Is Hemp a Miracle Plant that can Save the World
By Jeffrey Green
Hemp is perhaps the answer to most problems in the world.
Ambitious, yes. An exaggeration, no.
If grown extensively, its diverse uses can be of significant
value to the environment, the economy, world hunger, personal health, and so
much more.
For the environment, hemp can reduce deforestation,
pesticide use, provide a sustainable biofuel, and replace GMO cotton among
other benefits. It grows like a weed without the need for pesticides or heavy
fertilizers.
Hemp does just about anything wood can do and it only takes
6 months to renew, not 20 years. It can be used to make paper, to build homes
with, and as fuel for fire.
Hemp clothing is far more durable than cotton, which is an
industry still operating a form of slavery from cultivation to production. GMO
cotton has led to indentured servitude for Indian farmers where failed crops
and debt result in shockingly high suicide rates. Hemp is simply a better
material for clothing.
The oil in the hemp seed can be made into biodiesel just
like any vegetable oil. Most arguments against biofuels are that their crops
take up too much valuable farm land that should be used for food, and it takes
more energy than it gives back when all things are considered (fertilizer,
pesticides, planting and harvesting machinery, refining).
With hemp, biofuel is merely a bi-product of this crop, not
it’s main use. The fiber of the plant is still an extremely valuable commodity.
Whereas corn ethanol needs a lot of land with tons of intensive chemicals, and
the process of turning corn into ethanol is then a net energy loss.
As today’s economy falters due to a variety of systematic
problems, the world is in desperate need of a new industry. Worldwide hemp
legalization and promotion would lead to a revolution in nearly all major
industries. Entrepreneurs would have a field day with textiles, plastics, body
care, construction, etc.
Industrial hemp’s female counterpart, marijuana, provides
effective natural medicine for a number of ailments. Cannabis is one of
mankind’s oldest recorded healing plants. As its prohibition lessens, modern
man is only just beginning to discover the exciting medical uses of marijuana,
which are provably vast already.
Cannabis can ease pain, depression, anxiety, sleep
disorders, PTSD, arthritis, and has even been proven to have anti-cancerous
properties. When eaten or vaporized, cannabis is entirely beneficial as a
natural alternative because any unwanted tars are not inhaled. Furthermore,
juicing raw cannabis has many benefits and zero psychoactive effects.
Hemp alone is powerful enough to be a game changer for the
environment and for human society as a whole. It’s time to unleash the hemp
seed.
About the Author
Jeffrey Green is a self-sufficiency practitioner and hemp
legalization activist. He writes forNaturalBlaze.com. Follow at Facebook. This
article originally appeared at Activist Post.
Who is Trying to Patent Marijuana?
By Kent Mao
The secret is out: marijuana is medicine. And not to the
surprise of the pharmaceutical industry, who is slowly but surely gaining
exclusive rights to the medical properties of this age-old plant.
But wait. How can a company, other than Monsanto, patent a
plant? That’s not a serious question, but it brings up a serious point. Patents
on marijuana have yet to cover genetic modifications of the plant itself, but
rather involve the cannabinoids found in marijuana that are responsible for its
medical effects.
Phytocannabinoids in the treatment of cancer (Patent No.
US20130059018)
The most recent patent filing on cannabinoids comes from
none other than GW Pharmaceuticals – the UK-based company that manufactures
Sativex. Sativex is an oral spray that contains cannabinoids derived from the
cannabis plant itself, specifically THC and CBD. Although Sativex is not yet
available in the U.S., it has already gained approval in Canada, the UK and
eight other European countries.
GW Pharma has been quick to recognize the market potential
of cannabis and their most recent patent application makes this more than
clear. Just from the title of the patent, one gets a good sense of what GW
Pharma has been trying to claim as their own. “Phytocannabinoids” simply means
cannabinoids derived from plants, referring to the cannabis plant in this case.
Unsurprisingly, it appears as though GW Pharma encountered
difficulties in trying to claim such a broad “invention”. In fact, the updated
version of their patent application shows that more than half of their original
patent claims were retracted, and for good reason too. Looking back in time, GW
Pharma made claims to just the use of isolated cannabinoids in the treatment of
cancer, which is no more of an invention than it is a theft from individuals
who first proclaimed marijuana’s cancer-fighting abilities decades ago.
On the other hand, GW Pharma’s remaining claims might just
pass through the Patent Office without further questioning. GW Pharma seems to
be familiar with the pharmaceutical industry’s shrewd patent strategies, which
involves modifying pre-existing compounds that have already been proven to
work.
In this case, all GW Pharma had to do was claim that they
invented a cannabis-based botanical drug substance for treating cancer –
botanical drug substance meaning any form of marijuana prepared by methods as
simple as aqueous or ethanolic extraction. There you have it. GW Pharma
invented neither cannabis nor a method of extraction, but still consider
themselves to be inventors of “phytocannabinoids in the treatment of cancer”.
Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants (Patent
No. US6630507)
Perhaps the most infamous marijuana-related patent belongs
to the U.S. federal government themselves. Indeed, while federal agents have
been keeping busy trying to defend their stance on pot prohibition, they also
made sure to file patents on the medical components of the very same Schedule I
drug. The funny thing is, this particular patent dates all the way back to 1998
when Bill “didn’t inhale” Clinton was still president.
Although federal patent writers made sure to include a long
list of synthetic cannabinoids within their claims, carefully tucked away is
none other than cannabidiol, also known as CBD. Once again, the inventive step
in this patent seems to be severely lacking, but maybe the federal government
gets more flexibility with their patent filings.
Regardless, it seems as though the use of CBD for the
treatment of “stroke and trauma”, “Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and
HIV dementia” and a “wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as
ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases” all belongs to the
White House, at least for the next 10 years until their patent expires.
Private funding matters more
It might be easy to blame an outdated patent system for what
seems to be just another one of the many injustices that plague the private
health care system. But the truth is, it’s not really the Patent Office’s fault
that marijuana is being taken over by capital-backed corporations and
government agencies.
Rather, the fault lies in the restrictive nature of medical
marijuana research, which is overseen by the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA) – the only source of legal marijuana in the U.S.
According to researchers who have attempted to conduct
clinical trials on cannabis, the NIDA is simply uninterested in supplying cannabis
for medical studies, in accordance with a mandate from Congress that limits
NIDA researchers to investigating the marijuana’s dangers. And being the
overwhelmingly benign substance that it is, marijuana hasn’t been the subject
of many NIDA studies for a while now.
But perhaps the worst outcome of this situation is not the
fact that clinical research on medical marijuana is severely lacking. No, the
worst part is that the gap in research is eagerly being filled by corporations
like GW Pharma. Indeed, while there were a total 37 clinical studies conducted
on cannabinoids between 2005-2009, only 8 of them involved actual marijuana. On
the other hand, 9 of the 37 studies involved Sativex, with the rest consisting
of a variety of synthetic THC formulations, no doubt sponsored by their
respective manufacturers as well.
So where does this leave the rest of us? Not too far from
where we started off it seems, since it’s no surprise to anyone that healthcare
will continue to be driven by privately funded research, even in the case of
marijuana. But all that research money has to come from somewhere, and you can
bet it’s not coming from the deep pockets of GW Pharma’s executive board.
As it turns out, a couple of shrewd businessmen with
knowledge of medicine realized long ago that sick and dying individuals will
pay almost any price for the promise of relief, even if it happens to be all of
their life savings and then some. What happened to these businessmen? Oh,
they’re still around. We just call them Big Pharma.
About the Author
Kent Mao is a contributor to Waking Times and the editor of
TruthOnPot.com, an online resource for medical marijuana facts, information and
research. TruthOnPot.com actively engages in the online discussion of marijuana
research and policy. You can learn more by visiting www.truthonpot.com. Kent is
also a contributor to Waking Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment.