Cannabis is a medicine

Interesting review these days at Science News on the status of cannabis as actual medicine, not just to alleviate symptoms, which is in itself a medical use, but also to cure a range of illnesses from post-traumatic disorder to even cancer.

Take a look.

Also interesting some of the comments. For example, Will protests that the interest of pharmaceutical companies are hindering legalizing the plant because they would rather make profit from its components, which they have patented.

Of interest as well is the alternatives mentioned to the usual smoking. Eating pills is probably a poor alternative because one cannot control the unavoidable high, but sprays, essential oils and even relays to heat the plant without burning it, delivering similar amounts of its essences, are mentioned.

Additional resources: Erowid.

Cannabis highly effective against muliple sclerosis symptoms

The combined effect of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabibidiol (CBD) is very effective against the obnoxious symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), while the side effect ("high") is low when compared with those of other costly and pretty much ineffective alternative treatments. Five out of six patients (more than 80%) report reduction in spasticity and improved mobility.

The use of cannabis as medicine has deep roots and is again being confirmed by modern science.

Shaheen E. Lakhan and Mary Rowland, Whole plant cannabis extracts in the treatment of spasticity in multiple sclerosis: a systematic review. BMC Neurology, 2009.

News article at Science Daily too.

UK: Brown gets rid of honest drug advisor

The last highly questionable move by the erratic and rather arrogant British PM, John Brown, has been to re-classify cannabis from class A drug to class B, so the police can more easily persecute users and small traders.

This is of course a highly controversial move and his chief advisor on drugs was clearly against. Prof. D. Nutt actually even dared to criticize his boss, declaring openly that the psychotic risk derived from cannabis was virtually inexistent (same as I commented here) and questioning that alcohol and tobacco are treated separately from illegal drugs (both drugs are highly addictive and dangerous).

Well, he got fired right away.

For Prof. Nutt, this is "disappointing". And he warns of increasing conflict between politics and science. He argues that he was not prepared to mislead the public on behalf of the government.

And it seems that's what governments and corporations want scientists for these days: to lie in their behalf.

While the conservatives support the government, the liberal-democrats do not. "What is the point of having independent scientific advice if as soon as you get some advice that you don't like, you sack the person who has given it to you?" C. Huhne declared.

Meanwhile cannabis users in Britain will see their scarce rights even more restricted, risking as much as five years in prison for mere possession.

Source: BBC.

Update (Nov. 5): there is an interesting short article by David Nutt on the issue today at New Scientist: Governments should get real on drugs.
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Cannabis highly unlikely to cause schizophrenia

A new research paper by Matt Hickman and other researchers from several English universities, highlights that, if cannabis use could trigger schizophrenia, in order to prevent a single such case, ten thousand male cannabis users and thirty thousand female ones would be needed to be taken out of the consumption routine. The figures are half that for the stronger transgenic varieties of cannabis, every day more common, but still totally disproportionate and statistically irrelevant.

Matt Hickman et al., If cannabis caused schizophrenia—how many cannabis users may need to be prevented in order to prevent one case of schizophrenia? England and Wales calculations. Journal for the Study of Addiction, 2009. (paywall)

A divulgative article can be found at Science Daily.

Cannabis consumption may hence very very slightly favor the trigger of such mental problems but it is obviously not any major cause but rather a scapegoat. In my opinion, research should focus on anti-natural birth giving practices instead, which are very likely to cause traumas for all life and may hinder normal development, as well as on exposure to industrial toxins and electromagnetic fields.

Also these kind of studies do not seem to consider the cross influence of other drugs, like LSD,, MDMA, cocaine or alcohol, which also seem to have some psychosis dangers, probably more intense.
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In Archaonews

You may already know of Archaeonews, the archaeological news section of Stone Pages (one of my favorite sites around the net that deals primarily with Megalithism), section that is mirrored at Archaeoforums. Usually I pick up one or two news as they arrive but, as I have been rather inactive and uninterested in everything intellectual for the last months, many have piled up - and many are very interesting actually. In this post I will try to ammend my laziness of late times, listing all those I would have surely mentioned anyway:


Huge fortress revealed in Wales. The Gaer Fawr fortress has been described as "the Milennium Stadium of the Iron Age" because of its unsual dimensions. A masive piece of egineering, with five terraces cut in the hillside. Being the area a dense forest its dimensions were not really understood until now. The apogee of the site is from 900-800 BCE (Late Bronze Age) but it was in use until Roman times. (forum links 1, 2)


Oldest European cremation burials found in Neolithic Istanbul. They are also the oldest of that kind in Anatolia. The urn necropolis has been found as the subway is being laid in the Turkish city, in the district of Marmaray and date to some 8000 years ago, long before other peoples ever adopted cermation anywhere in Europe. (forum link)


Neanderthals did not hurl weapons, Sapiens did. H. sapiens right humerus from c. 28,000 BP (Gravettian culture) are clearly rotated in a way that can only derive from frequent missile throwing since childhood. No Neanderthal remains show this feature, what means that they probably fought in close combat most of the time, be it against hunting prey or other peoples. While the authors suggest that projectile weapons may have dated from 100,000 BP in Africa, the evidence gathered in their study appears inconclusive for the supposed Sapiens military/hunting advantage over Neanderthals they claim, because Neanderthals had already lost most of their territory by that time. Now, I imagine that they could not study earlier remains because of the scarcity of them (Gravettian Cromagnons left many human remains in comparison with other older or more recent cultures), so maybe the hypothesis stands after all. (forum link)


Oldest marihuana stash found in Uyghuristan. The finding of 780 grams, still keeping their green color and psychoactive properties (but not the characteristic smell), belongs to the Gushi culture (Tocharians) and is dated to c. 700 BCE. It was found alongside a mummy of what is believed to be a Tocharian shaman. The article describes him as "fair-haired and blue-eyed" but while I can accept that hair preserves well in such exceptional conditions, I really suspect that the journalist was letting his/her imagination fly when describing the eyes, a most perishable part of the body. Otherwise the eyes would be the news, not the cannabis. (forum link)


Dugout oak canoe found in Black Sea. It is not dated but must be from long ago. The unusual lack of oxygen and aboundance of hydrogen disulfide at the deep layers of the Black Sea have allowed it to arrive to us in excellent condition. It was found by local fishermen off the Bulgarian coast. (forum link)


New Gravettian art set found in Russia. The portable artwork found at Zaryak (some 160 km SE of Moscow), carved on mammoth bone, is being compared to that of Kostienki and Avdeevo, and is dated to c. 22-21,000 years ago. It includes engravings of mammoths and diagonal cross patterns, as well as two "venus" statuettes (ritually placed in pits surrounded by colored sand), the style resembles very much that of Avdeevo, further south. (forum link)

Britain set to fill its jails with marihuana smokers

The reclassification of cannabis as "B-type drug" in the insular kingdom means that posession can mean up to five years in prision. Meanwhile in neighboring Netherlands or Spain posession, and even growing for personal use, is at least formally legal (though, quite contradictorily, trade is not or, in the case of the Netherlands, limited to taverns with a special license).

I wonder if they have even thought in what that means for the penal administration as potentially maybe a fourth of the island's youngsters are elegible for such harsh penalties at some moment.

This reclassification is made on exclussively political grounds, as the scientific advisory council advised against it a few days ago.

More information on hemp at Erowid.