Prop. 19: major potential for some cancer patients

Alternet:

Tens of thousands of sick people throughout California find relief from scores of ailments by using cannabis because this plant has so many healing qualities.

Ten years ago I wrote – and AlterNet published – the very first bylined news story about the active ingredients in marijuana destroying cancerous tumors. The article was entitled, “Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ’74.”

Much to its credit, AlterNet has archived the story for a decade and the link still gets picked up and reposted to websites around the world. You can read it here.

After I wrote the story, and won a 2000 Project Censored award for doing so, my frustration at not seeing the facts in the article reported and discussed in the mainstream media eventually led to my giving up a 20-year journalism career in disgust.

Now, with California voters on the eve of deciding whether the Golden State will legalize adult cannabis use, I feel the need to point out some important facts that are getting short shrift in the debate over Proposition 19, the “tax and regulate” cannabis initiative.

If California legalizes marijuana, it will be fitting, since California was the very first state in the Union to make cannabis possession and cultivation illegal nearly 100 years ago, back in 1913. Prior to that, cannabis was the active ingredient in many common medicines, for everything from migraines to arthritis to colic.

That’s right: during the 1800s my great-grandparents' generation used to give cannabis extract to their babies to soothe them.

Continue reading here.