Your Apology Is Accepted, Dr. Gupta

(The picture above is from Wikipedia, where it was posted by Cannabis Training University.)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I favor the legalization of marijuana -- both for medical and recreational use. I firmly believe that the American people have been lied to by the government about marijuana for decades now. It is not a dangerous drug. In fact, it may be the least dangerous drug known to man (and far less dangerous than many legal drugs being used for both medicine and recreation). It's legalization would not harm Americans, and would actually help -- by saving the costs of incarcerating users and dealers, and by heavily taxing it to help defray the cost of other government functions.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a physician, and the CNN spokesman for medical affairs. In the past, he has been against the legalization of marijuana -- even for medical use. But he recently did some intensive research and travel to investigate marijuana, and make a documentary on the subject for CNN. That documentary, entitled "Weed", can be seen on CNN on August 11th at 8:00 pm (eastern time). And his eyes have been opened. He now knows that the government has not been telling the truth about marijuana, that it does not deserve to be classified as a category 1 narcotic, and that it definitely does have many medical uses. And in an article he wrote for CNN, he has apologized. I urge you to read the entire article, but here are some excerpts from it:

Over the last year, I have been working on a new documentary called "Weed." The title "Weed" may sound cavalier, but the content is not.

I traveled around the world to interview medical leaders, experts, growers and patients. I spoke candidly to them, asking tough questions. What I found was stunning.

Long before I began this project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive. Reading these papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for medicinal marijuana. I even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled "Why I would Vote No on Pot."

Well, I am here to apologize.

I apologize because I didn't look hard enough, until now. I didn't look far enough. I didn't review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.

Instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have "no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse."

They didn't have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn't have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. . .

We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that. . .

In 1944, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned researchto be performed by the New York Academy of Science. Among their conclusions: they found marijuana did not lead to significant addiction in the medical sense of the word. They also did not find any evidence marijuana led to morphine, heroin or cocaine addiction. . .

There is clear evidence that in some people marijuana use can lead to withdrawal symptoms, including insomnia, anxiety and nausea. Even considering this, it is hard to make a case that it has a high potential for abuse. The physical symptoms of marijuana addiction are nothing like those of the other drugs I've mentioned. I have seen the withdrawal from alcohol, and it can be life threatening. . .

Keep in mind that up until 1943, marijuana was part of the United States drug pharmacopeia. One of the conditions for which it was prescribed was neuropathic pain. It is a miserable pain that's tough to treat. My own patients have described it as "lancinating, burning and a barrage of pins and needles." While marijuana has long been documented to be effective for this awful pain, the most common medications prescribed today come from the poppy plant, including morphine, oxycodone and dilaudid.

Here is the problem. Most of these medications don't work very well for this kind of pain, and tolerance is a real problem.

Most frightening to me is that someone dies in the United Statesevery 19 minutes from a prescription drug overdose, mostly accidental. Every 19 minutes. It is a horrifying statistic. As much as I searched, I could not find a documented case of death from marijuana overdose.

It is perhaps no surprise then that 76% of physicians recentlysurveyed said they would approve the use of marijuana to help ease a woman's pain from breast cancer. . .

Looking forward, I am especially intrigued by studies like those in Spain and Israel looking at the anti-cancer effects of marijuana and its components. I'm intrigued by the neuro-protective study by Lev Meschoulam in Israel, and research in Israel and the United States on whether the drug might help alleviate symptoms of PTSD. I promise to do my part to help, genuinely and honestly, fill the remaining void in our knowledge.