by Larry Busch
How does the image of a six-year-old kid smoking kid pot, with his parents happily looking on, sit with you? Or is the issue really only a wedge in the door for legalizing pot for everyone? It appears many medical marijuana smokers simply enjoy the “cool factor” of having an excuse to smoke pot with impunity.
With all the legal discussions and political posturing around the medical marijuana debate, why hasn’t Health Canada, the CACP, MADD and like-minded agencies recommended that the government research the benefits of “Charlotte’s Web” over traditional hallucinogenic marijuana?
Charlotte’s Web, formerly “Hippie’s Disappointment,” is a strain of sativa marijuana that possesses all of the high-potency medical cannabidiol (CBD) benefits and absolutely none of the psychoactive effects of THC. It’s named after a young Colorado girl who suffered more than 300 grand mal seizures a week.
Ingested, not smoked, it yielded spectacular results for Charlotte, who’s now seven years old and thriving. Her seizures only happen two to three times per month now, almost solely in her sleep. Not only is she walking, she can now ride her bicycle, feed herself and is talking more and more each day.
Any drug manufacturer would be ecstatic if they could remove all side effects of hallucinations, links to schizophrenia, low testosterone and sperm count, mental impairment, changes in brain density etc. from a drug they were trying to get approved by the government.
If Charlotte’s Web was accepted as the only strain of medical marijuana available, the requests for prescriptions would plummet. Road-side testing kits to detect THC would be simple and effective; medical marijuana grow operations would not require high security and incidents of “sky high driving” would decrease sharply.
Ignoring the obvious seems to be a government trait. I’m expecting its legal types will one day recognize that somewhere down the line, some medical (THC) pot smoker will end up suing them. This will be because it knew, or ought to have known, that Charlotte’s Web is a safer product yet it failed to protect users from the harm they cause themselves. It’s the same as smokers suing cigarette manufacturers in more recent times.
There will also be the conspiracy theorist, who says the government intentionally let the pot smokers use (THC) “medical” marijuana as a means to wipe them out. That’s always fun!
I’ll let scientific researchers argue that ingested marijuana is safer and medically more potent than smoked. There is no way smokers can cook up evidence that only smoked marijuana works, but they will most certainly try.
The government may also come under fire for not protecting the many “licensed” companies spending millions of dollars growing THC medical marijuana who will go bankrupt because it didn’t do enough research before giving them licenses. This despite the fact that any half-crazed, half witted, nincompoop can put a seed in the ground and grow their own.
Then there is the entertainment value of just throwing it out there and watching them fight about it in news reports and talk shows.
BIO
Larry Busch served with the RCMP for 35 years and is now a Toronto area security consultant. Contact: lbusch@strategicsecurity.ca or 905 904-0528.
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