when it comes to using marijuana to treat adolescents with A.D.H.D.

“How many ways can one say ‘one of the worst ideas of all time?’ ” asked Stephen Hinshaw, the chairman of the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. [Uh, "War on Drugs", "Drug-free America", "marijuana prohibition", hmmm, there's three ways right there...] He cited studies showing that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, disrupts attention, memory and concentration — functions already compromised in people with the attention-deficit disorder.

Advocates are just as adamant, though they are in a distinct minority. “It’s safer than aspirin,” Dr. Talleyrand said. He and other marijuana advocates maintain that it is also safer than methylphenidate (Ritalin), the stimulant prescription drug most often used to treat A.D.H.D. That drug has documented potential side effects including insomnia, depression, facial tics and stunted growth.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, however, patients and doctors have been reporting that marijuana helps alleviate some of the symptoms, particularly the anxiety and anger that so often accompany A.D.H.D. The disorder has been diagnosed in more than 4.5 million children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Berkeley, Dr. Frank Lucido said he was questioned by the medical board but ultimately not disciplined after he authorized marijuana for a 16-year-old boy with A.D.H.D. who had tried Ritalin unsuccessfully and was racking up a record of minor arrests.Within a year of the new treatment, he said, the boy was getting better grades and was even elected president of his special-education class. “He was telling his mother: ‘My brain works. I can think,’ ” Dr. Lucido said.

“With any medication, you weigh the benefits against the risks,” he added.

It’s always a thorny discussion when you’re talking about kids and marijuana, because on every parent’s list of nightmares for their kid’s future is “hopeless drug addict”.  Our side has the anecdotes about the teenagers who smoke pot and get straight A’s and turn out to be wonderful adults; many of my colleagues speaking on the summer hemp festival circuit publicly trace their cannabis use back to as early as age 12.  Then their side has the anecdotes of the teenage doobie puffer who became either a listless slacker or a recovering heroin addict.  Both sides have their studies and enough personal accounts to make compelling arguments.

I didn’t try cannabis until I was 22 years old.  I wouldn’t recommend its non-medical use by anyone under age 18, even though politically I know that any re-legalization effort will require and age 21 limit.  It’s not even that I’m so worried about any physical or mental harm that might befall a teenage pot smoker.  It’s more that I think those teenage years are when your personality and character are formed.  You’re experiencing so many emotions for the first time – love, jealousy, anger, frustration, accomplishment, loneliness, and so on – these things should be felt fully and unaltered.

However, I say this as a teenage drinker.  I first drank at age 16.  I blunted many good and bad times with alcohol, up until, not-coincidentally, I first smoked marijuana.  Looking back, alcohol led to far worse outcomes for me as a teen than had I been a marijuana user… assuming I wouldn’t have gotten caught.  So I’m always curious about our society that is so quick to demonize the idea of teenagers smoking reefer when teenage use of alcohol seems pervasive and socially encouraged.  Couple that with our pediatricians who seem more than willing to throw powerful pharmaceuticals at every troubled teen and I’m left perplexed.

In this case, I trust the doctors who are carefully treating young patients, like Dr. Frank Lucido in this story, or Dr. Lester Grinspoon, who helped his young son through cancer treatments with cannabis.

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Cannabis Conversations

• NORML Founder Keith Stroup and Harvard emeritus Dr. Lester Grinspoon discuss their upcoming testimony to the Massachusetts statehouse in support of legalization of cannabis.

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Money… get back… I’m alright Jack, keep your hands off my stack… Article after article keep trickling across the news desk about states cutting their budgets in this economic crisis, desperate to trim wasteful spending, motivated to search for creative new revenue streams…  So, congratulations, Ulysses the Marijuana Unicorn, official mascot of those incarcerated for simple, first-time, non-violent marijuana possession, you now have a friend — Elliott the Legalization Elephant!

On today’s Daily Audio Stash we get a double dose of Cannabis Science.  Dr. Mitch Earleywine is here to talk about that study I brought up yesterday showing that marijuana users were less likely to get injured than alcohol drinkers.  Then Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a pioneering physician in the field of medical marijuana and author of Marijuana Reconsidered and Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine, joins us to talk about his new web ventures (you’ve seen the ad banners) and the progress of medical marijuana since he began his research in the 1960s.

Lester Grinspoon is Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of several drug-related books, including Marijuana Reconsidered, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, and Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine.

Marijuana Reconsidered came out in the 1970s as Nixon was beginning the War on Drugs and the counterculture had popularized marijuana.  Much of the same reefer madness about pot was going around then as it is now and few doctors knew anything about the real science behind medical marijuana.  Grinspoon originally endeavored to write Marijuana Reconsidered in order to build a case against marijuana, but as his research progressed, he realized the complexities of the plant and was moved to advocate for legalization.

Grinspoon also had a strong personal connection to the medical marijuana issue.  Grinspoon discussed the way marijuana helped his young son while he was dying from leukemia in the 1970s, completely eliminating the horrible nausea & vomiting he experienced after each of his chemotherapy treatments and, thereby, making the final year and a half of the boy’s life far more comfortable, for his son, and for Grinspoon and his wife by not having to endure the pain of witnessing their son suffer.

Over forty years now, Dr. Lester Grinspoon has been one of the most vocal and potent advocates for the end of adult marijuana prohibition.  Join us in celebrating one of the heroes of our movement.