Bill Downing is a MassCann/NORML Board Member and is filling in for Mike Cann this week.
Which is it?
The medical profession has mandates. One is that they “do no harm.” This mandate has been violated with horrific results for nearly a century by America’s medical leadership, educational institutions, and the vast majority of American doctors.
What could be so powerful a force that it could keep medicine from doing its duty?
The fact is, countless studies have shown that
the safest therapeutic substance we know of is cannabis.
For any practitioner of the medical arts, the most important thing is being curious, especially about the safest therapeutic substance known to man. Therefore, one can assume that anyone involved in treating illness or injury should have at least some degree of curiosity regarding the applications of cannabis.
But such an assumption would lead one to being dead wrong. The Massachusetts Medical Society, by popular vote, opposed allowing “medical marijuana” to be used by doctors as therapy for patients. This happened despite years of editorial support for medicinal cannabis from the New England Journal of Medicine, and despite support within our own Commonwealth from the world’s most widely published authority on the medicinal use of cannabis, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, retired Harvard Medical School of Psychiatry professor.
Dr. Grinspoon best exemplifies the one against hundreds in opposition. There are a very few medical professionals possessing what one might consider a normal degree of intellectual curiosity, or perhaps a sufficient degree of professional responsibility. Such curiosity or professional responsibility should have inspired every medical student at some point to investigate the safest therapeutic substance. Unless they were dumb as a rock.
Another possible explanation is that the entire medical community is involved in a comprehensive, airtight conspiracy. What could possibly be the motivating force behind it?
As Deep Throat famously said, “Follow the money.” Which big money folks have the most to lose by allowing medicinal cannabis? The pharma-industrial complex! Cannabis is like poison to the pharmaceutical business.
Cannabis can be grown for the cost of sunshine, rain, and dirt.
In other words, cannabis is free medicine. That is a horrifying prospect for the pharmaceutical business.
Is there any reasonable question as to whether doctors are under the influence of pharmaceutical companies? No, there is not. We all know doctors receive many direct and indirect benefits from the prescription of certain drugs.
So, to the vast majority of doctors and medical pros who know nothing about (and therefore react with fear toward) the medicinal application of cannabis: which is it? Are you unaware of the properties of the safest therapeutic substance or are you aware of it but acting stupid so you can be a good pharma-industry soldier?