Is Glaucoma Treatable with Marijuana?
In 2007 I became aware of the fact that one of the helper girls who worked for me had become addicted to Xanax (benzodiazapine) to relieve her anxiety. I offered to furnish her with a less harmful, less addictive, drug that relieves anxiety which could be legally used here in SoCal if one purchased a CA State license for its medical use. The drug is THC, which is safer because when used to excess one merely falls asleep instead of possibly dying. After several years of THC use she was able to say goodby to Xanax and, as we agreed, I continued to supply her with dried marijuana flowers that I legally purchased in nearby Woodland Hills from Ukrainian emigrants. Unfortunately the price was c. $12 a gram and she might use a gram a day --- so I was spending around $350 a month on dried flowers. The obvious solution was for us to buy grower's licenses from the State and grow our own. This we did. The first year's crop yield was about 9kg. Most of the first crop was used to pay rent. She kept about 300g for her own use. Eventually she was able to get off of Xanax and other benzodiazapines. This was c. the time that my eye-doctor informed me that the pressure in my good eye had become dangerously high and needed to be lowered a.s.a.p. to avoid blindness. He initally prescribed FDA-approved eye-drops but they proved to cause eye discomfort and intermittent loss of sleep 24/7, so I stopped using them without his permission - so my eye-doctor sent me to a glaucoma specialist eye doctor in Camarillo who informed me that smoking marijuana does not affect eyeball pressure. I told her that people with glaucoma like me do not smoke marijuana because it takes a long acting drug to have any affect, not a drug which literally goes up in smoke in minutes. Talking to her turned out to be not unlike talking to a stone wall. She assertively told me I was absolutely wrong because she knew of a government-approved Website which said marijuana does not work for reducing eye pressure. I wasn't buying it because I knew from a nurse who told me that there was evidence that it worked on a least some people. She kept up the pressure for me to go back to drops so I balked and I walked. Subsequently I got a "the sky is falling letter" from her warning me that I would definitely go blind unless I followed her recommendations and stopped ingesting THC.
The result of stopping drops caused my eyeball pressure to surge above what it was before I tried drops. In other words, glaucoma eye-drops are physically addicting, so there is a strong incentive to keep buying them for the rest of my life - which is good for corporate profits, and since corporate profits funds many politicians' re-elections, change for the good seemed quite unlikely. Since FDA glaucoma drops had been problematic I decided to try eating one chocolate square a day that contained 45mg of THC to see if it worked or whether THC-treatment of glaucoma was just another lame ploy of druggies to try and justify their recreational use of marijuana. When I began the THC treatment test the pressure in my good eye was a dangerous 33mm of Hg. At the end of a year, the pressure in my good eye was 16mm of Hg, which is below the 21mm of Hg pressure that is safe.
Perhaps it's time for the Feds to deal with reality and admit that Drug Tsar Henry Anslinger lied extensively to Congress in order to get marijuana classed as dangerous a drug as heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine so the DEA could squeeze more money out of Congress to build Anslinger's new empire and hire more apparatchiks.
Presently c. 70,000 Americans are incarcerated for involvement with growing marijuana flowers or for providing marijuana to other people. If you are counting, around a third of a billion Federal tax dollars goes down the drain a year based on Anslinger's embarrassing lies. Sure, some motor vehicle drivers crash when they doze off after smoking too much weed, but does that justify punishing people who ingest it to stop from going blind due to glaucoma?
A list of what Anslinger told Congress to in order to get more money:
Harry J. Anslinger quotes:
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."
"…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
"Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
"Marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
"Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."
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R.L. Measures. January 2014..
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