Re: [DIYbio] Re: THC legislation is next week

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 5:07 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@gmail.com> wrote:
> What? With the poor state of research on THC, let alone Marijuana as
> whole plant, it's *entirely* logical to suggest sticking with better
> understood therapies.

I think that as a plant Marijuana is pretty harmless, apples and
sugarcane are inhomogenous products, but people can become just as
addicted to eating as they can with smoking, or drinking tea, or beer.
Of course these different products produce different effects, duh. You
don't use a hammer to drive a screw.

>
> Everyone likes to roll out their hobby horse on marijuana whenever this
> comes up, but the fact is that in-vitro studies proving anticarcinogenic
> properties mean *nothing*. Table salt would be considered
> anticarcinogenic based on in-vitro studies. Alcohol would be considered
> anti-carcinogenic: "Amazing in-vitro results; virtually all cancer cell
> lines tested were rapidly and completely inactivated by Ethanol at
> modest concentrations tested.".
>
> Marijuana produces all sorts of wonderful compounds, sure. Some of them
> work as sunscreens, perhaps. Others are CNS depressants and make great
> painkillers (THC). But people *are* abusing these preliminary results to
> call for blanket legalisation of an inhomogenous product that could be
> damaging to some subsets of the population; those who are apparently
> prone to addiction to an otherwise non-addictive drug, those who may be
> prone to mental health conditions that *could* (I'm not saying they are,
> because research is so slim etc.) be triggered by psychotropics.

There are plenty of legal things that are horrible for humanity in
addictive doses, gambling for instance, the folks that feel like hell
if they don't have even one cup of coffee per day.

If we all reacted exactly the same to all the world's compounds, we
wouldn't be evolving. I know some people who can't drink more than 1
beer, I know others who could drink a whole keg full and keep going.
I'm going to say that the beer guzzler definitely has an advantage if
water quality goes to hell because fermented beverages have been used
for drinking water purification historically.

I don't drink corn syrup soda hourly or daily or weekly as many people
do, I don't think it should be out lawed, but I know that because I am
less prone to that addiction my genes are more likely to be longer
lived and (genetic) fitness is potentially increased. Salt is the same
way, at least here in America, packaged food that contains 200
kcalories or less has 25% daily value of salt, so if you eat just 800
kcalories of food you should stop with the salt for the day... but
most people don't do this, and they are /unknowningly/ or /ignorantly/
consuming more salt than might be ideal. But we don't limit these
things and meter them, even though people may be prone overconsume.

> *That* is immoral. The ethical route to legalisation is to do it in
> stages with high-quality research to back up claims and suppositions. If
> the research shows that THC *isn't* a threat to people prone to
> schizophrenia, or parkinson's, then I for one would shrug and suggest
> full decriminalisation with a campaign to encourage ingestion rather
> than smoking, etc. etc.: evidence-based health advice based on good science.

Hasn't this been just as tested as apples and tomatoes though? Do you
avoid tomatoes and potatoes because they're in the nightshade family?
How do we know all cultivated plants aren't susceptible to evolve and
produce some toxin. Hell, forget about evolve, what about engineered
by some government or corporation or terrorist?

Some people can't eat citrus because they have heart problems, but we
haven't pulled that off the market. I don't know what the answer is
for 'my son smoked pot and got schizophrenia' if he truly wouldn't
have got schizophrenia if he never used marijuana, but there are lots
things in life that could end in tragedy/grief/loss. Maybe with the
right research we could learn more about the whole process.


From a purely scientific standpoint, I do think these laws prevent
scientific progress from being made on the whole breadth of chemicals
found in this plant. We certainly have the mind power to gain a lot of
new medical tools from the molecules produced therein. Maybe the
neural growth stimulation chems could be tweaked to help regain brain
plasticity following severe head trauma or nerve damage. Maybe these
can be separated from the narcotic or psychedelic chems... who knows,
progress is hindered by red tape so what could take us 10 or 15 years
with current gen tech will take 125.

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