Marijuana - A Cure For Aggressive Cancers?

By now, it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the United States government has been lying to us about marijuana -- and those decades of lies are finally being exposed. They told us marijuana was a dangerous drug. We now know it is not dangerous at all. No one has ever died from an "overdose" of marijuana. Marijuana is much safer than any legal drug -- like tobacco and alcohol, and even the supposedly "safe" over-the-counter drugs like aspirin, cold remedies, and myriad others.

They told us marijuana was a "gateway" drug, and would lead users to to the use of harder and much more dangerous drugs. This has also been exposed as a lie. What has led some people to graduate from marijuana to other drugs are the government lies. After realizing that the government has been lying about the effects of marijuana, some are convinced that they were probably lying about other drugs as well. But there is nothing in marijuana (or about marijuana) that would make people want to use any other drug.

Then they tried to tell us that marijuana is dangerous because it's users are incapacitated like alcohol users and are dangerous to other people when driving. Another lie! Numerous studies have shown that drivers on marijuana are no more dangerous than drivers who have used no drug at all.

But perhaps the most egregious lie the government has told us is that marijuana has no medical value. The truth is that we know the drug has been used to treat many medical ailments for centuries, and the list of medical uses for marijuana continues to grow. Now researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco have evidence that marijuana may be a very effective treatment for cancer -- and not just any cancer, but the most aggressive types of cancer, like breast cancer. Here is how The Huffington Post puts it in an article from September of 2012:

A pair of scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco has found that a compound derived from marijuana could stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancer, potentially altering the fatality of the disease forever.

"It took us about 20 years of research to figure this out, but we are very excited," saidPierre Desprez, one of the scientists behind the discovery, to The Huffington Post. "We want to get started with trials as soon as possible."

The Daily Beast first reported on the finding, which has already undergone both laboratory and animal testing, and is awaiting permission for clinical trials in humans.

Desprez, a molecular biologist, spent decades studying ID-1, the gene that causes cancer to spread. Meanwhile, fellow researcher Sean McAllister was studying the effects of Cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-toxic, non-psychoactive chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. Finally, the pair collaborated, combining CBD and cells containing high levels of ID-1 in a petri dish.

"What we found was that his Cannabidiol could essentially 'turn off' the ID-1," Desprez told HuffPost. The cells stopped spreading and returned to normal.

"We likely would not have found this on our own," he added. "That's why collaboration is so essential to scientific discovery."

Desprez and McAllister first published a paper about the finding in 2007. Since then, their team has found that CBD works both in the lab and in animals. And now, they've found even more good news.

"We started by researching breast cancer," said Desprez. "But now we've found that Cannabidiol works with many kinds of aggressive cancers--brain, prostate--any kind in which these high levels of ID-1 are present."