Marijuana: Excellent, Effective Replacement for Lethal Opiates and Opioids

(PORTLAND, Ore.) - It is daunting to try to write an article like this when the references go back about 5,000 years to 2700 BC, when Cannabis/Marijuana was written up in Chinese medical texts. If I make some errors, please do not be too tough on me.

Cannabis/Marijuana (C/MJ) was introduced into western medicine about 1840 when Dr. William Brooke O'Shaughnessy (1809-1889) brought it to England from India. Actually, Roman emperor Nero's surgeon Dioscorides in 70 AD praises Cannabis for its medical properties.

For us, in Europe and America, must rely on O'Shaughnessy's work although it is possible that Columbus brought it to America in 1492 because Spain was an Arab colony where Cannabis was used.

By 1545 the Spanish brought it to South America. There was a lot of use of it from China westwards through the Arab countries including Spain.

In 1564, King Philip of Spain ordered Cannabis to be grown throughout his empire including Argentina north to what is now Oregon.

Cannabis was grown in the kitchen gardens of George Washington and Jefferson, and one must presume that it went from the garden to the kitchen table.

After O'Shaughnessy's medicine was introduced to the United States in the next 50 years, hundreds of medical articles were written about its medical benefits. Those benefits are still true today.

To make clear to those with minimal knowledge of those benefits, the successful treatments are mostly for pain, muscular spasms and nausea, but C/MJ is very good treatment for the following:

Arthritis, Spasms, Migraines, Fibromyalgia, PMS, Chronic pain, Depression, Asthma, Insomnia, Neuropathy and probably many more conditions.

I wrote my first article about C/MJ treatment for pain about August 2009 titled, “MJ/C for Pain” in Salem-News.com. It had only 23 facebook “recommends”, but the article was one of the first in a series which continues to this day. My next article was “Marijuana: Miracle Pain Killer Better than Opiates” Nov 2010, which had 2,800 recommends. My next article was March 2011 titled, “Pain Therapy and the Paramount Pain Killer Marijuana”, which had only 45 recommends.

The article compared marijuana to about 20 different pain killers, and asserted that marijuana was better than all of the others. The article was based on an article from TIME. TIME's article was a severe disappointment.

My next article titled, “Medical Marijuana: The best and safest pain killer compared to Oxycontin” in January 2012 had 332 recommends, which was a surprise considering the extreme lethality with thousands of deaths every year.

I next wrote “Marijuana: The Best, Safest Pain Killer” March 2013 which garnered 1600 recommends and asserted that marijuana was better and safer than most opiates and opioids.

The New York Times printed an article about the perils and lethality of the NSAIDS such as aspirin and Tylenol. I wrote that medical marijuana for headache (was) safer and less toxic than the NSAIDS. I was surprised that I only had 54 recommends on this one.

Because mainstream media was constantly degrading marijuana as a pain killer, I decided to haul out the heavy artillery. My next article July 2013, “I wrote “Marijuana Cures Methadone and Heroin Addiction” it got 4,200 recommends. Some people decried my title of “cure”, but I got the point across.

The opiates, Morphine Oxycontin and Hydrocodone (Vicodin) are more potent than marijuana as a pain killer but they are dangerously lethal and kill thousands of patients each year.

The opioids, Methadone, Fentanyl, and Demerol in general are about as potent as the opiates above, but they are also dangerously lethal.

I base my arguments about the relative safety and effectiveness of marijuana in contrast tio the horrible adverse effects of both the potent opiates and opioids.

I had about 5,000 legal medical marijuana patients at least 70% needed marijuana for pain, and in their previous medical histories they had been given about a dozen strong narcotics such as the opiates and opioids mentioned above which cause a variety of well known adverse effects.

Most patients were able to completely replace these opiates and opioids with marijuana and the rest were able to strongly reduce the opiate and opioid use by using marijuana concurrently.

The statistics from the Oregon medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) show that Oregon has about 60,000 legal medical marijuana patients and 90% use marijuana for pain. The figures for Oregon are not much different than any of the other states. In most states, about 70% or more are pain patients successfully using marijuana.