Now this really is a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, I’m thrilled to see that a study documenting the anti-cancer properties of cannabinoids is finally receiving some mainstream media attention.

On the other hand, I’m disappointed that its coverage is limited to a British tabloid that is better known for running anti-pot propaganda like this:

Cannabis killer knifed neighbour 100 times
via Metro.co.uk

A mentally ill man driven to violent frenzies by cannabis was sentenced to life yesterday for stabbing a man 100 times.

… Kashmiri, 50, of Tooting, south London, sexually assaulted the woman at her south London home in June, 2006, and returned five nights later to attack her.

… Kashmiri, whose violent episodes are triggered by cannabis, denied murder but admitted manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.  

Of course, I’m accustomed to reading “Reefer Madness” in the British press.

But I’m less accustomed to reading “Reefer Madness” when it comes from the mouth of an established medi-pot researcher like Dr. Wai Man Liu.

Cannabis may help the war on cancer
via Metro.co.uk

Cannabis could be used to treat many forms of cancer, new research suggests.

The drug contains an ingredient which slows tumour growth and prevents the reproduction of cancer cells, doctors say.

Its effects are seen in all cancers but particularly in those of the lung and brain, and leukaemia, it is claimed.

But scientists warned against smoking the drug, saying the only safe version was that created in the lab.

Researcher Dr Wai Man Liu said: ‘I’m in no way encouraging people to take up smoking the ganja – there would be more harm than good.’

Previous research has shown cannabis-based medicines can help cancer patients as a painkiller, appetite stimulant and in reducing nausea.

The drug has also long been used by multiple sclerosis and arthritis sufferers to reduce pain.

Its medicinal benefits come from the main active ingredient, THC. The latest research, by St George’s University of London, shows that THC can weaken cancer cells to make traditional chemotherapy more effective.

Dr Liu said: ‘It’s another weapon against the armour of cancer. We are quite close but need to jump through certain hoops. I believe it could be used in two to three years.’

Dr Joanna Owens, from Cancer Research UK, said the latest studies were encouraging but needed to be followed up with more trials. She added: ‘Making cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy or radiotherapy is a great concept but it is still early days.’  

Having recently lost friends and family members to cancer, including one to leukemia, I can inform Dr. Liu that such a diagnosis — even when treated with standard radiation and chemotherapy — is a death sentence. For Dr. Liu to advise, with a straight face no less, that these patients would do “more harm than good” by smoking cannabis is a disgrace. Not only can cannabis alleviate cancer patients’ nausea and pain, elevate their mood, and increase their appetite, but also — as Dr. Liu’s own data demonstrates — it may help to alleviate the very disease that’s ravaging their bodies. Nevertheless, I suppose that Dr. Liu would rather have these patients shut up and die than expose the political hypocrisy surrounding criminalizing a plant.

Finally, as for Dr. Liu’s idyllic estimate that his pharmaceutically-approved pot-based anti-cancer drugs will be available in “two to three years,” don’t hold your breath (or, if you already have cancer, try not to die in the interim). I’m sure that these investigators made similar proclamations when they documented pot’s anti-cancer properties — in 1975!

Yet here we are 38 years later and the only ‘progress’ we’ve made on this issue is in the wrong direction — having moved from investigating the plant’s anti-cancer potential in animals to cells in vitro in a petri dish! Thank you Dr. Liu; now kindly get out of my sight.

For over a decade now I’ve been telling folks that compounds in cannabis can selectively target and kill malignant cancer cells. It seems like some media outlets finally starting to get the message.

Today, the good folks at HuffingtonPost.com published my latest essay on the subject, “What Your Government Knows About Cannabis And Cancer — And Isn’t Telling You.”

Since the Huffington Post is an online medium, I made it a point to include nearly a dozen links to pertinent research and clinical/pre-clinical trials demonstrating that cannabinoids possess anti-cancer properties.

Fortunately, in the past 10 years scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells — including prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and brain cancer. (An excellent paper summarizing much of this research, “Cannabinoids for Cancer Treatment: Progress and Promise,” appears in the January 2008 edition of the journal Cancer Research.) A 2006 patient trial published in the British Journal of Cancer even reported that the intracranial administration of THC was associated with reduced tumor cell proliferation in humans with advanced glioblastoma.

For most visitors to the Huffington Post, my essay will be their first exposure to this information, but ideally, not their last. Hopefully, readers of the site — which is one of the most visited on the Internet — will join us in our calls to end the US government’s multi-decade long denial of this potentially groundbreaking research.

You can read the full text of my essay here.

Please feel free to leave a comment and/or circulate this article widely (Digg it, reddit, buzz up, etc.) My last Huff Post essay, “Don’t Buy The ‘Potent Pot’ Hype,” received nearly 100 comments, a personal response from the Drug Czar’s office, and earned me a guest spot on Dr. Drew Pinsky’s live nationally syndicated radio show. That said, in my opinion, the government’s cover-up of pot’s anti-cancer abilities is a far more important topic; hopefully we can get a similar buzz started.

PS: Those interested in learning more about this topic can download an audio file of my recent guest appearance on the radio show, “Sex, Drugs, and Civil Liberties,” (KOPN: Columbia, Missouri) here.

I’m proud to be a guest on this week’s edition of KPFT’s Century of Lies radio program to discuss the therapeutic use of cannabis and the federal government’s multi-decade campaign to suppress research documenting its clinical utility. You can listen to the radio show online here.

You can also watch a separate interview with me discussing the anti-cancer properties of pot, and join the ongoing discussion on Alternet.org here.

Forgive me if the headline above sounds slightly exploitive. My intention is not to piggyback on a personal tragedy, but I did want to get your attention.

In the fourteen years I’ve worked in marijuana law reform, few events have struck me as so needlessly tragic as the federal government’s consistent and deliberate stifling of medical cannabis research. Nowhere is the Feds’ refusal to allow this science more overt and inhumane than as it pertains to the investigation of cannabinoids as anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of gliomas.

As noted in today’s wire stories regarding Senator Edward Kennedy’s diagnosis, glioma is an aggressive form of cancer that affects an estimated 10,000 Americans annually. Standard treatments for the cancer include radiation and chemotherapy, though neither procedure has proven particularly effective — with the disease killing approximately half its victims within one year and all within three years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells in tact? And what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but deliberately withheld this information from the public?

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Smoking pot, even long-term, is not associated with an increased risk of developing cancers of the head and neck, according to the results of a just-published case-control study from New Zealand.  

“This population-based study did not find a statistically significant increase in the risk of head and neck cancer in adults [under age 55] from cannabis,” authors concluded. “[Even] the risk associated with the highest tertile of cannabis use (defined as one joint per day for more than eight years) was not statistically significant after adjustment for cofounding variables including tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, and level of income.”

So for the second month in a row we have researchers from New Zealand telling us that pot smoking has little-to-no association with cancer. But perhaps you missed the first study. That would be understandable because the mainstream media deliberately obscured its findings with alarmist headlines like “Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Cigarettes” and “Experts Warn of Cannabis Cancer ‘Epidemic’” — headlines that, in fact, were nearly the opposite of what the study actually said.

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Longtime NORML Board Member and cancer survivor Norman Kent reflects on his 40+ years as a cannabis activist and enthusiast here.

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You can listen to host Dean Becker and I debunk the latest marijuana myths regarding potency, cancer risk, driving, and a plethora of other issues on the February 6 edition of the syndicated radio show Cultural Baggage.

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International media headlines reporting that heavy marijuana smokers have a six-fold risk of coming down with lung cancer are, predictably, a whole lot of hot air.

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