Marihuana "Addiction" 100% !
Five major scientific government commissioned studies about marihuana: 1894 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, the 1930's-1940's Laguardia Committee, the 1940's U.S. Army study on marihuana, the 1972 Shafer Commission, and the 1970 era Canadian Le Dain Commission. All stated that cannabis used as a drug does not create dependence, or addiction.
Until quite recently, it was common knowledge that marihuana was not addicting. It still isn't addicting.
We do know that the endocannabinoid system is not screwed up or bypassed or attenuated by the injestion of marihuana cannabinoids in the same manner that the endorphin system is so affected by the opiates, when opiate addiction occurs. In other words, there is no physical addiction mechanism in the human body for cannabis. If you like weed now, you won't really go insane if you stop using it, like the poor heroin addict next door, who do go totally insane apparently if they can't get heroin every 6 hours (that's what the books state). Don't worry, your endocannabinoid system has not been harmed or compromised by cannabis.
If you're NOT a medical marihuana user, you can stop using weed easily! It is NOT an addicting drug for the mainstream-healthy segment of society. That is a well known historical FACT! A healthy person who truely chooses to stop using weed should not have any apparent withdrawal symptoms, or reappearing symptoms of any type, since they didn't have any medical symptoms of illness in the first place, did they? Withdrawal symptoms for weed have only been mentioned in recent years, and insomnia is about the only one that was mentioned. The five major studies mentioned in paragraph one didn't mention a single withdrawal symptom; they all simply said marihuana is not addicting at all.
Until around the time of Ronald Reagan's presidency, having a nearly exclusive preference for a particular item, in and of itself, was not seen as an example of physical addiction, but merely the exercise of ordinary freedom to choose.
For example, water is not addicting though everyone craves it everyday for all of their lives. Some eat cheeseburgers everyday, and seem to exhibit actual withdrawal symptoms if they can't have that precise food, but few would call that a true addiction other than fraudsters or fakes. (In my opinion, the use of better quality foods leads to less obsessive eating problems. More satisfaction leads to less compulsive over-eating.)
QUESTION: what happened in terms of scientific knowledge about cannabis between the time of the last study mentioned in paragraph 1, about 1972 and the year 1989, when Reagan finished his last term? Jack Herer states in The Emperor Wears No Clothes that a multitude of incredible medical studies were conducted 1966-1976 or so, that revealed that cannabis was essentially, a miracle drug, and was good for tumors, cancer, and many other diseases. Herer states that Ronald Reagan actually had many of these studies destroyed. However, many were still kept at the universities where they had been conducted, or somewhere else, so some of these studies have resurfaced, but not all of them.
I wish I had a list of the lost studies mentioned in The Emperor Wears No Clothes, the ones that were totally destroyed.
Science and truth suffered under Ronald Reagan in certain respects.
A Reagan Era Cannabis Research Library.
Here are the quotes from Herer's book currently on the web (chapter 6):
Destroying the Public Record
Some 10,000 studies have been done on cannabis, 4,000 in the U.S., and only about a dozen have shown any negative results and these have never been replicated. The Reagan/Bush Administration put a soft “feeler” out in September of 1983 for all American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries.
Scientists and doctors so ridiculed this unparalleled censorship move that the plans were dropped…for the moment.
However, we know that large amounts of information have since disappeared, including the original copy of the USDA’s own pro-marihuana film Hemp for Victory. Worse yet, even the merest mention of the film was removed from the official record back to 1958, and has had to be painstakingly reestablished as part of our national archives. Many archival and resource copies of USDA Bulletin 404 has disappeared. How many other such priceless historical documents have already been lost?
Luckily, the marihuana movement is so strong in 2010 that it is unlikely that such a strange period of ignorance and regression could ever take place again.
Question: how was Reagan able to violate the law? (Assuming it's really true that Reagan personally ordered the destruction of the studies,) I'm sure that what he ordered to be done in 1983 was totally ILLEGAL under U.S. and international law. Sorry to remind anyone of this simple fact. It also seems a bit anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Mormon, anti-Hebrew, anti-Persian, anti-Hindu, anti-VooDoo, and anti-everything.
