An open letter to the medical group:
Right here’s a query: If you happen to imagine you could have inadvertently stumbled upon a treatment for a illness beforehand regarded as incurable, what would you do? Share the knowledge? Actually.
However, what if you happen to’re fallacious? What if the “treatment” seems to be a pipe dream fallacy? Properly, then you definitely’re a goal for ridicule and derision.
With that in thoughts, right here we go. I’ll inform you my story, and then you definitely be the choose.
The illness in query, Continual Obstructive Pulmonary Illness, or COPD, is at the moment regarded as a life sentence with no early launch or parole. I’m 75 years previous. After smoking cigarettes and a pipe for 28 years, I used to be identified with COPD on the age of 45. I had tried to give up smoking a couple of instances unsuccessfully however that prognosis gave me the push I wanted, and I used to be lastly tobacco free.
Too late, sadly.
Throughout these years and for years thereafter, each time I caught a chilly or bug of any variety, it morphed into debilitating bronchitis inflicting me to overlook work, and so on. The 2 inhalers I used to be prescribed had been used 4 instances per day, and saved the illness at bay, principally.
Throughout my smoking interval, I additionally used marijuana, not fairly every day, however typically. After which my “vendor” (archaic time period, however descriptive) moved away and for 5 or 6 years — with leisure pot nonetheless unlawful and never all that simple to amass — I didn’t smoke something. A couple of years later in 2001, my marijuana wants had been met, and I started smoking nearly on daily basis, as I nonetheless do, for creativity, pleasure, leisure and sleep.
Each couple of years my Kaiser physician would order a pulmonary checkup for me. On Might 12, 2012, I had my closing pulmonary examination. I not had COPD. The technician mentioned she was stunned on the outcomes, as was I. I discussed {that a} COPD prognosis was regarded as perpetually. She simply shook her head, and, with a glance that mentioned, “you bought me,” instructed me to cease the inhalers.
Now, my way of life hadn’t modified in any respect. There have been no additions or subtractions environmentally or in any other case. I hadn’t moved. I’m nonetheless working the identical job, almost 30 years now. The one main change in my life was the each day smoking of marijuana. It took me a while to make the connection, so absurd was the notion that smoking something might heal my airways. However, for the lifetime of me, I can’t consider some other rationalization. It took almost 10 years of smoking marijuana after quitting tobacco, however I imagine marijuana cured my COPD.
After I’d made the connection, my pulmonary technician, who would periodically name to examine on my situation, checked in once more. I shared my concept together with her. She listened, however I don’t suppose she heard. I ultimately talked about it to a number of others, together with my basic practitioner, my blood draw technicians and a few flu shot techs — all with seemingly no follow-up. So, it turned time for this letter.
Marijuana is a reasonably advanced plant, with greater than 400 chemical elements — 80 recognized, as of July 9, 2009, distinctive to the hashish plant — solely two of that are utterly understood, cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The explanation for the lack of awareness is due to its placement (thanks Richard Nixon) at Schedule 1, alongside heroin, LSD, mescaline, and so on., on the federal government’s checklist, making analysis troublesome for many testing labs.
I known as President Biden not too long ago urging him to make use of his government powers to take away it. I’ve not heard again. Nevertheless it might change quickly anyway. Principally it’s been a Democratic push for legalization. However now, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., with 5 different Republican representatives as co-sponsors, has provided the States Reform Act, which might mark an finish to federal prohibition and go away regulation as much as particular person states.
Now, to dispel any false narratives, marijuana smoke by no means killed anybody. You’ll be able to look it up. Nevertheless, marijuana can do hurt to a creating mind, as much as the age of 25. A ten-year California examine of 65,177 marijuana people who smoke discovered that they died no ahead of non-smokers. One examine signifies smoking marijuana causes bronchitis. If this had been true I, with my historical past of bronchitis, would have definitely suffered some type of it through the previous 20 years. I’ve not. A 2012 Harvard examine confirmed no antagonistic results on the lungs from reasonable marijuana smoking.
Marijuana has already been confirmed to deal with glioblastoma-multiforme, a type of mind most cancers, additionally epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s illness, Glaucoma, migraines, fibromyalgia, ache, nausea, PTSD, and so on. Why not COPD? Properly, you would possibly suppose, you’d be inhaling smoke, which is counterintuitive, to say the least. However we actually don’t know the complete story on what the smoke accommodates. It’s not particulate matter, like wildfire smoke.
Who’s to say if it has airway therapeutic properties or not. Properly, me, for one. However I’m not a analysis scientist. I’m just one man … who’s more healthy at present than I used to be 20 years in the past. I can’t show that marijuana cured my COPD, I simply comprehend it’s true. Let the analysis broaden and proceed in earnest. Possibly there’s a COVID-19 resolution as effectively.
So, that’s my story. Now, you be the choose.
— Michael J. Haworth/Vallejo
