Legalizing Medical Marijuana

A recent Letter to the Editor to The Berkshire Eagle

Your recent article about “Pot on Statewide Ballot” states; “the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), representing 24,000 doctors, also opposes legalizing medicinal marijuana without scientific proof that if would be safe and effective on patients.”

Really? Perhaps they never heard of Google. Or, they have some other motives

According to the government: the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (2009) Annual Causes of Death in the US: Cannabis/Marijuana ranks dead last, at ZERO deaths.

“Indeed, epidemiological data indicate that in the general population marijuana use is not associated with increased mortality.” Source:  Janet E. Joy: “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base,” Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), p. 109.

On the other hand:

1.      According to the CDC: “in the United States, tobacco use is responsible for about one in five deaths annually, about 443,000 deaths per year.

2.      Lack of health insurance and access to basic care kills 44,789/year.

3.      Preventable medical errors in hospitals kill 12,000/week = 624,000/year, a conservative estimate, responsible for 26% of deaths, making it the 3^rd leading cause of death.

4.      An article by Dr. Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, in JAMA: Vol.284, No.4, 07/26/2000: revealed that prescription drugs kill around 106,000 people in the US every year making it the fourth leading cause of death. “The data did not include fatal reactions caused by accidental overdoses or errors in administration of the drugs. If these had been included, it is estimated that another 100,000 deaths would be added to the total every year.” Furthermore, every year there are 2,216,000 serious adverse drug reactions (ADR’S). HMO’s spend more money treating ADR’s than they do on drugs.

When you understand that the MMS, like the AMA, are trade associations whose primary purpose is to protect doctors’ incomes, and have virtually nothing to do with improving patient safety and care outcomes, then the above starts to make some sense.

Why would they deny suffering and dying patients access to a benign, very helpful, inexpensive medicinal herb? As always, follow the money.

Clearly, the MMS and the AMA should be more concerned about the scientific proof, safety and efficacy of their doctors’ routine medical practices and prescribing habits.

The functioning of our democracy depends on an informed public given, as best possible, verifiable facts, not self-serving myths.

Peter May

North Adams, MA 01247

10-12-2012

Tribute to Jack LaLanne

My Tribute to Jack LaLanne

Jack LaLanne, ‘the founder of the modern fitness movement,’ died at the age of 96. He was a showman and a salesman. He was passionate in his message, and his message was spot on correct. It was a message of health.

In 1936 Jack LaLanne “opened the prototype for the fitness spas to come — a gym, juice bar and health food store — in an old office building in Oakland. The Jack LaLanne Show made its debut in 1951 as a local program in the San Francisco area, and then went nationwide on daytime television in 1959.”

Had Americans heeded his advice back then, and ignored the advice of their doctors and the AMA, we would have been a much healthier nation and tens of millions of lives would have been spared the devastation and death of the chronic lifestyle degenerative diseases of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and more.

According to Jack LaLanne, “the doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.” Oops. What an amazing, glaring, costly (in terms of disease, death and money) and self-serving ignorance of health that turned out to be a financial bonanza for the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex.

And this was far from the first, or last, time they have been so wrong. In fact, I refer to it as ‘creating the next generation of users’ (of medical/pharmaceutical care and insurance).

“Back in the 1930’s, the AMA played a role in establishing cigarettes as a popular product. The AMA helped develop, and then accepted in its journal, advertisements that made cigarettes appear to be a physician endorsed product.” In fact, in the 1940’s, cigarette makers regularly used ‘science’ and physicians in their ads to sell cigarettes. “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette,” "cool and soothing to the back of the throat"…fueling the rise of lung disease and death from emphysema and cancer. Oops.

The 1950’s brought the cholesterol scare. The combination of food industry and medical science and doctors began to scare people away from eating natural animal fats in favor of the synthetic trans fats vastly contributing to the rise of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and death over the subsequent decades. Oops.

And now, doctors are scaring people out of the sun in favor of the full-body application of chemical sunscreens for life, creating a pandemic of vitamin D deficiency. “Individuals with low levels of vitamin D appear to have a higher risk of death from all causes, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.” Oops.

Why is none of this surprising? What would you expect from an industry that focuses on, and profits from, disease and disease care; generating $2.6 trillion dollars in 2006 ($86,000/second), projected to be $4.3 trillion ($136,000/second) by 2017?

Jack LaLanne was a chiropractor. His message was/is the message of chiropractic health; that health is the innate set-point and possible throughout our lives if we safeguard and nurture it with proper exercise and nutrition…a simple, elegant, and irrefutable message. Why is it so hard for people to believe?

Worth watching. As they say, it harks back to a more innocent time.

Lies, Damned Lies and Advertising

Lies, Damn Lies & Advertising

Every word that I hold dear, as a chiropractor and health coach, has been misappropriated and destroyed by the marketing interests of corporations.

Words and phrases such as:

health, wellness, health care, heath screen, wellness fair, employee wellness-program, health care, health care reform, health insurance, etc. In our medical-pharmaceutical-insurance dominated world, the more accurate and truthful descriptions would substitute the word disease everywhere corporate marketers use the words health & wellness.

In short, marketing has destroyed our understanding and concepts of health and wellness, and thus, our actual health and wellness, for corporate profit.

Vis a vis: the photo. I took that photo at a Rite-Aide Pharmacy in New Jersey.

As if the word wellness even belongs in a pharmacy, let alone plastered above the words and products Tobacco on the left, Cigarettes on the right with their 'Stop Smoking Center' wedged in between. It is beyond a mixed message. It is subliminal advertising relating tobacco and cigarettes to wellness.

I guess the epitome of Wellness+ to them would be more kids like the one in this video. If they could do it here, they would.

Two-Year Old Toddler Smokes Cigarettes - Watch more Funny Videos