Duncan Life Sciences (DLS) has recently expanded its services to include medical cannabis. Why? Well I’m glad you asked!
Cannabis is full of compounds called cannabinoids. These powerful compounds (i.e., THC) are responsible for the “high” people experience when smoking marijuana. However, they also have a tremendous number of health benefits. Medical cannabis is now being studied and is showing efficacy in treating epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain, cancer, depression, anxiety, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other illnesses. My passion to protect public health drives my desire to learn more about various ways to do so. In this post, I am going to give you the 3 stories that proves the curative and therapeutic nature of cannabis and why my mindset on this “drug” has completely changed.
Sanjay Gupta changes his stance on medical cannabis after many years of research for his documentary “Weed”.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a practicing neurosurgeon and the Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN. He is responsible for the 4-part documentary “Weed”, which began in 2013. Throughout his studies, he discovered families whose lives had been completely transformed through access to cannabis. So much so, that people were willing to uproot their families, leave jobs, friends, and other loved ones behind in order to move to states where medical cannabis is legal. I watched all 4 parts and the transformation that occurred within me was remarkable. I had never thought of weed, marijuana, “ganja”, etc. as something that could heal. Boy, was I wrong.
We are one month away from having the first ever plant-derived cannabis product approved as a pharmaceutical.
GW Pharmaceuticals has a product called “Epidiolex” that has been clinically proven to significantly reduce the number of seizures in patients with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndrome. Both of these are life-threatening forms of childhood epilepsy that leave families feeling hopeless and often results in death. In April, an advisory committee to the Food & Drug Adminstration (FDA) unanimously recommended approval of Epidiolex. After going through the same approval process as all other pharmaceutical products with positive results, it is hard for anyone to say that cannabis has no therapeutic benefit. FDA approval is expected next month.
The US government has a patent on the medical benefits of cannabis.
I’m not gonna lie…my mouth dropped when I found out about this one. The Drug Enforcement Administration considers cannabis to be a Schedule I drug. This means that the substance has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”. Knowing this, I found it very interesting to find out that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a patent #6630507 that states EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. The abstract of the patent states:
So, the US government has both vilified and acknowledged the benefits of cannabis all at the same time. I’ll let each of you come to your own conclusions on this one.
I hope the information in this post has shed some light on the curative and therapeutic properties of cannabis. Almost half of our states have approved this plant for medical use and it is just a matter of time before this is legalized federally. I have so much more to share on this topic including:
- Personal stories of how medical cannabis is changing lives
- The problem with regulating medical cannabis at a state level
- How the growing process can affect your health
- Why you only should get cannabis that is tested by reputable labs
Stay tuned and don’t forget to