Is Pot Culture Hurting Medical Marijuana?

The hardcore “Legalize It” warriors are some of medical cannabis’ strongest supporters. But are their efforts -- and antics -- helping or hurting?

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Before we go too far down highway 420, we need to stress that the two strongly support a comprehensive repeal of America’s stupid federal ban on cannabis. We’re also keenly interested in the good studies on the medical uses cannabis -- either the whole flower or isolated compounds -- might have on public health.

28 countries -- including the US and Canada -- have some form of medical cannabis law that ostensibly allows an authorized patient to spark up a spliff in the comfort of their own home. 12 of those are developing nations, spread around Central & South America, Eastern Europe, and even a couple of countries in Africa.

In America,  30 states (well, 29 plus the District of Columbia) have passed medical marijuana laws. Even Oklahoma, which surprised both of us.

Unless you’ve been ignoring any and all media, you have likely heard near-magical stories of cannabis as a medicine, curing just about every kind of disease and condition under the sun.

But these personal stories are simply anecdotes, and anecdotes don’t add up to evidence.

Worse, quality scientific studies on the medical effects of cannabis are few and far between. Largely, many claim, because of America’s federal ban on cannabis. That makes it extremely difficult -- bordering on impossible -- to find money to fund a large-scale study.

But there have been some studies. We know, for example, of very interesting compounds that come from cannabis:  two of them are THC and CBD. Generally speaking, THC is the psychoactive component -- that which gets you high. CBD, on the other hand, doesn’t.

Go deeper than that, and things start to get messy. Many in the scientific and medical community ask a simple question: what’s the proper dosage of either of those two compounds -- either isolated or in combination -- that will provide the necessary medical effect on any given patient?

So why did we pick medical marijuana as our critique on first world culture? Because Evo thinks that the stoner culture might be “imperfect messengers” for the cause of medical marijuana. Though, as you’ll hear in this episode, his opinion is changing.