Cannabis (seeing through the smoke): The New Science of Cannabis and Your Health

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Ideally, skeptics can work with true believers to advocate for safe practices, many of which most of us can agree upon, such as avoiding cannabis during pregnancy and breastfeeding (except under certain very narrow circumstances), before driving, and during adolescence. There are certainly benefits that we can all agree upon, such as using cannabis to treat chronic pain and insomnia. We do better when we work together. This book looks at four aspects of cannabis. It tells the history of cannabis, where it came from and how it became illegal. Then it talks about how cannabis works and what it does to the brain and body. Then it looks at how cannabis, which for thousands of years with the medicine, suddenly became illegal. The last section talks about how to minimise the harms of cannabis. Allow hospitals to allow inpatients to use medical cannabis so they don’t have to either withdraw from cannabis in the hospital, use it surreptitiously, or interrupt their care regimens. (This doesn’t mean smoking or vaping in a hospital.)

Pursue research that isn’t based on any corporate or political agenda and which isn’t biased in either direction.Dr. Grinspoon is a widely recognized expert on cannabis science and drug policy. He regularly appears as an expert on national television and radio programs, including NPR’s All Things Considered, NBC Nightly News, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Fox and Friends and Fox News. He is quoted frequently in the national media, in such venues as People, the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune,and the Boston Globe.He is a TEDX speaker. An unflinching and utterly personal journey through the often-confusing cannabis landscape.Readers will delight in the historical as well as the scientific focus brought to life by Grinspoon, whose roots and professional experience provide a unique and fascinating perspective. Seeing through the Smoke has something for everyone – from the novice to the expert and everyone in between with an interest in cannabis.”– Staci Gruber, MD, Director of Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School NIH Central Resource for Grants and Funding Information, “Notice of Information: Establishment of a Standard THC Unit to be used in Research” (2021). Available at: https://bit.ly/3X0zecj

Peter Grinspoon is an ex-addict, marijuana enthusiast, and cannabis prescribing physician with a professional and moral obligation to know and tell the truth about cannabis’ relationship to driving, pregnancy, psychosis, autism, addiction, sleep, cancer, and much more.Never before have I read such an engaging and accessible review of the evidence.”– Ethan Nadelmann, founderand former executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance

A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth about Marijuana

Chapter 4, “Doctors and the War on Drugs,” brands this MD as a heretic within his courtly profession. Nevertheless, he is respectful of and circumspect about his medical colleagues’ ignorance or skepticism regarding cannabis as a therapeutic herb. He lays blame mostly on the institutional bias of the old school medical schools whose curriculums are still teaching politically motivated falsehoods. In the United States, the falsehoods were propagandized during the losing War on Drugs waged by the Nixon administration, then were escalated into the lost War on Weed waged by the Reagan administration, and under the present Biden administration are still soldiered on by diehards and holdovers within the DEA, the FDA, and NIDA. If your own doctors plead ignorance about medical marijuana, bestow upon them copies of this book. If you must be thrifty, then make them photocopies of just Chapters 4 and 22. The Reefer Pessimists must forget, or at least contextualize, much of what they have learned because so much of this knowledge was manufactured with an agenda (if not flat-out fabricated) by the dictates of the War on Drugs. This led to unrealistically negative beliefs and a lot of unhelpful mythology (e.g., breasts, sperm, I.Q.). The cynicism regarding cannabis from the War on Drugs, along with vastly lopsided funding into purported harms (but not into potential benefits), created an echo chamber of presumed negativity and flat-out dismissiveness, which continues to artifactually distort and obscure continuing explorations into the true nature of cannabis. Regulate CBD and other minor/new cannabinoids (e.g., CBN, THCV, delta 8 THC) in a coherent and helpful way, not like we are currently doing. We need to regulate the production of these products, not permit them as “supplements” without any control over their manufacturing or safety/benefit claims. Provide neutral education on harms that are credible and believable, given without judgment, exaggeration, or stigma. Grinspoon’s Harvard Health articles have reached tens of millions of readers, have been widely referenced in the national media, and have been cited in congressional testimony. His writing has been published in The Nation , the Los Angeles Times and Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics .

S Ortiz-Peregrina et al., “Effects of cannabis on visual function and self-perceived visual quality,” 11, 1655 (2021). PMID: 33462319. Stop making cannabis into tasty edibles, chocolates, or candies that any small child (or pet) would happily overconsume. A Passani et al., “Cannabinoids in glaucoma patients: the never-ending story,” J Clin Med, 9, 3978 (2020). PMID: 33302608. Opinion on cannabis, particularly medical cannabis, is broadly positive. Ninety-four percent of Americans are in favor of legal access to medical marijuana. Can you name any other issue about which 94 percent of Americans agree? Can you even imagine it? I’m not sure that 94 percent of Americans believe the earth is round, that we actually landed on the moon, or that the sky is blue. My one gripe is that at times it does feel somewhat like an extended advertorial for Drug Science, a UK based drugs advisory body and research organisation founded by Nutt in the aftermath of his infamous dismissal from the chairmanship of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009.Program of Neurosciences, Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA), University of Navarra, Pamplona 31008, Spain; Department of Biochemistry and Genetics, School of Science, University of Navarra, Pamplona 31008, Spain. After completing his medical training at Guy's Hospital London, continuing in neurology to MRCP, he went on to his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA. On returning to England in 1988 he set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol University, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology before moving to Imperial College London in December 2008 where he leads a similar group with a particular focus on brain imaging especially PET. Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Neuroscience Research Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.