From: [g--am--n] at [aol.com] (GanjaMtain)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: We were lied to about the dangers of marijuana!
Date: 2 Oct 1994 04:29:02 -0400

I'm not saying marijuana is the safest drug known to man, I'm saying it's
one of the safest. You probably know that it has medical value and it's
been used as medicine for a heck of a long time. It's a lot safer then
most of the perscription drugs doctors prescribe. If it's safe for all the
desizes and disorders it helps, it must be safe for recreational use.
  About a year ago, I believed all the myths and lies that the police and
media had been saying about pot. Then I found out a few of those myths had
been lies by reading articals. I started to have my doubts about the other
myths (and the articals because those were one side and the police and
media were on the other). Then I came accross this new book that I read
about in one of the articals. Its name is: "Marihuana, the Forbidden
Medicine" (with an H) by Lester Grinspoon, M.D., and James B Bakalar
(1993). Hear is a list of deseazes and disorders marijuana helps: It could
help addits of addictive drugs (marijuana is not addictive) come off them,
cancer chemotherapy, galucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, paraplegia
and quadriplegia, AIDS, chronic pain, migraine, pruritis, menstrual cramps
and labor pain, depression and other mood disorders, asthma, and many
more.
  This book is so well written that the stories (written by other people)
will shock you. It's unbelieveable that this drug will help so many things
and is so safe.
  I'm going to give you part of the discription of the book from its
jacket and a paragrah from the very first page:

  From the jacket:

  Much of the book consists of accounts written by patients (including one
from famed scientist Stephen Jay Gould) that dramatically illustrate not
only the relief provided by marihuana but also the unnecessary distress
caused by the need to obtain it illegally. Grinspoon and Bakalar recount
the long history of medical marihuana use, discuss the real (as opposed to
fancied) potential health hazards of the drug, and analyze the social
causes of the government's insistence of making outlaws of its medical
users. They find that marihuana is a remarkably safe substance and that
criminalizing its use is costly, ineffective, and unfair. They conclude
that legalizing it for medical purposes alone would be unworkable and that
it must be given the same status as alcohol--legal, with appropriate
limitations, for use by adults for any purpose. 

From the first page:

"When I began to study marihuana in 1967, I had no doubt that it was a
very harmful drug that was unfortunately being used by more and more
foolish young people who would not listen to or could not understand the
warnings about its dangers. My purpose was to define scientifically the
nature and degree of those dangers. In the next three years, as I reviewed
the scientific, medical, and lay literature, my views began to change. I
came to understand that I, like so many other people in this country, had
been brainwashed. My beliefs about the dangers of marihuana had little
empirical foundation. By the time I completed the research that formed the
basis for a book, I had become convinced that cannabis was considerably
less harmful than tobacco and alcohol, the most commonly used legal drugs.
The book was published in 1979; its title, Marihuana Reconsidered,
reflected my change in view."
--Lester Grinspoon, M.D.

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