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Title: Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ‘74
Author: Raymond Cushing
Faculty Evaluator: Mary King M.D.
Student researchers: Jennifer Swift, Licia Marshall,
Corporate media coverage: AP and UPI news wires 2/29/00
A Spanish medical team’s study released in Madrid in February 2000 has shown
that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, destroys
tumors in lab rats. These findings, however, are not news to the U.S.
government. A study in Virginia in 1974 yielded similar results but was
suppressed by the DEA, and in *1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to
persuade U.S. universities and researchers to destroy all cannabis research work
done between 1966 and 1976, including compendiums in libraries.
The research was conducted by a medical team led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of
Complutence University in Madrid. In the study, brains of 45 lab rats were
injected with a cancer cell, which produced tumors. On the twelfth day of the
experiment, 15 of the rats were injected with THC and 15 with Win-55, 212-2, a
synthetic compound similar to THC. The untreated rats died 12-18 days after the
development of the tumors. THC treated rats lived significantly longer than the
control group. Although three were unaffected by the THC, nine lived 19-35 days,
while tumors were completely eradicated in three others. The rats treated with
Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.
In an e-mail interview for this story, the Madrid researcher said he had heard
of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate literature on it.
"I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I have attempted
many times to obtain the journal article on the original investigation by theses
people, but it has proven impossible," Guzman said. His response wasn’t
surprising, considering that in 1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to
persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966/76 cannabis
research work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer. "We
know that large amounts of information have since disappeared," he says.
Guzman provided the title of the work—"Antineoplastic Activity of
Cannabinoids," an article in a 1975 Journal of the National Cancer
Institute—and author Raymond Cushing obtained a copy at the UC Medical School
Library in Davis, California, and faxed it to Madrid. The 1975 article does not
mention breast cancer tumors, which were featured in the only newspaper story
ever to appear about the 1974 study in the local section of the Washington Post
on August 18, 1974. The headline read, "Cancer Curb Is Studied," and
was followed in part by, "The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the
growth of three kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity
reaction that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of
Virginia team has discovered. The researchers found that THC slowed the growth
of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory
mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."
Drug Enforcement Agency officials shut down the Virginia study and all further
cannabis research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on these events in his
book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to
all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major
pharmaceutical companies. These companies set out—unsuccessfully—to develop
synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the
"high."
Update by Raymond Cushing
When I was a cub reporter twenty-eight years ago at the daily Advocate in
Stamford, Connecticut, my first city editor—a white-haired veteran of the
International Herald Tribune named Marian Campbell—told me that the cure for
cancer was the holy grail of all news stories.
"Unless they discover the cure for cancer," she would say over the
clackety-clack of the manual typewriters, "this paper goes to press on
time."
What I found out a quarter-century later is that not even the cure for cancer is
a big enough story to crack the Berlin Wall of media censorship in this country.
Toss in the facts that the cure appears to be a benign substance that has been
illegal for 63 years, and that the government knowingly suppressed evidence of
its curative powers 25 years, and you get twice the storyćand twice the
censorship.
I won’t name the "investigative journalists" who didn’t respond
when I sent them this story. I won’t list the numerous "progressive"
publications that ignored it. I won’t describe the forbidding sense of
professional isolation I endured in the months I tried to place the story.
Suffice it to say that it’s what one would expect in a society that has
criminalized its own young for two generations around the cannabis issue simply
because we were told to do so.
Thousands of innocent people who are in U.S. prisons for possessing or selling
"the cure for cancer" await liberation and reparations. Someday our
grandchildren will look back and ask, "What did you do to set the cannabis
prisoners free?"
Here’s what any responsible journalist should be doing:
Go to primary sources when evaluating cannabis research. The AP and other news
organizations love to elevate "bad science" and suppress "good
science" when it comes to cannabis. You have to read the original research
articles yourself and make your own judgments.
Investigate and report on the war on children that is a major component of the
war on drugs. The marijuana laws are the main tool the police use to persecute
minors. No other policy affects more families in more insidious and devastating
ways than cannabis prohibition.
Learn about the history of cannabis prohibition and about the pharmaceutical,
liquor, and tobacco giants that are behind it. If you don’t know the history
of cannabis and hemp prohibition, you’re too ignorant to justifiably call
yourself a journalist.
If it turns out—as my story would seem to indicate—that cannabis is the cure
for cancer and the government suppressed this information for 25 years (and
continues to suppress it), then the body count alone will make this the biggest
holocaust in recorded history. Virtually all federal drug policy makers of both
parties since 1975—including legislators, presidents and the DEA—will be
complicit and criminally liable.
That’s why they don’t want this story covered.
To learn the history of cannabis prohibition, read www.jackherer.com.
To read my story, type in the address at the beginning of this segment.
Raymond Cushing: raymondcushing@ireland.com
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2]
http://www.ephidrina.org/cannabis/drugswar.html
Changing Attitudes and Better Information
Since Anslinger's day, opinions on cannabis have pulled in two different
directions. Some people think it is a grave moral and social threat to the
fabric of our society, which should be stamped out. Other people think it's just
a bit of harmless fun, and call for its legalization. These two divergent
movements appear to have been equally important in shaping current attitudes,
but cannabis remains illegal.
Throughout the last sixty years, cannabis as a recreational drug has been
steadily gathering popularity. Interest in it grew in the 1960's, when the
public became aware of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and "magic
mushrooms". Credible sources reported that Kennedy had smoked pot in the
Whitehouse, and was planning to legalize. In 1964, the first headshop was opened
in the U.S. by the Thelin brothers, selling books, posters and various pot
related paraphernalia.
Pot's newfound respectability fuelled interest in its medicinal uses as well.
Research began again, and reports started appearing in medical journals about
the positive therapeutic effects in the treatment of conditions such as
epilepsy, MS, glaucoma, nausea, asthma and tumors. Patients began to use this
illegal drug to relieve their symptoms. In 1970, Anslinger's tax act was
declared unconstitutional - and was quickly replaced by the Controlled
Substances Act. Throughout the 1970's more and more evidence surfaced declaring
pot to be basically harmless, while politicians continued to grapple with the
hot potato of legalization.
The War on Drugs
The 1980's saw an enormous backlash against the use of cannabis, on a similar
scale to Anslinger's campaign, and possibly with the same motivation. The
Republican Reagan/Bush Administration launched an enormous campaign against drug
use, spearheaded by the president's wife Nancy, under the slogan "Just Say
No". The campaign, and others like it, was funded largely by tobacco and
pharmaceutical companies.
In 1983, a program called Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) was initiated
in schools all over the United States. Propaganda alleging untrue and unproven
health effects was fed to schoolchildren, and students were encouraged to become
police informants, passing information to the authorities about their friends'
and families' drug habits. At the same time, the Reagan/Bush Administration
quietly instructed American universities to destroy all research work into
cannabis, undertaken between 1966 and 1976.**
That same year, the federal government used aeroplanes to illegally spray
marijuana fields in Kentucky, Georgia and Tennessee with the toxic weedkiller
paraquat, risking the lives of cannabis smokers. Reagan's Drugs Czar, Carlton
Turner said that kids deserved to die as punishment for smoking the poisoned
weed, to teach them a lesson. Two years later, he called for the death penalty
for all drug users.
Under Reagan, the federal prison population doubled. Young offenders and
non-violent drug users were sent to "Special Alternative
Incarceration" boot camps, where they were brainwashed with yet more
anti-drug propaganda, to undermine their subversive attitudes. The President
declared the War on Drugs to be one of the major achievements of his
administration, while the international narcotics trade thrived and cannabis
prices sky-rocketed.
In 1989, it was revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal that the U.S. Government was
participating in the trading of "hard drugs" for military weapons. In
the ensuing investigation, the increasingly frail and senile Ronald Reagan
pleaded ignorance and, unsurprisingly, everyone believed him. But Ephidrina
wonders: was this what a confused old man really meant when he was talking about
the "War on Drugs"?
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