The results of a first-of-its-kind worldwide survey of nearly 1,000 medicinal cannabis consumers shows that most patients prefer their medicine in the way that nature, not Big Pharma, intended it to be.
Investigators from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States conducted a web-based survey consisting of 21 structured questions to assess patients’ perceptions of different types of cannabinoid-based medicininal products as well as their preferred modes of consumption. Over 950 subjects participated in the survey.
The study’s findings appear in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
Overall, subjects said that herbal cannabis preparations were more cost-effective and posed fewer side-effects than cannabis-derived pharmaceuticals. Participants also reported greater satisfaction with inhaled (via either smoking or vaporizing) forms of cannabis products as compared to oral dosing.
“In general, herbal non-pharmaceutical CBMs (cannabinoid-based medicines) received higher appreciation scores by participants than pharmaceutical products containing cannabinoids,” the study concluded. “[O]ur data suggest that overall there is good satisfaction with whole plant preparations that are affordable and administered in an inhaled manner, or in the form of a tincture.”
An abstract of the study, “The Medicinal Use of Cannabis and Cannabinoids — An International Cross-Sectional Survey on Administration Forms,” appears online here.
It’s not a fair competition. The plant has been subjected to over 10,000 years of product development through human-directed evolution. It’s going to be hard for modern laboratories to compete with that.
No surprise there! I think that there is a perception that Big Pharma is for profits, not to actually find a real cure. All the new medications that they come up with now are to “manage symptoms, not actually cure. There is no profit in curing.
What I love most about marijuana; It contains so many good medicinal compounds that Big Pharma cannot sustain it’s prohibition even though the U.S. government owns the patent!
For who can own the patent of life?
Take a toke of Freedom, America.
We own this revolution.
There’s a role for big pharma in medicinal marijuana, but NOT as a replacement for simple, cost-effective herbal remedies.
Welcome to health care in the 21st century.
…why in the hell would anyone want to use a man altered medicine when the natural is readily available….and can be consumed in a safe manner!
I’ve come the same conclusion as millions of others and that is Big Pharma is not interested in promoting peoples health. They are extremely interested in their profit margins. If increasing those margins means keeping cannabis illegal, and locking up good people because of it’s illegality, then so be it.
Screw Big Pharma!
Thanks to cannabis, I am very healthy and don’t take a single prescription drug.
The dosage manipulation afforded by smoking cannabis makes it more user friendly than oral consumption of cannabis. Ill use my single dose unit while awaiting the other to take affect. Once the oral has kicked in, the smoking ends for several hours.
Man made pills! and God made cannabis! Who do you trust?
hmmmm….none of the side effects associated with pharmaceuticals: tardive dyskinesia (permanent muscle spasms every day for the rest of your life), potential for opiate addiction, potential of death from overdose, liver toxicity, drowsiness, weight gain, high blood sugar, um…no thanks. Been smoking the good stuff for 40 years now and other than my daily toke I’m on no prescriptions whatsoever.
Norml…I need a phone number to call so I can attend a conference at Iowa state university this weekend. .. if you need tickets that is. ..
[Editor’s note: Press release from Iowa State Univ. NORML for this Sunday’s lecture…
CONTACT: Paul Gerlich, President, ISU NORML
pgerlich@iastate.edu or 309-714-0276
Former Director of New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program to Speak At Iowa State University
Iowa Board of Pharmacy Told Activists to Draft Bill Similar to New Mexico’s Program
AMES, IOWA— ISU NORML will be hosting Dr. Steve Jenison, former director of the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program (2007-2010) and former chair of the Advisory Committee to the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program at the Memorial Union Campanile Room this Sunday, November 10th at 4:00 p.m.]
Dr. Jenison will give a presentation discussing the implementation of the medical cannabis program in New Mexico and the political issues involved. New Mexico’s program has been described as one of the most restrictive ones in the country.
“We’re all really excited to hear what Dr. Jenison has to say about the medicinal cannabis program in New Mexico,” says Paul Gerlich, President of ISU NORML. “This event will help open some eyes to the real and absolute potential that cannabis has as medicine for Iowans.”
Members of the media are invited to interview and interact with patients/students/something at the event. Contact Paul Gerlich at pgerlich@iastate.edu or 309-714-0276 if you would like to schedule an interview.
Patients will also be testifying as to how medical cannabis helps with epilepsy and PTSD.
Dr. Jenison will also be speaking at the Public Library in Iowa City, Iowa on Tuesday, November 19, time TBA.
For more information on this event, please contact Paul Gerlich at pgerlich@iastate.edu or 309-714-0276 and visit http://www.normlisu.org.
NORML at ISU is part of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a national network dedicated to advancing discussion surrounding current cannabis laws. NORML’s mission is to move public opinion sufficiently to legalize the responsible use of marijuana by adults, and to serve as an advocate for consumers to assure they have access to high quality marijuana that is safe, convenient and affordable.
# # #
The government says there is no way to measure the dose of marijuana. Will I found there dose chart and it is D M H -11 to one kg. of body weight.
Pills can be faked.
My choice would be nature over big pharma. The only reason marijuana is being kept illegal is because big pharma would loose money. Seems like our government cares more about money than they do about their own people. And that’s not right.
Well, weed only cures depression until it wears off or until next morning or until your highs blown so BigPharma could still make $ unless BigMarijuana already took it. This is going to be legal sometime. Very few drugs CURE anything. Im on 4 myself for depression, adhd insomnia and schizophrenia and they dont cure anything. I have to take 5x a day. Im sure they might have a cure for the cold but would you pass up millions a year to help? Not everyone would. God can cure. Even that was made into BigBusiness. Greed is the root of something.. Cannabis has 1001 good uses and counting. Id like to someday be able to buy quality bud in a safe way at the same price as everyone else and to help ailing sick people. I like Indica a little better than Sativa but both are great.
The drug war mentality just kills me, There are people I have known, whom if they thought something would get them high would put it in their mouth even if it came from the vet, or try to sell it to someone who would! Can I get a toke now, and have a good laugh please. because if you see anybody barking and chasing cars…
it’s a hard choice.
a fresh sun ripened apricot loaded with antioxidants- or a stale vitamin tablet.
a steak on the barbie – or protein powder that has the consistency of chalk.
sorry for the metaphors.
It’s called green toilet paper and I’d like some to, this morning my fellow Americans I have some sad news for you. Money has become more important then peoples lives are. And the holy insurance policy counts for more then the simple things in life do; the gentle sound of rain on the roof, Saturday morning, getting high, and hanging out with my cats.
Exactly why would anyone mess with what God put on this earth to use?! It is a natural plant that needs to be legal for us who need it for pain.. tax it and sell it, would help American! Plus help those in need!!! Drug manufactures do not care about curing people, they only want their money! They are in the politicians pockets so for ‘them’ its a win-win but for us .. we are being shoved with man made drugs that kill us! Living in Maryland wanting to move to any where that it is legal! Agree with most of you out there too..
Cannabis use, from the external cannabinoids (mostly THC and CBD, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, and cannabidiol) afforded from the cannabis plant, have been
proven to have beneficial neuroprotective effects.
External cannabinoids, or exocannabinoids, supplement our body’s own natural, internal, endocannabinoid system.
The endocannabinoid system plays a predominant role in our immune function, mood regulation, nerve cell regulation but sometimes we lack these essential molecules, and cannabis happens to make (agonist) molecules that fit in cannabinoid receptors. These cannabinoid receptors make up a majority of all receptor proteins, which like locks on the cell surface, have corresponding keys, or molecules (ligands) with the proper fit to trigger or activate the (intracellular) signaling system inside the cell, into action.
Clinical studies have shown that use of cannabis can indeed stifle the snowballing effects of dementia due to the formation of neural plaques, and by extension, also shown to serve as a palliative medicine, therapeutically beneficial to a patient’s outcome and quality of life.
The molecules that are made by cannabis were intuitively priceless to our ancestors, who bred and grew cannabis, carrying it to every area of the globe, where the plant simply adapts quickly, over relatively few generations of reproduction, from seeds.
Cannabis has been a companion to man, like the domesticated dog, Cannis familiaris, co-evolving with us. Dogs developed traits (or were selected for traits) that demonstrate inclination to seek cues and instruction from humans and also their uncanny canine ability to sense our moods.
Cannabis co-evolved with humans and was ubiquitous in our surroundings because of the ease of seeds, which we carried with us where we went. Arguably, the male-female dichotomy seen in cannabis plants and the annual cycle of the plant (flowering, fertilization, seed production, seed dispersal) was the model that triggered an agrarian revolution based on observation of predictable events in the annual cycle, cause/effect, that male and female forms were both necessary to form seed, later known as fertilization or sexual reproduction.
I recommend this book::
Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease by Clint Werner
http://www.amazon.com/Marijuan…
And this documentary film which presents information plainly but the information is so surprising (in contrast to the prohibition propaganda)
What If Cannabis Cured Cancer? 2012
http://www.amazon.com/What-If-…
Without exaggeration, one might sense the need to act, the urgency in putting and end to an arbitrary prohibition based on misinformation campaigns and media ostracism, creating a socially engineered environment that tolerated imprisonment of people for mere possession of a flowering plant that was called “the safest therapeutically active substance known to man,” by Francis Young, DEA administrative law judge.
Judge Young presented his call for rescheduling cannabis out of schedule I (the worst punishments to protect “you” from “you”) by illustrating the fact that cannabis may not even be properly labeled as a “drug” which typically have significant side effects and morbidity-accelerating effects, because in terms of quantifiable measures of drug safety*, cannabis is in a class of its own. Perhaps it should not be grouped with alcohol drugs and tobacco drugs, o.t.c drugs, pharmacy drugs, (*lethal dosage resulting in 50% mortality, LD-50, and therapeutic ratio (the higher the value of the ratio, the less detrimental the side effects compared to the benefit of the drug). And perhaps the absurdity of imprisoning people for a drug to protect them from their own decisions, is most obvious in the case of essentially harmless cannabis, noting that nothing is absolutely harmless, but dependent on how people consume [whatever]. Water intoxication can kill. Overeating kills.
Let the punishment fit the crime. Let Nixon’s CSA drug war and laughably arbitrary drug schedule “system” (unscientific, arbitrary, based on mere disapproval or individual self-interest / self enrichment) come to an end when the majority of states have legalized cannabis (specifically, they have removed poor public policy regarding it.
links (non-truncated) I offered:
Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease by Clint Werner (Sep 1, 2011)
http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Gateway-Health-Cannabis-Alzheimers/dp/098342618X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384618639&sr=8-1&keywords=gateway+to+health
What If Cannabis Cured Cancer?
http://www.amazon.com/What-If-Cannabis-Cured-Cancer/dp/B007S0F2JE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1384618736&sr=8-2&keywords=what+if+cannabis+cured+cancer
There was a pharmaceutical group that purposefully designed a molecule that would act as an antagonist or blocker of the cannabinoid receptor in our bodies.
Their “reasoning” was based on the observation that cannabis use can lead to the “munchies” or stimulation of the appetite, and so blocking these receptors, they figured, with lab-made look-alike’s that prevent normal activity, would do the opposite of what cannabis does, and would lead to appetite loss, not munchies, and so marketed as a weight-loss drug, called Rimonabont.
Considering that the cannabinoid system is essential in mood regulation (and immune function and nervous system protection and neurogenesis), blocking the normal function of cannabinoid receptors had negative effects, like on the people in the drug study started killing themselves….because endocannabinoids like internally-produced anandamide, and also exocannabinoids from cannabis, like THC, CBD, CBN, CGB, THCV, etc., seem to help us not want to die by suicide, when they’re allowed to work normally.
Here’s the logic of their marketing scheme:
cannabis –> munchies
so
block cannabis effects –> block munchies –> weight loss ($$$$$))
As an antagonist molecule, Rimonabont molecules bind to cell surface receptors like keys that can be inserted but will not turn or unlock, then get stuck for long periods, preventing working keys from access.
That was the reasoning or “good reasons” they used to produce their “diet drug.”
Cannabis provides us with cannabinoid agonist molecules (they act just like our body’s own, internal, endocannabinoids, namely anandamide.
Typically, our modern lifestyles seem to affect the concentration of endocannabinoids produced within us, and are often lacking. Supplementation with external cannabinoids from cannabis seems to be beneficial in cases where there may be endocannabinoid deficiencies.
Why are there federal agencies responsible for severely punishing people who supplement their cannabinoids to improve their conditions? One person tells another that they can’t do or act in certain ways, and the justification is a stone-walled schedule designation that is not appropriate at all (within a pseudo-scientific drug scheduling fraud) about no “accepted medical use” and other now famous lies that hold such importance that they can barely be challenged in our fair and just judicial system, no president would ever legalize it on executive order unless they want bad things to happen to themselves and their families.
Go states! Our states will end this nonsense. Thankfully
@Ted has said it:
a toke is EDAT = Endocannabinoid Deficiency Anemia Therapy!
For an essay on co-evolution of Cannabis and H. sapiens, check out Wikiversity: “Ethnobotany”.
Man’s best friend (other than your free hand):
Canis…….Hund…….dog—-(animal)
Cannabis….Hanf…….dagga–(veggie)
@mexweed
Fascinating stuff. Ethnobotany and the coevolution of plants, animals microbes and bacteria have always fascinated me. But the coevolution of the endocannabinoid system and cannabis cultivation is an epiphany in scientific perspective.
First, one must breach the barrier that our coevolution with cannabis transcends early hominids, before weed was weed or humans were humans, millions of years ago. What a concept: that the endocannabinoid system developed with humans. This could help explain higher consistencies of Chrone’s disease among Jewish people, who have a long documented history of cannabis cultivation, allowing members of society with Chrone’s disease to survive with treatment.
Evolution is humbling to comprehend. People are afraid to find out that not only are humans are animals, but even more afraid and arrogant to accept that we have symbiotic relationships with the life around and within us. For example, there are independent microorganisms of microbes and bacteria that live in our intestines given to us from breastfeeding from our mothers or even sucking the food off their fingers and kissing… Bacteria without which we would die.
Take this symbiosis a step further and examine the relationship of the cannabis plant and the endocannabinoid system in the human body. No other plant has such an intimate relationship with humans and the Cb1 and Cb2 regulation within our minds and bodies. To a very measurable degree, we can say that cannabis is beyond the addictive properties of withdrawal; cannabis is an exclusive coeovolved staple of a balanced human diet.
The next level of research into the coevolution of cannabis and humans would be linking the archeological evidence of smoking and cooking, such as finding clay, bone or wooden pipes next to pots, cauldrons and grinders. There may be a link between fire-building, cooking and smoking cannabis that allowed the modern human mind to diverge from early hominids and become human.
@Julian,
I hope links will be found as you mention but I am aware that humans were mainly in Africa until the last 100,000 or so and cannabis is said to be of southeast Asian origin. Plenty research needed.
My thought is the difference between cannabis and meds (“pills”) is that the pills are supposed do something to me, in contrast I do something WITH the cannabis. Or maybe I and my symbiotes cooperating together exercise energetic self-healing processes in response to “suggestions” (propaganda) from the cannabis. The chemical or structural devices that plant invents in order to achieve its renowned fiber-strength are, when ingested by us, converted into strategic organic procedures or processes we and/or our symbiotes enact which can help achieve triumph over some illness. It’s a learning and doing process, not something we passively let a “drug” (what a drag) do for us. (Cry your eyes out corporations with your poisons to punish the germs etc.)
Interesting socioethnic problem for us and our symbiotes: many persons are prejudiced against “germs” out of a desire to be of the Upper Class (immune to being bullied; lower class means “they have the drop on you” and you get bullied)– cohabiting with germs might mean something “dirty” the groan-ups have a right to punish you for.
To paraphrase the great Warren Harding (whose name appealed to newly enfranchised women because it sounded like Warm Hard Thing): “There is More Punishment in the United States of America than anyplace else on earth.” We are taught to consider ourselves happy because of our wealth and somehow forget the suffering we endure caused by all that punishment. Of course the vendetta against cannabis is led by the US (world-leading tobackgo-pusher nation) like most other punishment agendas worldwide of the last century.
@Mexweed,
Thanks for taking me back to Africa, the Himalayas, and the recent few hundred thousand years. Perhaps it doesn’t take “millions” of years to coevolve our endocannabinoid system with the cannabis plant… apparently there are plenty of terpenes and polyphenols in most plants that have been stimulating CB2 evolution in animals for even longer than I thought. We’re all taught in school how plants and animals are symbiotically intertwined in the respiratory/photosynthetic cycle. But cannabinoids are left out of the discussion, even though they fundamentally distinguished mammalian behaviors long before cannabis plants or modern human animals ever played, prayed, ate or created civilizations together. Many vegetables, as it turns out, can stimulate our CB1 and CB2 receptors. But no other plant can stimulate the mind and body quite like cannabis, or with so much variety and balance. Cannabis is literally food not just for the body, but for the mind and soul as well.
…
We know why NIH is lacking in productive cannabis research. Let’s face it; they’re paid to research the detriments to the world’s most beneficial plant. There are scientists locked up in labs in that building up Wisconsin Ave. just itching all around ground-breaking cannabinoid research because they can’t get their hands on a DEA permit to study cannabis, much less promote it as medicine. Here is a 3-year old NIH article that explains endocannabinoid evolutionary theory as a natural human process of development, then susbsequently rejects cannabis as “beneficial” until “further research” is completed!: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2931553/
“During mammalian evolution contacts with ‘direct’ CB2 receptor active plant metabolites like ?-caryophyllene or ‘indirect’ cannabinoid receptor agonists (FAAH and MAGL inhibitors) in diet may have led to hitherto unrecognized physiological effects. Although it is tempting to believe that these compounds exert beneficial effects in humans, clinical evidence is lacking. Future studies will have to determine whether there are additional apparently nontoxic CB2 receptor-selective ligands in plants other than Cannabis and whether they could in fact be exploited therapeutically.”
Does anyone realize how DEEP the bullshit has gotten up there at NIH? I mean, these poor bastards have figured out how to essentially map our entire cannabinoid system regulating a complex neurological network from the pituitary gland right out the bunghole… but admitting the benefits of cannabis “needs more research?” Look, we can all agree MORE RESEARCH NEEDS TO BE DONE until we all turn green and grow leaves, but I THINK WE’RE PASSED THE AUTHORIZATION POINT FOR MARIJUANA PRESCRIPTIONS NIH! And while I’m on a rant, the AMA says “cannabis is still DANGEROUS?” How do you look yourself in the mirror and call yourself DOCTORS? We don’t even have to read an article on cannabinoid evolution to know how vital marijuana has been to mammilian development; JUST PLANT SOME IN YOUR YARD!! EVEN THE DEER AND THE COONS KNOW THAT $#!+ IS GOOD!!!
…
Here is an interesting article from 11 years ago, stating how puffer fish were discovered to contain genes encoding CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors. http://www.biolbull.org/content/202/2/104.full That means cannabinoids have been evolving in vertebrates even before mammals branched off. It also means puffer fish have been modeled for cannabinoid system research, (and possibly some culinary research from some daring Japanese chefs… careful; their venomous).
It was on this day, in 1859 that Charles Darwin published his research on the Origin of Species. How can we presume to prescribe medicine in America today when we prohibit the one plant that contains all the secrets to the origins or mechanisms of the very systems that regulate medicine in our own bodies? Millenia of trial and error methods of treatment between plants and animals created the medicine cabinet of cannabinoids contained in cannabis today. And the beauty of it is that even the government’s patent on cannabinoids cannot lock the door on the medicine this plant provides; not even the laboratories of profit driven pharmaceuticals or their legions of corporate lobbyists; nor the DEA’s organized crime of “eradication, enforcement or interdiction.” They can only raise the price… and the dead. But the dead don’t vote. As a result, a wounded and sick animal in the forest has a better chance at healing itself eating bark, roots and leaves at random than an average American has of getting a cure from prescription pills from a local doctor today.
It’s hard not to get carried away with timelines of evolutionary theories between humans and cannabis coming from a state that still can’t get evolutionary fact published in Texan textbooks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/education/texas-education-board-flags-biology-textbook-over-evolution-concerns.html?hpw&rref=education&_r=0
(Texan boards of education and NIH publications aside:) 154 years after Darwin, there really does appear to be a greater need for further research between the evolution of the human endocannabinoid system and the cannabis plant itself than perhaps any of us can imagine. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis “Continuing Research.”)
Paraphrased, the study states:
“Karl W. Hillig, a graduate student in the laboratory of long-time Cannabis researcher Paul G. Mahlberg[55] at Indiana University, conducted a systematic investigation of genetic, morphological, and chemotaxonomic variation among 157 Cannabis accessions of known geographic origin, including fiber, drug, and feral populations. In 2004,(they) said “assigned fiber/seed landraces and feral populations from Europe, central Asia, and Asia Minor to C. sativa. Narrow-leaflet and wide-leaflet drug accessions, southern and eastern Asian hemp accessions, and feral Himalayan populations were assigned to C. indica. He also concluded there is little support to treat C. ruderalis as a separate species from C. sativa at this time, but more research on wild and weedy populations is needed because they were underrepresented in their collection.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_ruderalis
“Cannabis ruderalis [pretty much a variety of hemp]is a species of Cannabis originating in central Russia. It flowers earlier than C. indica or C. sativa, does not grow as tall, and can withstand much harsher climates than either of them.”
“Origin and range:
This section does not cite any references or sources. ”
Wikipedia goes on to say that c. ruderalis grows wild throughout the midwestern U.S. due to recent introduction,(mainly English colonial development and the more recent Hemp for Victory campaign of WWII) eventually going wild again and losing some of its original cultivated traits. In other words, there’s tons of wild hemp out there to study, and the jury is out to say whether it only originates from the northern Himalayas. One thing is for sure; feral American hemp has crossbred and could provide the world with a sustainable source of renewable biofuel.
What we’re dealing with here, aside from a great need to continue research, is a discovery that there is a vast amount of interbreeding going on here, at least more than previously discovered. About as far and wide as humans traveled, so did cannabis seeds.
These studies more or less coincide with recent discoveries of human evolution such as the fact that many of us with European ancestory contain between %1 and 2.5% neandertal DNA, which was previously believed to be an extinct species of hominid that lived in Europe up to 10,000 years ago during the last ice age. What does that say about cannabis? How many other extinct species “came back” from inside the genome? We’ve written the human and cannabis genomes entirely. Have we not been reading them correctly?
There’s potentially a whole pharmacopeia of medicine inside cannabis, bordering on panacea, all depending on matching the right balance of cannabinoids to the right human illness. (i.e. higher CBDs for seizures, higher THC for certain depressions, but a variety over all of active compounds). So much so, we are in a strain-race to see who can develop the best cannabis medicines for every illness. Better a strain race than a drug war, I always say.
…
The ethnobotany of cannabis may even cure human ethnocentrism. Just like the cannabis family, if you take it back far enough, we all have the same mother. And we all apparently “intermarried” much more often throughout history than we previously believed. Much like the dispute over speciation between cannabis sativa and cannabis ruderalis, American Indians are often disappointed that they’re categorized as “Asian,” by DNA tests, because taxonomy won’t trace the genetics that differentiate modern Asians from American Indians. What we end up with then is ethnocentric categorizations based on grant money and publishing titles, not factual science. While our Texan textbooks were telling us that Indians came from the landbridge across the Bering Strait around the time Neantertals lived in Europe 10,000 years ago, carbon dating was telling us that the mountain city of Machu-Pichu in Peru was built more than 15,000 years ago, before the landbridge was even formed during the last ice age.
I suspect we’ll discover the same epiphanies about the origins of cannabis as competitors battle over textbook publications, cannabis strain popularities, ethanol vs. food zoning and research grants. Racism is economic. So is Strainism.
Two recent books I’ll recommend on the subject of the ongoing research of endocanabinoid system evolution are “Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany” by Rob Clarke and Mark Merlin, and “1493,” by Charles Mann. The first I’m recommending only based on reviews. I’d love to read it but with a $95 price tag from the University of California Press, I’ll just be reading the reviews until Christmas.
“1493” doesn’t even get into cannabis, but it unwinds a valuable model and entertaining tale of where other cultivated foods came from before and after the Columbian exchange and how they shaped civilizations. By describing how potatoes made it from Peru to Ireland or Corn from the Amazon to central Mexico to Africa, or how sweet potatoes ended the last dynasty in China, Mann creates a silouhette for marijuana ethnobotanists to fill in; not only an evolutionary history of the endocannabinoid system, but perhaps an epic exocannabinoid legend that links our very being to human health and civilization; all the history and wisdom of our own existence just waiting to be discovered and written.
Thanks for mentioning “Hemp for Victory”, which I’ve seen, how inspiring to see plants three inches apart growing three meters tall, what other plant species can match that biomass production per groundspace?
1. Wildfire Prevention Brigade: employ students, teachers, interns, volunteers, ex-offenders, refugees from Syria and Somalia etc., to hack, clip, pick deadwood from drought-stricken areas all over western USA and Australia, Brazil, Chile (Wildfire Prevention Brigade, with every 6 months Hemigration for workers)…
2. Truck workable logs, poles to town for carpentry, manufacturing at Creative Reuse lumberyards, in place of marketing live-cut lumber, to prevent “commercial” deforestation;
3. Gullywood/Bushwater program: haul dust, litter, chips, shreds, bundled brush to millions of miles of dry streambeds, gullies, ravines and lay down a long biomass mound– finest particles deepest, weedstalk bundles on top, to retard stormwater runoff building up regional evaporation and rainfall in uplands;
4. Seed MASSIVELY with fast-rooting hemp, to grip material and prevent erosion;
5. After a crop year or two of depositing rich hemp litter as topsoil for young trees, seed the bio-mounds with fast-growing invasive perennials like Ailanthus, Eucalyptus, cottonwood, willow;
6. After a decade or two of drought-resistance buildup and seed export/dispersal by birds, etc., seed area with noble hardwoods and pines you want your children to live among.
“After a crop year or two of depositing rich hemp litter as topsoil for young trees, seed the bio-mounds with fast-growing invasive perennials like Ailanthus, Eucalyptus, cottonwood, willow”
Hmm… No thank-you! People could be employed to kill Ailanthus… Much better idea.
@Dave,
Question is: where do you want your ailanthus, maybe out in the droughtlands helping create bushy green fingers of reforestation? Consider the alternative (desert)?
I’ve lived in cities for decades and seen thousands of big, reasonably shady, municipally valuable ailanthus individuals (“The Tree that Grew on Maxwell Street”)– google “Treeconomics”.
Concerning ailanthus weedgrowth where unwanted– clip the shoots, make a walkstick (if strong enough, they are hollow) or a croquet mallet handle. Have you ever used an anvil pruner or a ratchet pruner? Don’t wait to employ anyone, volunteer, gather the sticks, do the woodworking! (Cannabis is the nutrient that inspires “Handbiz”.)