The TGA show their cards and as expected medicinal cannabis is still considered dangerous

Ok, so the TGA have finally shown their cards and as expected, cannabis will be highly regulated for pharmaceutical companies to maintain an oligopoly. This will also allow the government to scrape a few tax crumbs. I don't expect the pharmaceutical companies will be too generous in this regard.
Morally this is wrong in my opinion considering the scientific based research provided by neuropsychopharmacologist Prof David Nutt..See credentials on wikipedia;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt
Prefessor Nutt's study can be viewed here: Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse

below is professor Nutt's table assessment

professor Nutt's table assessment

As can be seen from the assessment, cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
This has not taken into account that;
1) cannabis is more often than not mixed with tobacco, particularly in the UK and Australia.
2) Cannabis does not need to be smoked, the safer option being either vaporising, (no carcinogens produced) or ingesting extracted oils, again avoiding the production of carcinogens through the process of burning plant matter.
3) The governments worldwide have provided zero education on safer cannabis use, generally just propaganda.

simplified assessment below

simplified assessment

 

references:

http://drugscience.org.uk/


Dr. Orrin Devinsky explains how cannabis works on epilepsy

Dr. Orrin Devinsky cannabis

Dr. Orrin Devinsky from the NYU Epilepsy Center and co-founder/editor emeritus of epilepsy.com talks about the medicinal use of marijuana or cannabis in treating epilepsy and seizures. He discusses what is known – and not known – about the biology of the compounds in cannabis and how they work in the brain. Learn more at http://www.epilepsy.com

It’s been about 3 months since I’ve started smoking regularly and I don’t have thoughts of suicide anymore (reddit)

 

Marijuana helped to save my sanity, save my marriage and, most importantly, save my life. (reposted from reddit

I’m gonna start this by saying this is going to be a long read. I’m currently at about a [6] and I have tears in my eyes as I write this because everything that I almost lost because I had a problem that I refused to address. I was an incredibly shitty person and words will never be able to express how sorry I am.

I have pretty bad anger issues. Not violent. Just pissed off. I get set off pretty easily and couple that with that fact that I have a job that I completely hate doing but have been stuck at due to the lack of any additional skills. That’s not to say that it’s not a good job. The pay is good and I like my coworkers. I just don’t like the actual job that I do. I just end every day feeling… unfulfilled. I’ve been doing the same job for ten years.

Because of the fact that I was so miserable in my professional life I ended up bringing that anger home and taking it out on my wife. Like I said, never violently, but that still makes me a pretty shitty person. I acknowledge that. We fought constantly. Over anything. Over nothing. We just stopped getting along anymore. A little over a year and a half ago, our marriage had reached it’s breaking point. The passion had left, we barely spoke to one another and we didn’t even sleep in the same bed anymore. I had never felt so alone. It was my fault really, I drove her away. I was an angry miserable prick all the time. Who would want to be around me? But I refused to even consider that it was my fault at the time.

Because I felt alone and because my wife seemed to no longer care about me I sought out affection outside of my marriage. Again, not saying it was the right thing to do, just saying how I justified it to myself at the time. I found someone else. Someone who made me feel special for the first time in a long time. I was in… love. Yeah, or so I thought. I told my wife I wanted a divorce and within a few months new girl had moved in. Things between my soon to be ex-wife got… Incredibly tense. The divorce was NOT going smoothly in anyway. Horrible fighting. It was bad. The whole time new girl had been whispering little nothings into my ear making me turn even uglier against my soon to be ex. I didn’t realize at the time what a callous, jealous and petty person new girl was. Because of new girl, any and all relationship between myself and my ex, the mother of my child, had been torched to the ground. 17 years of friendship. 3 years of marriage. Just… Torched because I couldn’t acknowledge that I had a problem controlling my anger and new girl fed that anger and pointed it at my ex. New girl was and is a horrible human being and I only wish I had been able to see it at the time. I should have, there were so many red flags but I refused to see them because someone was finally paying attention to me. Eventually new girl’s jealousy was what made my new relationship end. Wife and I were still fighting when new girl and I split but that was the turning point when things started getting better. I was with new girl for roughly nine months.

Throughout this whole time I only smoked here and there because I thought it was something fun to do. Not because I thought it might help me in any way.

Eventually I started dating a new girl, but the relationship between my almost-ex-wife (divorce process took a long time) really started to mend. We could actually talk to each other civilly. We weren’t fighting anymore. We were becoming… friends again. It was nice. We were both around to do things together with our son. New girl 2 was completely understanding. She wanted my son to still be able to do things with both of his parents and that is such an admirable quality to have in a partner.

It was during the time while I was dating new girl 2 that I started smoking regularly. Slowly at first, once or twice a week, a little more, a little more and eventually every day. Now, I smoke every single day but the vast majority of the time I don’t even get high. That’s not to say I don’t get fucked up occasionally, but most of the time I toke only enough to take the edge off so that it helps ease my madness. It was with that madness eased that I finally felt like I could see clearly for the first time in a long time. I could finally see how unhappy I was in life. I could finally see that I needed to make a change in my life. Everyday up to these breakthroughs I would leave work, come home and wonder if today was the day that I was gonna eat a bullet. It was that bad. It’s been about 3 months since I’ve started smoking regularly and I don’t have thoughts of suicide anymore.

Anyway, the more that my still-not-quite-ex came around the more and more I started to realize that I still had feelings for her. She knew I smoked and I invited her to come and smoke with me one day. When we were together and we were both high things were fucking electric. There was instant heat, instant passion, instant emotion. Nothing happened between us that night but you could just kinda feel how it was. If that makes sense. Eventually, I broke it off with new girl 2 because I was still in love with my wife.

She and I have been back together for a couple of weeks now and while we still have a LOT of things to work out between us, she has acknowledged how much of a completely different person I am these days. I don’t get upset, I don’t yell and I don’t hate everything.

It made me realize that my job was going to kill me. I’m still doing that same job but not for much longer. I reached out to my parents for help, not something that was easy for me to do because I’ve been on my own and independent since I was 17 (I’m 30 now), and they agreed to help try and support me so that I can go back to school full time so that I can pursue a career that won’t make me want to kill myself. I never would have been able to swallow my pride and ask my parents for help if I wasn’t able to reflect in my life and realize that a change needed to be made.

It’s changed my life. I’m happier than I’ve been in years. I’m happier with my wife than I ever was before we had our falling out. It has allowed me to open up. To be able to feel feelings. (Shit, I never mentioned I’m not really good at expressing my feelings usually.) It’s really opened up a channel of communication between my wife and I like we have never had before in our relationship. It has been truly amazing.

All of the good that it has done for me in my life. All of this help from a little plant. It’s done me so much good and yet it’s still illegal. It’s madness people.

reference: https://patients4medicalmarijuana.wordpress.com/2016/04/03/its-been-about-3-months-since-ive-started-smoking-regularly-and-i-dont-have-thoughts-of-suicide-anymore-reddit/

Study Finds Medical Cannabis Legalization Doesn’t Increase Youth Usage Rates

Study Finds Medical Cannabis Legalization Doesn’t Increase Youth Usage Rates

In states that have legalized medical cannabis, there has not been an increase in cannabis use among those aged 12 to 17, according to a study published in The International Journal on Drug Policy. The study flies contrary to prohibitionist beliefs that loosened cannabis laws, even for medical use, will lead to increase usage rates among children....

 

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