"Although the federal government is aware of the therapeutic potential of marijuana, they have routinely suppressed scientific findings. For example, a two-year study of THC was conducted on rats and mice that found THC treated animals had significantly lower rates of many types of cancer. This report was shelved for over two years until a copy was leaked to AIDS Treatment News, stamped on every page "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OR ATTRIBUTION" ^[30]. Health and Human Services quickly made a version available to the public after being confronted with the leaked copy ^[26].

Another example is the 1997 NIH Workshop on the Medical Utility of Marijuana. The transcripts from the workshop show that the panel of experts agreed marijuana has medical value ^[31]. It was even found that "the evidence is perfectly clear that smoking is an outstanding route of administration....it's a very safe drug and therefore it would be perfectly safe medically to let the patient determine their own dose through the smoking route" (ibid p.28-29). The Executive Summary that was issued to the public by NIH was far less enthusiastic than the group of experts. It recommended further research and no smoking ^[32].

Photo courtesy AMMA website

"A Spanish medical team's study released in Madrid in February 2000 has shown that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, destroys tumors in lab rats. These findings, however, are not news to the U.S. government. A study in Virginia in 1974 yielded similar results but was suppressed by the DEA, and in 1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade U.S. universities and researchers to destroy all cannabis research work done between 1966 and 1976, including compendiums in libraries.

The research was conducted by a medical team led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutence University in Madrid. In the study, brains of 45 lab rats were injected with a cancer cell, which produced tumors. On the twelfth day of the experiment, 15 of the rats were injected with THC and 15 with Win-55, 212-2, a synthetic compound similar to THC. The untreated rats died 12-18 days after the development of the tumors. THC treated rats lived significantly longer than the control group. Although three were unaffected by the THC, nine lived 19-35 days, while tumors were completely eradicated in three others. The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.

In an e-mail interview for this story, the Madrid researcher said he had heard of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate literature on it. "I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I have attempted many times to obtain the journal article on the original investigation by theses people, but it has proven impossible," Guzman said. His response wasn't surprising, considering that in 1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966/76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer. "We know that large amounts of information have since disappeared," he says.

Guzman provided the title of the work-"Antineoplastic Activity of Cannabinoids," an article in a 1975 Journal of the National Cancer Institute-and author Raymond Cushing obtained a copy at the UC Medical School Library in Davis, California, and faxed it to Madrid. The 1975 article does not mention breast cancer tumors, which were featured in the only newspaper story ever to appear about the 1974 study in the local section of the Washington Post on August 18, 1974. The headline read, "Cancer Curb Is Studied," and was followed in part by, "The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered. The researchers found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."

Drug Enforcement Agency officials shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on these events in his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies. These companies set out-unsuccessfully-to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the "high."

"When I was a cub reporter twenty-eight years ago at the daily Advocate in Stamford, Connecticut, my first city editor-a white-haired veteran of the International Herald Tribune named Marian Campbell-told me that the cure for cancer was the holy grail of all news stories.

"Unless they discover the cure for cancer," she would say over the clackety-clack of the manual typewriters, "this paper goes to press on time."

What I found out a quarter-century later is that not even the cure for cancer is a big enough story to crack the Berlin Wall of media censorship in this country. Toss in the facts that the cure appears to be a benign substance that has been illegal for 63 years, and that the government knowingly suppressed evidence of its curative powers 25 years, and you get twice the story and twice the censorship.

I won't name the "investigative journalists" who didn't respond when I sent them this story. I won't list the numerous "progressive" publications that ignored it. I won't describe the forbidding sense of professional isolation I endured in the months I tried to place the story.

Suffice it to say that it's what one would expect in a society that has criminalized its own young for two generations around the cannabis issue simply because we were told to do so.

Thousands of innocent people who are in U.S. prisons for possessing or selling "the cure for cancer" await liberation and reparations. Someday our grandchildren will look back and ask, "What did you do to set the cannabis prisoners free?"

Here's what any responsible journalist should be doing:
Go to primary sources when evaluating cannabis research. The AP and other news organizations love to elevate "bad science" and suppress "good science" when it comes to cannabis. You have to read the original research articles yourself and make your own judgments.

Investigate and report on the war on children that is a major component of the war on drugs. The marijuana laws are the main tool the police use to persecute minors. No other policy affects more families in more insidious and devastating ways than cannabis prohibition.

Learn about the history of cannabis prohibition and about the pharmaceutical, liquor, and tobacco giants that are behind it. If you don't know the history of cannabis and hemp prohibition, you're too ignorant to justifiably call yourself a journalist.

If it turns out-as my story would seem to indicate-that cannabis is the cure for cancer and the government suppressed this information for 25 years (and continues to suppress it), then the body count alone will make this the biggest holocaust in recorded history. Virtually all federal drug policy makers of both parties since 1975-including legislators, presidents and the DEA-will be complicit and criminally liable. That's why they don't want this story covered."

"Today, American researchers who wish to obtain legal cannabis for scientific study must apply to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which maintains a government-funded, 1.5-acre marijuana farm in Oxford, Mississippi. Compared with street marijuana, however, the government's plants are low in cannabinoid content, and some researchers have also complained of the institute's slow and seemingly arbitrary decisions. In 1994 Donald Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, proposed to study the effects of smoking cannabis on HIV-related weight loss, but his application was rejected by NIDA, even though it had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. When he then resubmitted his proposal, this time emphasizing the drug's potential negative effects, NIDA not only approved the study but also provided him with nearly a million dollars in funding. Another researcher, Lyle Craker of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2001 for the right to grow cannabis for research purposes as a way of sidestepping these potency and access issues. For three years he heard nothing, until a federal court ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to respond. They said no, so he sued them. That case is still under way. "

. . . . . The chill affected researchers as well as clinicians. Medical journals published dozens of studies before the tax act but few after its enactment. As researcher Lester Grinspoon noted, "virtually no medical investigation of cannabis was conducted for many years" as a string of additional laws, including the 1951 Boggs Act and the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, further deterred research." --- T. Geller - Chemical Heritage Magazine

[11] - The narc's did give out permits to do Safety research on Cannabis, but it is a historic fact that they never allowed for any kind of FDA approval type of research to be done -- NO WAY.
[12]- From Project Censored - Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928 censored@sonoma.edu
[13]- By Raymond Cushing - www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=9257

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