Cannabis, the Science and the Politics

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Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cannabis_ruderalis_%28wild_marijuana,_habitus%29.jpg

Although cannabis is presently an IILEGAL substance in India, around much of Nainital district as well as adjoining districts of Tehri Garwhal and  Almora, wild cannabis of a good variety grows freely as a wild herb. For millenniums the herb was used by local persons and herbalists for many purposes from medicinal to meditation and from recreational to a relaxant. Then somewhere far away in USA in 1930’s it was made illegal. It is said although not proven that it was because of commercial interests of Du Pont that had come up with new fiber nylon and that another produced from hemp a taller variety of the plant was a competition. 

In the ensuing years, other far more powerful commercial interests from the legal and illegal drug industries appear to have developed to keep it illegal. So powerful were these interests that it seems even research was made near impossible in this herb and it was classified in USA as a herb with no known medicinal use with new research more or less prohibited to know if there was any. Simultaneously it seems USA has pressurized much of the world in making it illegal and it was made illegal in India and classified with far more dangerous substances in 1985. Needless to say this illegality has on the one hand held back the benefits from many suffering persons, on the one hand, made them consume dangerous ineffective chemical medicines and also spawned much crime and deaths around the world.

However truth can not be suppressed forever. Now new medical research is exposing the medicinal benefits of Cannabis.  America’s top medical organization recently released a major series of papers on medical cannabis last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "use of marijuana for chronic pain, neuropathic pain, and spasticity due to multiple sclerosis is supported by high-quality evidence."  You can read more about this research at,
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/its-official-marijuana-is-medicine/Content?oid=4381482
Cannabis, the Science and the Politics

Just to quote a sentence from this link,
"It's a national embarrassment. The federal designation that cannabis has no medical value is like saying the moon is made of green cheese," Lee said

Jai Ma Nanda, Jai Ma Sunanda, Jai Bhole Nath ki

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