Charlotte's Web Used To Be A Children's Book

Sometimes those who write a lot search eagerly for inspiration. Charlotte is mine for today.

I met Charlotte Figi the same way a lot of people might have met her.  CNN and Dr. Sanjay Gupta's reported on a little girl who was severely suffering from seizure's from the beginning of her life, and had to find an alternative to all of the drugs that were not working to keep her from having any less than 300 seizures per day.

When the family made their way to a Colorado dispensary that had a grade of marijuana high in CBD (cannabidiol)- considered the medicinal part of marijuana- but low in THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the element that makes you high, the Figi's had found an option that they hoped would work.

It did.

Within no time at all, Charlotte's seizures were reduced to one per week and her brain functions slowly but surely began to improve- not degrade as is typically believed of marijuana, especially with young brains. Charlotte's update on the CNN special has my eyes clean of all dust and pollen in the air.  Not tears just from the improvement she enjoyed, but because the little girl that seizures were totally hiding has been revealed to two loving parents who are joyfully getting to know the daughter they were only hoping to save from the damage of seizures and typical seizure medicine.

Eventually, Charlotte ran that local shop out of the strain that they couldn't sell very well anyway since it doesn't get you high, so the Figi's had to research another answer for little Charlotte.  Enter the RoC (Realm of Caring) marijuana foundation in Colorado.  RoC, run by the Stanley family, had been growing a breed of high CBD marijuana that took YEARS to develop because of the generation it took to master the process of cross breeding, and the time it took to cross breed THC out of the plant.

Mostly, the cross breeding stuff has created a bunch of really high THC weed.  However, research into the effects of marijuana has also uncovered that CBD is not only medicinal, it is the activator of THC, thus nearly every plant has some percentage (usually very low) of the CBD which produces the euphoric effect of the drug.  Without getting you high- researcher's have discovered something believed to improve crippling medical conditions that run the gamut.

Domestic research might be in its infancy , but American doctors have discovered that Israel has been researching weed for years and are currently prescribing it for a wide list of conditions, with some excellent results in the area of PTSD. The expansive list of people who are able to rid themselves of a deadly pharmaceuticals in exchange of marijuana is something that any person who takes a cocktail of drugs, or loves someone who does, should look into.

Research has found a way to remove the psychoactive elements from marijuana, yet, the federal government still maintains a federal ban on marijuana, while simultaneously holding patent number 6630507, the trump card for turning marijuana into the medicine minus the puff that its become for so many.  Marijuana might be known to have many medicinal benefits, but it can't be patented as a plant, since all plants are natural and can be grown by anyone.  Extracting the valuable aspects of marijuana into a pill that would replace so many other pills comes with the risk of replacing so many other pills and the billions of dollars they generate.

To the credit of research, medicinal edible marijuana products are advancing rapidly, but without the support of the federal lead. Families desperate for answers for epileptic children or other medical challenges have to find high CBD weed and process it into oil all by themselves or move to medical marijuana states like Colorado and hope for help from Charlotte. (Recent laws have allowed for Charlotte's Web to be transported across certain state lines).

My oldest brother grew up with seizures, and hated the medication that was supposed to fix the problem too much to take it on the regular.  Over time, he seemed to get a little control over the seizures, but I remember him squirming and moving at times in a way that I can now connect back to the condition he suffered from.  Nobody knew of very many meds to deal with seizures during the 70' and 80's, but they damn sure knew weed.  How many epileptic people unknowingly found relief in marijuana is worthy of research?  Absent a consent from my big brother, I can only say that I think I know how he occasionally avoided the medication that he was supposed to take more often than he did.

What the 80's and street weed doesn't offer is a great way to determine species or grade, so some relief  becomes a lucky shake of the dice. With today's deliberate selling of known species of marijuana, even recreational smokers who shake uncontrollably from time to time, can choose a species of marijuana that deals with the shake and the gloom all in one puff.

DOES IT REALLY WORK?

If you need to really know what the government thinks about the potential for medical marijuana, read the details (below) of the patent that WE've owned since 2003, which describes something clearly valuable, justifying the worthiness of a patent.

God Bless you RoC and the Figi family for seeking an answer for Charlotte, and helping to spread her sticky icky web across the land.  Maybe one day this patent will be used to save lives and not to insure corporate stability in the pharmaceutical industry.

United States Patent	6,630,507
Hampson ,   et al.	October 7, 2003

**Please see images for: ( Certificate of Correction ) **

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Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants 

Abstract Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH.sub.3, and COCH.sub.3. ##STR1##

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Inventors:	Hampson; Aidan J. (Irvine, CA), Axelrod; Julius (Rockville, MD), Grimaldi; Maurizio (Bethesda, MD)
Assignee:	The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services (Washington, DC)
Family ID:	26767641

 

ObamaCare Causing Addictions Too? This Time The Rumors Might Be True.

Back in 2011 I wrote about the growing demand for prescription drugs because I was confused about the nature of the new aged drug dealers.  Here's how I began:   

I was listening to a report about the growing prescription drug addictions  and I found myself researching the problem.  I was curious about how we are able to fill the demand for this newest wave of growing addictions.  Are drug dealers actually waiting in line at the doctors office for a prescription?  There has to be a black market that allows these drugs to hit the street in a way other than waiting in a doctors office for a prescription?  Research will tell you that the street meds could be poor quality knock offs of  common prescription drugs produced by black market sources.  The conspiracy theorist in me says that may only be part of the real story. 

Fast forward to 2014 and the scene that appeared muddled has become way too clear a picture.  

A significant benefit of the Affordable Care Act may be the fact that it is now accessible to the people who could hardly afford it.  Several of them will be forced to cash in on the benefits soon.  As it turns out, the ACA has several cost saving measures, and the individual mandate is simply one of them.  Part of the health reform initiative has involved the systematic attack upon wasteful spending, especially federally funded spending such as medicare and medicaid.  

Not many people realize that one of the largest contributors to the rate of healthcare inflation has always been the impact of governmental extortion in healthcare.  In the past, billing guru's found ways to over bill medicare and medicaid for procedures that traditional insurance companies would pick and choose who to cover, or not.  Over time, all healthcare inflation took on a trajectory that the bilking of medicaid and medicare caused.

Several years ago, healthcare took a blow as federal mandates forced the hand of doctors who take medicaid by only paying set amounts for certain procedures.  This has forced many hospitals and doctors to rethink their acceptance of medicaid, but it has also forced the industry to reverse a trend that had several decades of momentum.  During the Obama administration, healthcare cost have risen at the lowest rate in decades, due in large part to the crackdown in medicaid billing.

The healthcare crackdown didn't stop there however.  In addition to the reduced payment procedure's, Obama had to instruct federal officials to begin tightening the noose on doctors who freely write prescriptions for patients.  Especially those addicted to oxycodone.  What I had not realized several years ago when I first wrote about the prescription drug epidemic was that doctors were in fact the pushers that made this epidemic expand.

So, what happens to an Oxy addict when the doctor who use to hook them up is under federal pressure to cut that crap out?  Enter the return of the dragon.  No, this is not a Bruce Lee sequel but a return of massive use of oxycodone's cheap alternative, heroine.

Heroine addictions are massively on the rise, and without another plausible explanation it appears that ObamaCare is the indirect cause of it all.  Not to be excluded are all of the doctors who were the original enablers to this problem, but they now have their hands full with the rise in heroine overdoses as a result of another shocking element to this story.

As if increased heroine addictions were not bad enough, today's heroine is not your garden variety heroine.  Apparently, today's heroine is likely to be laced with a synthetic opiate called fentanyl which is commonly used in operating room sedation only.  How this drug made its way to the black market has brought question and concern to doctors and state officials dealing  with the rising overdose trends related to laced heroine.

Absent some serious intervention, this problem is likely to get worse before it gets better because our drug enforcement efforts are sorely lacking sufficient education and prevention. Primarily, we put most of our counter efforts on incarceration and law enforcement, both legitimate industries that our economy depends on as well.

Sadly, while we think we are profiting from the direct and indirect revenue that addictions create, all that we have to show for it is a circle of money that sustains the status quo.  The crook steals the money to feed their addiction while their addiction funds the doctors who treats them for a day or the jailer who locks them up for a week.  When they hit the street, the cycle begins again.

Addictions: America’s Economic Prescription_vol.1

Famous Celebrity Addicts                           READ MORE

Addictions: America’s Economic Prescription__vol2 (produced Nov. 2011)

Today that same voracious monster has placed its hands into the world of Medical Marijuana which has seen the rapid rise in Medical Marijuana dispensaries in states that have de-criminalized the prescribed use of marijuana.  Federal law enforcement has stated clearly that it will not intervene in this matter at a state level clearing the way for states to tax the distribution of it.  Since this defies federal laws, is it not simply an issue of revenue that has moved the Feds out of the way? 

When it comes to our moral framework, it is becoming increasingly clear that cash is king.  Even though we may not freely allow the direct exploitation of our children, they are often indirect victims of the sanctioning  that occurs as we collect  taxes for things that many people do not have the ability to engage in responsibly. 

 Some would say that obesity is killing just as many people as these deadly addictions, why not get rid of potato chips?  Food is one addictive item that we do not implement any age restrictions  on.  Human beings can become as addicted to food as they do to endorphins if you jog a lot.  Addictions of all types can be seen as simply a part of our nature, so how do we go about changing our nature?

Do we have the integrity to live without 

the revenues of addiction….putting 100% 

of that tax revenue into rehabilitation and prevention education?

 

    

Since we may never find a way to change an addicted society, the question becomes whether we care to wage a war on drugs and addictions while enjoying the tax benefits that they bring.  The question is whether we have the integrity to live without those tax dollars as a statement against what they represent, or commit 100% of the tax revenue from our addicted world to  rehabilitation and education  against addictions.  It is simply disingenuous to claim a concern for deadly and dangerous addictions while counting the cash from the revenues that these industries generate. 

     We’ve decided that it is better to collect money from these engines of death instead of letting  them have it all to themselves.  Is it not a form of blood money  to tax the industries of addiction?  A dirty cop shake down?  Sometimes it feels that way to me.  

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Addictions: America’s Economic Prescription_vol.1

ObamaCare Causing Addictions Too? This Time The Rumors Might Be True.