The mainstream media deflects attention from where power resides: corporations, not with the leaders of the free world. The arguments posed by Chris Hedges, that the U.S. is neither a democracy nor a republic but a totalitarian state that can now assassinate its citizens at will, are pertinent ones. Scary ones. Especially as consecutive governments seem equally as impotent to invoke any real change for the States. If the media won’t stand up to the marionettes who pull the strings of the conglomerates causing deep, indelible polarisation in the world abound; then so we must act. Together.
Listen to the full interview in our weekly Newsvoice Think podcast.
We were delighted to have Chris Hedges on an episode of the Newsvoice Think podcast as we seek to broadcast perspectives from all sides of the political spectrum. Right, left, red, blue and purple.
In our interview with Chris, we discussed a range of topics facing the U.S. today as the Trump administration looks back at a year in power, and forward to the November ’18 midterms where Democrats will be looking to make gains. Chris was scathing of that party describing them as a “creature of Wall Street, which is choreographed and ceased to be a proper party a long time ago.”
As a columnist with Truthdig, and a big advocate of independent media. Chris Hedges was the perfect interviewee for us to draw on the benefits of crowd-sourced journalism and the challenges facing sites at the mercy of Facebook, Google and Twitter algorithms.
Chris’s ire against the corporate interest of Facebook et al didn’t let up saying dissident voices were being shut down and that corporate oligarchs were only too happy to let them. The neutralisation of the media platforms that seek to provide independent opinion on U.S. current affairs is in full pelt.
North Korea was the hot topic in 2017. Commentators said it was like a return to the days of the Cold War. But Hedges pointed that we need to remember what happened during the Korean War — how the North was flattened by U.S. bombs — and that as a result they, as a nation, suffer from an almost psychosis as a result. Trump, he said, is an imbecile and only deals in bombast, threats and rhetoric.
Not surprisingly, Trump got it hard from Hedges. Describing his administration as a “kleptocracy” who will seek to attack immigrants and up the xenophobia stakes as it distracts and covers for the unadulterated theft of U.S. natural resources.
As young people look to estimable journalists, activists and politicians in the States to help give them a voice, Hedges sees the democratic system as utterly futile. Encouraging mass civil disobedience instead, the ex-NY Times foreign correspondent states that railroads should be blocked and shutting down corporate buildings, for example, is the only way forward.
The perennial argument between Republicans and Democrats is just that; is the U.S. a Republic or a Democracy? Hedges thinks neither. He told Newsvoice that the States is an inverted totalitarian country where the government regards the public as “irrelevant”.
Unlike Ben Wizner from the ACLU who sees hope in delaying Net Neutrality, at least until a new administration is in power, Chris feels it is hopeless — that it is a dead duck, and as Net Neutrality slows down independent media platforms, the public will be at the behest of corporate social media sites such as Facebook who’ll increasingly deem what you do and don’t read or see.
You can read more of Chris’ work at Truthdig where he has a weekly column every Monday.
We don’t trust nutrition studies funded by soda companies. Why would we trust alcohol studies funded by the booze industry?
kokouu via Getty Images If you’ve ever seen headlines about how red wine is good for your heart, or how moderate alcohol use is linked to longer life, you’ve seen the alcohol industry’s influence on health science at work.
Officials at the government agency tasked with studying the health effects of alcohol aggressively courted alcohol executives to fund a $100 million clinical trial on “moderate drinking,” according to recently published investigations by The New York Times, Wired and Stat.
The executives complied, according to the Times, with the understanding that this research would probably conclude alcohol is safe and lowers the risk of disease.
Together, these reports paint a disturbing picture about the way alcohol companies are trying to influence scientific understanding, and thus public perception, of alcohol as a health tonic.
If you’ve ever seen headlines about how red wine is good for your heart, or how moderate alcohol use is linked to longer life, you’ve seen the alcohol industry’s influence on health science at work. And Americans seem to be swallowing that message. A 2015 Gallup poll found that 1 in 5 Americans believe “moderate” drinking is good for health, and that this was especially true among those who drink alcohol.
This belief is a boon for the alcohol industry for at least two reasons: It links alcohol consumption to a healthy lifestyle that can improve heart health, and it relies on the concept of “moderation,” a squishy term that in practice ends up meaning whatever drinkers want it to mean.
Alcohol executives were allowed to help pick the scientists and preview the trial’s design, reports the Times, while Wired reported on how dependent the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) is on industry funding to complete the expensive, long-term study. Finally, Stat has a story about how scientists who published unflattering research about the alcohol industry were verbally abused by NIAAA officials and cut off from funding.
It’s kind of the whole reason we have an independent science sector ― to wall it off from conflicts of interest like this. David Jernigan, Boston University School of Public Health.
Even though the scientists involved in these studies, all from prestigious universities, may insist that they have independence in their work, studies show that research funded by the food industry is four to eight times more likely to conclude something that financially benefits the sponsor. Industry-funded research also tends to suppress negative data. When pharmaceutical companies fund studies, the findings are less likely to be published than research funded by other sources.
“The obvious conflict of interest is that the funder of this research stands to benefit when the research comes out with findings that encourage more people to use its products,” said David Jernigan, a professor at the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at the Boston University School of Public Health. “It’s kind of the whole reason we have an independent science sector ― to wall it off from conflicts of interest like this.”
Why food and drink companies love the word ‘moderation’
Research on the concept of “moderation” reveals that the more a person likes a food or drink, the bigger their definition of what a “moderate” serving is. And food and beverage companies may be using that to their advantage, said Michelle vanDellen, an expert in self-control and eating behaviors at the University of Georgia.
“I don’t know if food and beverage companies have done research on moderation,” she said. “I have, and I know that moderation messages are poorly defined, they increase the scope of what is considered healthy and they lead to increased intended consumption.”
When it comes to alcohol, at least, there is a seemingly objective unit of measurement for moderation: up to one drink a day for women, and up to two drinks a day for men, as defined by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. These amounts form the basis of claims that alcohol may have a positive effect on health.
But careful analyses have debunked the association between moderate alcohol consumption and health by taking the “abstainer bias” into account. People who currently abstain from alcohol include those who have never consumed it and former drinkers. But many former drinkers have quit alcohol for health reasons, so the “abstainer” group is already biased toward worse health overall than a group of people who are still moderate drinkers and haven’t had to quit because of their health.
Online checking accounts, popular with low-income customers, may now be off-limits to many who can’t afford new fees
Bank of America’s anti-consumer practices have been the subject of numerous protests in recent years. Thousands demonstrated against the bank’s foreclosures in 2011. (Photo: scad_lo/Flickr/cc)
Consumer advocates and banking customers are expressing outrage after an announcement by the Bank of America that it would begin charging fees to account-holders who maintain low balances.
The decision, announced Monday, comes a month after the Republican tax law gave the bank an expected $3.5 million tax break, and less than a week after it posted $2.4 billion profits in the last quarter of 2017.
Critics argued that such news should garner at least as much attention as the bank’s announcement last month that it would use some of the financial windfall to give its 145,000 employees a one-time bonus of $1,000 each—a relatively small portion of its tax savings.
Bank of America’s free online checking accounts—popular with low-income customers—will now be subject to $12 monthly fees unless the customer has a direct deposit of at least $250 per month or maintains a balance of at least $1,500.
Those impacted by the change will be the very people likely to overdraw their accounts due to their low wages, argue critics.
The fees could also drive customers away from banking altogether, adding to the 9.6 million Americans who don’t use a bank account—forcing many to rely on check-cashing services, which can end up costing them hundreds of dollars annually.
Nearly 49,000 people had signed a Change.org petition by Tuesday demanding that the bank reconsider its decision.
“Many low income families do not meet these requirements,” the creator of the petition wrote of the new fees. “There have been times where I’ve only had $10 to my name. That wouldn’t even cover the maintenance fee.”
A low-income account that charges only $4.95 per month will be available to customers, but those accounts come without paper checks, making them off-limits for people who use checks to pay bills and other necessities.
While tens of thousands have signed the petition, some customers announced they had had enough of the bank’s unfair practices and would be closing their accounts in protest of the new policy.
Weeks before the Republican-led Congress moved toward final passage of its corporate tax cut bill, major companies had already begun a surge of stock buybacks — confirming critics’ fears that the windfall of lower rates will be used for self-enrichment rather than job growth.
Home Depot led the buyback splurge, pocketing $15 billion. On an earnings call held earlier this month, the company’s CFO Carol Tomé quietly admitted the strategy, when asked about the impact of tax reform on the firm:
It really all depends on if it happens and when it happens and how we would spend it. Cash is fungible. Right now, we’re thinking it might not happen until 2019, so obviously we are using internally generated cash in 2018 to invest in the business and return capital to our shareholders. If it were to happen in 2019, we might use the tax — cash tax savings to invest in the business and then use — generated cash to back buy [sic] shares, it’s all fungible. The point is, we’re going to generate a lot, we may get some from tax reform and we will use it. We will invest back in the business, and we will return it our [sic] shareholders.
By “return it to our shareholders,” she is referring to a buyback, which drives up the price of a stock and can come with dividends as well. Typically, executives hold much of their wealth in company stock, and their compensation is tied to the performance of the shares.
Other corporations are expected to use the windfall to increase mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or invest in automation. “Industry executives have been eagerly anticipating tax reform in earnings calls, interviews and casual conversation all year. Multiple CEOs have projected major M&A activity will follow if any kind of corporate rate reduction is finalized, further accelerating the rapid pace of consolidation in the industry,” wrote one industry publication about how waste companies are anticipating tax reform.
But the House Republicans who wrote and passed the tax bill on Tuesday have ignored these warnings. In interviews with The Intercept, members suggested that stock buybacks, as well as M&A, will either be rare or not that harmful to the economy.
Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., didn’t believe in the buyback threat because some executives publicly pledged to increase jobs. “Most recently … the Delta CEO, and I don’t recall his name, he acknowledged that when the economy grows, it helps them and he doesn’t intend to buyback stock, he intends on making a better product,” she said. When we followed up on whether she anticipates any merger or stock buyback wave, she replied, “I don’t anticipate that happening.”
Near the end of 2014 Kim Kardashian set out to “break the internet.” She posed naked for pictures. This went great, getting 1% of entire internet activity on the day she did it. Now the worry is that such expressions of democracy will be gone when we lose net neutrality.
Net neutrality is a funny phrase. There certainly was net neutrality when leftist websites were blacklisted from Google. And when Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. Not to mention that all the content we receive come from six large companies who own just about all the media we consume. It is odd to see people who solely consume corporate outlets such as MSNBC bemoaning the loss of net neutrality.
What may be more troubling than the loss of a supposedly free internet is that so many of us were fooled already. Even in a neutral setting so many of us preferred to consume the very same websites that will now be able to pay for advantages on the internet.
The term “fake news” has never quite told the whole story. The idea that there is some sort of liberal conspiracy being peddled by all mainstream news outlets is silly. These people are only liberal to hide their corporate agenda from liberals, and I suppose everyone who hates liberals. Once you count the liberals and the liberal haters you don’t have many people left. Moreover, the news isn’t necessarily purely fake that often. When ABC suspended Brian Ross it was essentially for spreading fake news. What is a more effective strategy than outward lying is telling part of the truth. Or just spinning speculation without ever presenting evidence, Russia interference in the US elections being the blueprint. All bets are off for imperialism though I think. The New York Times and the Iraq war come to mind.
The mass distractions we receive on the internet are not necessarily fake, they are just nonsense. Selfies posture as resistance. Memes function as political commentary. Angry trolling is a conversation.
The US has always been pretty good about free speech, we just are dumb enough to believe what we hear. It is rather ironic that it is now Trump who is banning words like “fetus” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when he himself was supposed to represent the censored silent majority, suffering under the reign of political correctness. Trump may be an authoritarian but Obama was surely one also. Look at his treatment of whistle blowers or his mass surveillance programs.
The main point here is that net neutrality has a limited value if we are echoing our corporate masters anyways. It surely is a right we deserve, and abandoning such a principle is another step towards authoritarianism. So to this extent the loss of net neutrality may be more problematic for its implications than its effect on an already docile population.
It’s not like the internet is the first thing to exit neutrality. For a country that is so outraged about private ownership of the internet where do we stand on private land? Our schools are being privatized. So are our parks. Our land, our water and our air. Is the water at Standing Rock neutral? How about air pollution? Who owns the air when certain people are profiting of of the pollution of it? Are people themselves even neutral? Look at worker relations or domestic violence. The elections are bought. Small businesses can’t compete against large ones. In a country where 1% of the population has more wealth than the bottom 99% we are worried about the neutrality of the internet.
The loss of net neutrality will effect all these things but maybe we can take this time as a chance to spend less time on the internet and more time with each other. That is not only loving each other but also learning from each other, as news sources. If one were to only read the “neutral” news you would think that mass shootings were more common than good deeds, that everyone looked like Kim Kardashian, that Russians lurked behind every corner and that the rich only gave to charities. A world at least a degree removed from realness has always been represented on the internet.
The news on the internet is the story of six very rich people. The world is full of many more than that. The hope would be that the loss of net neutrality might open doors for us to rely on other ways to connect with people and understand our world. So far though the fear of losing net neutrality has been met with a response bred by the internet. One of instant outrage, lacking reflection. Click bait that does more to break the internet than defeat it. At this pace it’s loss will be forgotten by the next royal wedding, and we will go on consuming the truth about the world from the people who profit from its demise.
Given what “these companies have gotten away with,” concluded Naomi Klein, it is “no wonder they fear our power.”
Anti-war demonstrators rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations September 19, 2006 in New York City. (Photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images)
That governments deploy undercover law enforcement officers to infiltrate, gather information on, and subvert protest movements has long been common knowledge. Less well-known, however, is the extent to which some of the world’s most profitable businesses have hired private spies to keep tabs on political movements they perceive as a threat to their power and profits.
“The leaked documents suggest the use of secretive corporate security firms to gather intelligence about political campaigners has been widespread.” —Meiron Jones and Rob Evans, the Guardian
Hundreds of pages of newly leaked documents—reported on for the first time Tuesday by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)—provide an unprecedented glimpse into this mysterious world of “corporate spies,” who have been hired by major companies like the German carmaker Porsche, the U.S.-based manufacturing giant Caterpillar, and the Royal Bank of Scotland to monitor anti-war demonstrations, protests against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and environmental campaigns against the destruction of the planet.
“The leaked documents suggest the use of secretive corporate security firms to gather intelligence about political campaigners has been widespread,” report the Guardian‘s Rob Evans and Meirion Jones.
Despite this fact—and despite claims by police that corporate spies embedded in protest movements frequently outnumber undercover law enforcement officers—these private firms face “little or no regulation.”
And while these “security” companies have attempted to fashion themselves as run-of-the-mill service providers, they are in reality quite different.
“One key distinguishing factor is that corporate investigation firms are often staffed and run by former spies and veterans of special forces, even if they work alongside graduates, accountants and lawyers,” TBIJ notes. “Some of the companies even have private military arms.”
Speaking anonymously to the Guardian, a man who claims he personally infiltrated political groups for a corporate spy firm said that his work involved more than merely collecting information on protesters.
“He described how the spies surreptitiously fostered conflicts within a campaign to set activists against each other, in order to wear them down and make them lose their political motivation,” the Guardian reports.
One of the companies featured heavily in the cache of documents is the private security firm C2i International, which has deployed spies on behalf of Porsche and other major companies to infiltrate groups of environmentalists and anti-Iraq war campaigners.
According to the Guardian, “documents show that C2i claimed it had ‘real-time intelligence assets’ in a range of environmental campaigns including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, local green groups in Oxford and ‘all anti‐aviation groups.'”
In 2008, C2i also “pitched its services to Donald Trump’s property development firm, which was seeking to create a huge golf course and build a hotel and flats on ecologically sensitive land in Scotland.” C2i reportedly warned Trump that his company was “under threat from a consortium of environmental activists,” but it is unclear whether Trump took C2i up on its offer.
In one case exposed by the leaked documents, C2i—hired by Caterpillar—spied on the family of Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003 while protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes. The bulldozer was manufactured and sold to the Israeli military by Caterpillar.
As the Guardian reports, “Corrie’s family took legal action against Caterpillar, alleging that the firm was complicit in war crimes by exporting bulldozers to the Israelis knowing that they would be used to demolish Palestinian homes.”
Just days after U.S. judges dismissed the lawsuit, Corrie’s mother spoke to members of the campaign supporting the family’s legal action on a conference call. C2i appears to have listened in on the call and obtained the campaign’s notes pertaining to the conversation.
After learning that her conversation was infiltrated by private spies, Corrie’s mother Cindy told the Guardian that it is “really distasteful” that corporate operatives would lie about their identities to listen to a conversation she believed only consisted of supporters.
Reacting to the newly leaked trove of documents, author and environmentalist Naomi Klein—who has written extensively on the exploits of corporate contractors—argued that given the enormous human and environmental abuses global corporations have committed, it is not surprising that they would hire spies to monitor those who threaten to expose their criminality.
The targets included the grieving family of Rachel Corrie, the young student protester crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP
The cannabinoids in cannabis – cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – interact with your body by way of naturally-occurring cannabinoid receptors embedded in cell membranes throughout your body. In fact, scientists now believe the endocannabinoid system may represent the most widespread receptor system in your body.1
There are cannabinoid receptors in your brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, immune system and more, and both the therapeutic and psychoactive properties of marijuana occur when a cannabinoid activates a cannabinoid receptor. Your body actually makes its own cannabinoids, similar to those found in marijuana, albeit in much smaller quantities than you get from the plant.
The fact that your body is replete with cannabinoid receptors, key to so many biological functions, is why there’s such enormous medical potential for cannabis. More often than not, medicinal marijuana is made from plants bred to have high CBD and low THC content. While THC has psychoactive activity that can make you feel “stoned,” CBD has no psychoactive properties.
That doesn’t mean THC is medicinally useless, however. It too has been found to have a number of medicinal benefits, although it does need to be balanced with CBD to lessen its psychoactive effects. For example, recent animal research2 suggests THC has a beneficial influence on the aging brain.3,4 Rather than dulling or impairing cognition, THC appears to reverse the aging process and improve mental processes, raising the possibility it might be useful for the treatment of dementia.5
Drug Company Vies for CBD Monopoly
As reported by Motherboard, the drug industry is now pushing for legislation that would make CBD oil illegal – by turning it into a drug.6 The article discusses a South Dakota Senate bill, SB 95, which would exempt CBD from the definition of cannabis, thereby transferring it from a Schedule I controlled substance to a Schedule IV substance. This would allow CBD products to be sold, legally, in South Dakota, where medicinal marijuana is currently not allowed.
This past summer, lobbyists for GW Pharmaceuticals and its U.S. subsidiary, Greenwich BioSciences, fought for an amendment to the bill that would have limited CBD rescheduling to products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – in other words, they wanted only CBD drugs to be legally obtainable.
“Not surprisingly, GW Pharmaceuticals has just such a drug in the pipeline.Epidiolex, a ‘proprietary oral solution of pure plant-derived cannabidiol,’ has already been given to epileptic children in the U.S. as part of afederal investigative studydocumented recently in theNew England Journal of Medicine.” Motherboard writes. Epidiolex is currently under FDA review for approval.
“Since no other pharmaceutical company has a CBD drug anywhere close to market, and the wide range of CBD products already available in medical marijuana states lack FDA approval, if the bill had passed with that amendment intact, patients in South Dakota would have been subjected to a virtual CBD monopoly …
More ominously, The Great CBD Battle of South Dakota appears to be but the opening salvo in a nationwide war between GW Pharmaceuticals and traditional medical cannabis providers …
[U]nder the amendment, South Dakota would … ban myriad CBD products already available in many other states. Even though they cost far less than Epidiolex, and are potentially more effective for patients, since in addition to CBD those “full spectrum” cannabis extracts also contain small amounts of THC and other medicinal components of the plant.”
Study Confirms CBD Benefits for Drug-Resistant Seizures
The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study7 published in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2017 again confirmed what has long been known: that CBD offers relief for children with drug-resistant seizures, in this case patients diagnosed with Dravet syndrome, a “catastrophic early-onset encephalopathic epilepsy, with a high mortality rate.”
GW Pharmaceuticals funded the study and was responsible for the trial design. The company also supplied the CBD and placebo. The active treatment was an oral solution containing 100 milligrams (mg) of CBD per milliliter, given in addition to the child’s current antiseizure medication regimen. The placebo was identical to the treatment solution, but without CBD.
The dose was gradually increased over the course of 14 days, with a maximum dose of 20 mg per kilogram of body weight, taken twice a day. At the end of the treatment period, the CBD solution was tapered down over the course of 10 days, reducing the dosage by 10 percent each day. Following is a summary of the main findings:
Children taking CBD experienced a nearly 40 percent reduction in the frequency of convulsive seizures over the 14-week treatment period, from a median of 12.4 seizures per month to 5.9. In the placebo group, the median convulsive-seizure frequency decreased from 14.9 to 14.1
43 percent of patients in the CBD group experienced a 50 percent or greater reduction in convulsive-seizure frequency, compared to 27 percent in the placebo group
During the treatment period, three patients in the CBD group were completely free of seizures. No patients in the placebo group were free of seizures
When looking at all seizure types, the median frequency of seizures per month decreased from 24.0 to 13.7 in the CBD group (a reduction of 28.6 percent), compared to a decrease from 41.5 to 31.1 in the placebo group (a reduction of 9 percent)
37 of 60 caregivers (62 percent) said their child’s overall condition improved in the CBD group, compared to 20 of 58 caregivers (34 percent) in the placebo group
Reported Side Effects
Interestingly, while medical cannabis is typically well-tolerated, with few side effects, a whopping 93 percent of children in the CBD group – as well as 75 percent of those in the placebo group – suffered adverse events in this trial.
Eighty-four percent of adverse events in the treatment group were deemed mild or moderate, and included vomiting, fatigue, fever, upper respiratory tract infection, decreased appetite, convulsions, lethargy, drowsiness and diarrhea. Eight patients in the treatment group withdrew from the study due to side effects.
Of course, these conventional investigators were clueless about the benefit of a ketogenic diet for the treatment of seizures, so that was something that was not evaluated in the study. This is unfortunate, as it would have radically decreased side effects and may even have been more effective than the CBD. According to the authors:
“Elevated levels of liver aminotransferase enzymes (alanine aminotransferase or aspartate aminotransferase level >3 times the upper limit of the normal range) led to withdrawal from the trial of three patients in the cannabidiol group and one in the placebo group.
Overall, elevated aminotransferase levels occurred in 12 patients in the cannabidiol group and one in the placebo group. All these patients were taking a form of valproate [editor’s note: a type of medication used to treat epilepsy] … There were … no instances of suicidal ideation …There were no deaths.”
As mentioned earlier, full spectrum cannabis extracts will not be pure CBD, as they’re derived from the whole plant. And, as noted by CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, ” … [E]vidence is mounting that these compounds work better together than in isolation.”8
It’s possible that “pharmaceutical strength” CBD might be too pure, hence the high rate of side effects. Regardless, there’s a significant difference in cost between a CBD drug and natural CBD oil, which in and of itself is of great concern for many patients and their families who now worry Big Pharma is trying to take over the cannabis industry.
Monopoly in South Dakota Avoided, for Now
As noted by Motherboard, “parents with children suffering from Dravet’s syndrome and many other serious illnesses have been pushing for access to the “miracle drug” since 2013, when Gupta’s “Weed” documentary debuted on CNN.” The program featured a 6-year-old girl beset by some 300 grand mal seizures each week. A CBD-rich cannabis oil reduced her seizures by 99 percent.
Following the airing of “Weed,” hundreds of families moved to Colorado to obtain the herbal medication for their ailing child. Other positive media attention has also helped to loosen the stigma surrounding medical marijuana. In 1969, only 12 percent of Americans favored marijuana legalization. Today, a majority of Americans favor legalization: 53 percent favor legalizing marijuana across the board and 77 percent support legal medical use.9 Even the new surgeon general has cited data on how helpful medical cannabis can be.
Unfortunately, medical cannabis may just be “too good.” Showing promise for a wide range of ailments, the drug industry sees cannabis as major competition, and rightfully so. In South Dakota, a scaled-back amendment to SB 95 was ultimately signed into law. South Dakotans who want legal access to CBD will still have to wait until Epidiolex gains FDA approval, but GW Pharmaceuticals was not successful in limiting the down-scheduling of CBD to FDA approved CBD drugs only.
As a result, GW Pharmaceuticals will not have a monopoly on the market. Still, GW Pharmaceuticals has reportedly contracted lobbyists in several different states10 to fight for its cause, and their combined efforts may well delay implementation of cannabis reform that could improve access to medicinal marijuana. As noted by Melissa Mentele, chairperson of New Approach South Dakota, a cannabis reform group, who herself found relief from chronic pain when she started taking CBD-rich cannabis oil:
“Cannabis patients and caregivers have organized and fought for decades for the government to look at cannabis as a treatment option. Nobody did until hundreds of patients bravely shared their stories. So, we as a community have done the work for them, and now Big Pharma wants to swoop in and use an unfair monopoly and an inferior product to profit off the backs of catastrophically ill and dying people. It is disgusting.”
Indiana Cracks Down on CBD Products
In related news, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb recently announced CDB oil containing THC, regardless of the amount, will no longer be legal in the state, and has instructed local police to “perform normal, periodic regulatory spot checks of CBD oil products.” Retailers were given 60 days to sell out or remove such products from their stores.
According to Indy Star, “Most of the CBD products being sold in Indiana contain less than 0.3 percent THC, meaning they can’t produce a ‘high,'” adding that “Advocates of CBD oil say those products don’t have as many benefits as full spectrum CBD oil products.” At present, Indiana law only allows CBD products to be used by epileptic patients, who must register with the state’s CBD oil registry.
Republican state Sen. Jim Tomes has vowed to introduce legislation that would expand access to CBD oil under state law. According to Indy Star, “He’s received calls from people who’ve used the product to treat arthritis, Parkinson’s disease and mental illnesses.” Tomes told the paper, “I just don’t understand why is there such a resistance to allow people to get this product here? You can’t abuse it. It either works or it doesn’t.” The answer to Tomes’ question appears to be drug industry pressure. As reported by New Hope:11
“Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill Jr. appears to be relying on a discredited opinion from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency on the legality of the hemp-derived cannabinoid, which must come from industrial hemp that contains less than 0.3 percent THC (the high-inducing cannabinoid).
The Nov. 21 advisory opinion was issued from the state capital of Indianapolis, which also happens to be the headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., which is seeking fast-track approval from the FDA for its non-opioid painkiller drug, tanezumab.12
‘As a matter of legal interpretation, products or substances marketed for human consumption or ingestion, and containing cannabidiol, remain unlawful in Indiana, and under federal law,’ Hill wrote in his opinion. This conclusion does not apply to any product that is approved by the FDA.
There are currently two products that contain cannabidiol undergoing clinical trials; Epidiolex and Sativex. Simply put, cannabidiol is a Schedule I controlled substance because marijuana (Cannabis sativa) is a Schedule I controlled substance.'”
Legal Products Confiscated Amid Confusion
There’s plenty of confusion, however, as the attorney general’s opinion and Holcomb’s seizure instructions contradict a 2014 industrial hemp law that allows CBD products in Indiana as long as they contain less than 0.3 percent THC. The primary confusion appears to center around the fact that state law permits CBD as long as it is sourced from hemp and not marijuana.
In an effort to resolve the problem, the hemp industry, led by CV Sciences, has held educational meetings to explain the differences between marijuana and hemp-derived CBD products. The campaign resulted in Indiana state police issuing a statement saying that CBD products are in fact legal in Indiana as long as they’re sourced from hemp. All of this just goes to show that when it comes to cannabis and its derivatives, there’s plenty of confusion to go around, and it’s not always easy to determine the legal status of a given product in a given state.
FDA Issues Warning Letters to CBD Manufacturers
The FDA is also increasing its scrutiny of companies making CBD products. As reported by The Cannabist,13 four Colorado businesses have received FDA warning letters for making “illegally unsubstantiated health claims” on their CBD products. In a November 1 press release, the FDA said:14
“[T]he agency today issued warning letters to four companies illegally selling products online that claim to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure cancer without evidence to support these outcomes … The deceptive marketing of unproven treatments may keep some patients from accessing appropriate, recognized therapies to treat serious and even fatal diseases.
The FDA has grown increasingly concerned at the proliferation of products claiming to treat or cure serious diseases like cancer. In this case, the illegally sold products allegedly contain cannabidiol (CBD), a component of the marijuana plant that is not FDA approved in any drug product for any indication.”
The warning letters15 also rejected claims that CBD oil can be classified as dietary supplements, as Investigational New Drug (IND) applications have been submitted for the CBD-containing drugs Sativex and Epidiolex (both by GW Pharmaceuticals). This suggests the agency is not just aiming to clean up the cannabis industry’s propensity to make illegal claims; it also raises concerns that the legality of all CBD products is in question now that CBD-containing drugs await FDA approval.
Medical Marijuana Lowers Prescription Drug Use and Abuse
While CBD has now been reclassified to a Schedule IV substance in North Dakota by excluding it from the state’s definition of marijuana,16,17 it still remains a Schedule I (illegal) controlled substance in most other states. This is tragic, considering the evidence showing medical marijuana lowers prescription drug use. One wonders if perhaps that’s one of the reasons why it hasn’t been rescheduled across the nation.
There are no other truly compelling reasons why addictive narcotics like OxyContin are legal, while marijuana – which is extremely unlikely to kill you even if you take very high amounts – is not. The video above features W. David Bradford, Ph.D., whose study was published in the journal Health Affairs in July 2016.18 As reported by The Washington Post:19
“[R]esearchers at the University of Georgia scoured the database of all prescription drugs paid for under Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013. They found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law.
The drops were quite significant: In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical-marijuana state prescribed 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers in a given year.”
Legalizing Marijuana Could Save Medicare Hundreds of Millions Each Year
According to Bradford, the Medicare program could save $468 million per year if marijuana were legalized in all U.S. states.20,21 Already, $165 million was saved in 2013 in the 18 states where medical marijuana was legal that year. Similarly, a 2015 working paper by The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) states that:22
“If marijuana is used as a substitute for powerful and addictive pain relievers in medical marijuana states, a potential overlooked positive impact of medical marijuana laws may be a reduction in harms associated with opioid pain relievers, a far more addictive and potentially deadly substance.”
Not only did the NBER find that access to state-sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries resulted in a significant decrease in prescription painkiller overdose deaths, it also led to a 15 to 35 percent drop in substance abuse admissions. So, it would seem medical marijuana – far from being the deadly drug it’s been made out to be – could actually save thousands of lives that would otherwise be destroyed by painkiller addiction and its lethal consequences.
It’s a real travesty that the U.S. Senate is more than willing to shell out taxpayer money to Big Pharma for addictive painkillers and the drugs to treat addiction when a safe and effective answer to the pain and opioid epidemics lies right before our noses.
Both CBD and THC Are Far Safer Than Commonly Used Pain Killers
Polls show older Americans are becoming increasingly converted to marijuana use.23 Between 2006 and 2013, use among 50- to 64-year-olds rose by 60 percent. Among seniors over 65, use jumped by 250 percent.24 Pain and sleep are among the most commonly cited complaints for which medicinal marijuana is taken. Considering the high risk of lethal consequences of opioid painkillers and sleeping pills, medical marijuana is a godsend.
As noted by Dr. Margaret Gedde, an award-winning Stanford-trained pathologist and founder of Gedde Whole Health, there’s enough scientific data to compare the side effects of cannabis against the known toxicities of many drugs currently in use. This includes liver and kidney toxicity, gastrointestinal damage, nerve damage and, of course, death.
Cannabidiol has no toxicity and it’s virtually impossible to die from marijuana. It’s also self-limiting, as excessive doses of THC will provoke anxiety, paranoia and nausea. Such side effects will disappear as the drug dissipates from your system without resulting in permanent harm, but it’ll make you think twice about taking such a high dose again. Make the same mistake with an opioid, and chances are you’ll end up in the morgue.
Gedde also notes that cannabis products often work when other medications fail, so not only are they safer, they also tend to provide greater efficacy. In 2010, the Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR25) released a report26 on 14 clinical studies about the use of marijuana for pain, most of which were FDA-approved, double-blind and placebo-controlled. The report revealed that marijuana not only controls pain, but in many cases, it does so better than pharmaceutical alternatives.
Where to Find Reputable Information About Medical Cannabis, Its Uses and Benefits
While reputable information about cannabis can be hard to come by, it’s not impossible to find. One good source is cancer.gov.27,28 This is the U.S. government’s site on cancer. Simply enter “cannabis” into the search bar. You can also peruse the medical literature through PubMed,29 which is a public resource (again, simply enter “cannabis” or related terms into the search bar).
CMCR also provides a hyperlinked list30 of scientific publications relating to a wide variety of medicinal uses of cannabis, and the Journal of Pain,31 a publication by the American Pain Society, has a long list of studies on the pain-relieving effects of cannabis.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse,32 which also has information relating to the medicinal aspects of marijuana, preclinical and clinical trials are underway to test marijuana and various extracts for the treatment of a number of diseases, including autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation, pain and mental disorders.
To learn more, I also recommend listening to my previous interviews with Gedde and Dr. Allan Frankel, in which they discuss the clinical benefits of cannabis. Frankel is a board-certified internist in California who has treated patients with medical cannabis for the past decade. Awareness is starting to shift, and many are now starting to recognize the medical value of cannabis.
Unfortunately, that also means the drug industry is doing everything it can to secure its place in the market, and in so doing, eliminating the legal use of natural and far less expensive cannabis products. It’s up to us to make sure we stay involved in the political process whenever marijuana-related legislation is brought up. If we don’t, you can be sure the drug industry will become the only game in town.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
