How Medical Marijuana Works

a pretty important issue. Uh, medical marijuana. We've spoken for about the potential health benefits a plenty of other drugs, ecstasy, LSD, psilocybin, mushrooms. I feel like it's high time. Did you do that on purpose? Sadly not interesting that we did medical marijuana. This article had a couple of those little puns that I thought were one strain of research man that silverman thought he was so funny for getting that in there and just like freaking the man out. So where do

we start? Do you have an intro? No? I don't have an intro. I feel like this, uh, this subject itself needs no intro. It's using pot marijuana for medicinal purposes, and apparently there is a pretty extensive body of research showing that it does in fact help, that seven hundred and thirty thousand UH people who have grave diseases and illnesses aren't really just faking so they can smoke pot,

that the stuff is helping. UM. There's a lot of diseases that Jacob Silverman lists that this UM that medical marijuana has been shown to howl with. Do you know what they are? You recite them in alphabetical order. Well,

I have two lists UM. The list in the article says nausea, especially chemotherapy, nausea, loss of appetite, chronic pain, anxiety, arthritis, cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, MS or multiple sclerosis, insomnia, A d H D epilepsy, inflammation, migraines, Crohn's disease, and if you're terminally ill, to improve your quality of life. This is a list on the sign outside of the Cush Doctor at Venice Beach, California. And there's a lot more things on this list. Do you

suffer from? UM? They also include in here sickle cell anemia, UM, psychiatric disorders basically anything autoimmune, sleep, disorders, and it says, I think either sleeplessness or too sleepy? Does it say that? Yeah? Um? Any any well? At list about twenty more things, and then at the bottom it says, or any chronic or persistent medical symptom. Write anything fingernail hurt right now. So that's what the cush doctor will And that is an actual I'm not just making that up at Venice speech.

I saw the picture. It says, cush doctor, and um, you can go in there with your little card and get you some pot. So what you've just gotten at is the heart of this problem. Like there is plenty of legitimate, bona fide medical research that shows that marijuana does help ease symptoms. It does a special double weighamy on people who are nauseated and don't have any appetite, which is a terrible symptom of several diseases, cancer AIDS.

So you have this part of the medical establishment saying yes, pot helps, and then you have the drug warriors, the d e A, lots of US district attorneys, plenty of the square Americans, um saying now it's a drug, and um, there's gonna be plenty of guys like the cush doctor who are just gonna sell it to anybody they can and use any medical marijuana laws that you enact as a shield to operate criminally from behind, like don't don't take that drug. So um. For a long time, the

medical marijuana idea has been taken up by states. It's been a state's rights issue also, um. But the federal government apparently was the first ones to ever legalize um or sell or supply legal medical marijuana from a program that ran from nineteen seventy. UM. It kind of petered out in the states, starting with California really took up the cause. Yeah, for a while, they did not sit

very well, especially during the Bush years. That did not sit well with the federal government, and the Feds used to routinely raid uh legitimate uh medical pot dispensaries that were operating within the letter of state law because federal law supersede state law. So the d A can read you anytime they want, because according to the federal government, pots still a drug. It doesn't matter what your state says,

right right. UM. With Obama, he came into office saying, you know what, I'm not going to waste the resources of the d O j on cracking down on legal pot operations. Yeah, that was in two thousand nine, um and memo. Yeah, and things really launched after that, like more states pass legislation and more dispensaries like in l A. At the time, after that passed, they say there could have been up to a thousand dispensaries in l A proper, but then they and said no, it was more like six.

But what happened recently, well, UM, the the head of the d A, UM, a woman named Michelle Leonhardt was She was appointed by Bush and Obama reappointed her and shortly after her reappointment, she rewrote the d a's position on medical marijuana, saying like no, it's a drug and we're gonna go after it. And her, let's see leon Hart with the help of the district attorney no USA U S attorney UM by less name of Hague. I

can't remember first name, Melissa Hague maybe she Um. She started basically prosecuting we're sending sending the d e A to medical dispensaries, and everything just totally changed, like it just went backwards by years when it looked like it was all about to change. Yeah, and um, the media and especially the liberal media have held Obama's feet to the fire, and they're like, dude, what is up with this reversal? And um, isn't this probably just election year

campaign strategy And they're like, no, it's not a reversal. Really, it's sort of the same as it always was. Really but not really No, And apparently with so this is um. Chuck and I both thread a really good article called um Obama's Warm Pot in Rolling Stone. It's very thorough. Um. But the the there there has basically been a step up in the way that medical marijuana and the people who use it and prescribe it are being treated by

the federal government. Um. With there there's been a hundred raids so far, at least a hundred rates carried out under Obama's watch. So if it keeps if it keeps up with this pace, then um, he will be worse than Bush as far as medical marijuana raids. Uh. And this one guy, Rob Campia, who was executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said that Obama is the worst president on medical marijuana. Crazy. It is just totally crazy because that's not what he said during the campaign. And Uh,

the I don't know, no what need astorney. I'm one of the residents of Colorado that was campaigning hard to you know, to keep this going against Obama even though he voted for him, said he needs to watch it because quote, medical marijuana is twice as popular as he is. So he says he's already lost that vote no matter what happens. So we'll see how this shakes down, all right. So, uh,

California has been studying this since about two thousand. In earnest um, they were given about nine million bucks to do genuine medical research on the effectiveness of marijuana for different usually pain causing and nausea causing diseases. And um. It's always been hard to do these studies though, because the federal government, if they're gonna give you money, they're gonna regulate like where the pot comes from. And this

at the time was that you see San Diego. They would only let them get it from one place, one source, and then they would visit them. Federal agents would in uh the Medical Cannabis Research Center to verify that it was kept in a vault that was bolted to the floor, so they would, you know, they want to come by and make sure they were all sitting around smoking joints and like playing ping pong. You guess which I mean. I guess if you are kind of hung up on

testing with medical marijuana, that's cool. That's your right to drop by and make sure that everything is here and it's not being Yeah, I'm not liking that. Um. The federal government started, like like the the head of the Bureau of Alcohol to back on firearms. Then a lighter to firearms dealers saying it's um, it's illegal to sell

afire are armed to a person addicted to marijuana. So if you are, if you are receiving medical cannabis, you just had your Second Amendment right strip from your banks are worried about getting prosecuted for money laundering by dealing with dispensaries medical marijuana dispensaries. So now it's starting to go to a cash only I eat, more dangerous business for prone to robberies and tax evasion. It's just like

definitely going backwards, huge huge steps backwards. It's crazy, and by backwards, I should say, if you're pro medical marijuana, sure, let's talk about why um pot might help. Okay, th HC is in um it's a cannaba cannabinoid in marijuana, and that's what makes you feel high, and it's also where you find your medicinal properties. They're all locked in there together because we produce our own cannabinoids in the

form of indo cannabinoids naturally. Yes, so we have endocannabinoid receptors, right, an abinoid, Yeah, cannabinoid. I like the way you said, it's kind of pleasing phenomena UM in our body. And when they are when they receive something, when something is recepted to them, uh, they release things like pain relievers, reduced anxiety. It has a whole just a whole lot of effects on us mood, memory, appetite. Well, it has

a negative impact on memory. I think, well, it's it's just to regulates these responses whether or not there makes you sleepy or hungry or not. So with some with some diseases, UM, this combination of UM introducing THHC to the ENDO can now I can't say it correctly. Endocannabinoid receptor UM results in increased appetite, results in UM lesson muscle spasms. If you have multiple sclerosis, UM or if you're quadriplegic, UM results in just a greater outlook a

sense of well being if you're dying. All these things that have been studied and document it is actually working. I got one for you. Uh. They did a study in mice that showed that the cannabinoids may protect against development of certain types of tumors, both benign and cancerous. And not only that, listen to this. It appears to kill only the tumor cells and may even protect the healthy cells from cell death. That is some pot That's

pretty rad. That's all I'm saying. So on the other hand, you've got people saying, Okay, all right, I'm going to take the medical establishment at face value, and um say, yes, THHD hit your endocannabinoid receptors and produces it alleviates a lot of symptoms of certain diseases. Can we just not come up with something that doesn't get you high? And uh, some drug companies have been like, yes we can, and they introduced um shiny black pills called marian All, which

is synthetic THHC. Josh, I have had a Marino pill? Really did it? Did it alleviate your symptoms? Uh? It was a very mild thing, to be honest. And this was this was many years ago when I was living in Los Angeles. But um, yes, I've had a marinal pill, and it's did you get it from Dr Couch? Now I didn't. But it is funny how you just pointed out because that kind of debated off air. I was like,

should I say that I've had a marinal pill. We're like, well, yeah, it's an FDA proved drug, Like you can say that, but you can't say, yeah, I smoked pot and not get you know, the cross side stairs. Sure, it's just interesting, Yeah it is. That's I guess that's at the heart of all this. It's kind of like this this drug, the synthetic drug, yeah, uh, that you can get through a prescription right and go to your pharmacy and they'll

give it to you. Um, you can have that, but this this drug gros in the ground, right, Yeah, that actually works better than this other drug, the synthetic version of it, supposedly. That's the big um complaint against marian all is that it's like it's a synthetic teaching, but it's lacking some really important parts. Yeah, well, and it

absolutely is lacking. I mean chemically it's it's lacking. But um, but you can't have that and I'm really reminded of this, Like this is where like witches and doctors came from from the struggle of like the I guess some Middle Ages, so where science was really starting to kind of come about and um, to basically maintain a foothold or create a foothold for itself over Western society, it had to get rid of its rivals, which were um traditional healers

who very quickly became witches and outcasts and were ostracized as backward and possibly even evil. So don't go to them, come to me, because I'm the guy with the beat on. We can protect you from the plague. Look at you, Arthur Miller. But isn't that Isn't that kind of analogous? Yeah? I think so. Um. There's also, uh, that's very astute, Josh,

thank you. Um. There's also a tv X which is um a pain reliever, and it is actually an extract of real marijuana administered by spray and I think they have that's in England, Spain, and Canada, and it's in trials here in the US. Yeah, so that's not synthetic, that's actually an extract. Yeah. I'll bet everybody who uses it goes oh, I can't. I don't feel any pain, but you might as well just use this. Uh what's

the stuff you spray when you have tonsillitis? Oh? Yeah, might as well just use superl That's not the one I was thinking of, though, is the uh so, Like you said, most experts agree that mare and all um and it's at vax actually in clinical riles show to have less of an effect than actual the marijuana plant itself. But the d e A points out t S this is what this is legal that and they make a pretty good point here that um may and all is the THHC what morphine is to opium. Like, yeah, you

might need morphine. We're not gonna tell you it's okay to go smoke opium for your pain. There's morphine. Go use the morphine. It's legal, it's regulated, it's taxed, and it's not gonna get you landed in jail unless you get your hands on it illegally. So the Feds are the ones who are definitely blocking this right now. UM this I should say in in a lot of states, there's eighteen states, including d C that have UM laws on the books that say, yeah, man, you you we've

got legalized medical marijuana to some degree. Yeah, and Oregon is the king Daddy of medical marijuana. California was Yeah, I mean there's probably more dispensaries and things like that. But in Oregon you are allowed to possess up to twenty four ounces of you what they call usable marijuana, or twenty four plants um, six of which can be mature, eighteen of which can be immature, which means they're like flowering, budding plants. They were Jeane jackets. So Washington's right behind them.

You can possess twenty four ounces or fifteen plants, and uh not surprisingly, there are no states in the Southeast, and Michigan is the only state in the Midwest. Uh So yeah, in these in these Bible Belt areas, you're not finding any pro marijuana medical marijuana states going on and insert your own Detroit joke here. Uh we should. Yeah, we don't have to read through just all those other hippie states plus Iowa in New Jersey. Yeah, that's so

surprised thing have them Maryland. The thing is, though, is a lot of these, like you said, a lot of them rushed to um get laws on the books. Delaware. I think Delaware just wanted to be like he remember us, we're really a state. UM, but a lot of them have backed off, like Rhode Islands UM Governor Lincoln Chaffee is a vocal supporter of medical marijuana and a big critic of the federal government for using like goon squad

tactics to like fight it and basically over rule state law. UM. But even he's back down because federal prosecutors have been like, hey, don't make us come after your your state employees who are running these these dispensaries, because we'll put him in jail and they can do it. Thirty four states, Josh, have UM laws passed that recognized marijuana as having medical value, and I think New Mexico was the first one actually in the oh yeah, yeah, even before California and UM. However,

you know, you know how these laws go. It's like the gay marriage laws. It's like it's legal and then it's repealed, and then it's legal, and then it's repealed and you can do it here, and now you can't. So there's been a lot of back and forth over the years with the states. UH, sort of on a roller coaster that duke in it out with the federal government. Interesting. So, um, let's talk about California. Let's take California as a state. Yeah,

I love that place. I love California. So California is I think they were the first state with legal medical marijuana, right, I think so. I think it's properly to fifteen. Uh. And they said, hey, if you have a doctor's recommendation, because we should point out there's no doctor that can legally prescribe marijuana, because exactly if you walk into your local drug store, they'll be like, get out of here. We got marrin all. You want some of that, but

we don't have any pot. Um. So a doctor can recommend it in a state where you have legal medical marijuana, that it can say, I doctor feel good, UH, say that Chuck Bryant uh suffers from glaucoma and to relieve the interocular eye pressure associated with his condition, I recommend

that he um use medicinal marijuana. And then that's that signed Dr Kush right, and you, being a medical pot recipient, would keep that letter on you at all times, depending on if you were in California, which also passed the supplemental um law, saying you know what this is, you can lose your doctor's note or whatever. So let's just

issue I D cards to people who have a doctor's recommendation. Uh, if you have an ID card or doctor's recommendation, you can grow and you can um buy pot and possess yeah, and ostensibly use it. You know what Senate bill that was, yes, I do. Can you believe it? I could not believe it. Two thousand three. Um, they passed Senate Bill four twenty in California which um stipulated the cards and um that you could have eight ounces of usable marijuana, six mature plants,

or twelve imager plants. Senate bill. That's crazy is that the two thous three bill? Okay? Um, apparently even more than that. The state said, by the way, uh, let's take this down to the county level. You counties, if you feel like you want to expand upon this, go ahead. So some counties have been like sure, Like the Humboldt is one that definitely expanded the amounts that you can have in the situations in which it's not. Okay, boy, I had some Humboldt fog two days ago. What cheeze,

it's cheese. But it sounds like marijuana doesn't it does. And now that you mentioned that, I think I've had that before too. Is really like yummy blue cheese. Um. And we got some of the store down the street. But I laughed, Emily, I was like, it always cracks me up because some both Fox sounds like one of those marijuana streams. It definitely does. Yeah, you got me with that one. You're like, you can't say that, chuck. Uh so if you so. California also has um what's

called a caregiver law. Yeah. A caregiver is somebody who basically takes care of you if you're sick, right. Uh. In California, a caregiver can also refer to a person who supplies medical marijuana to people who have docutors recommendations. Right. Um, It's like your grandmother has glaucoma, she didn't know where to score, right, So you could be her caregiver and get this for her, or you can be the guy

who's growing it for her. Right. Did you ever see the Curb your Enthusiasm where Larry got pot for his dad. He got medical marijuanta for his dad because he had I think it was glaucoma, And he smoked with him and showed him how to do it and everything, and like went in the bathroom and freaked out. It was pretty funny. Yeah, and the whole buying process. So it was the guy from Lost. Hurley from Lost was the pot dealer. It was really really funny. It was good.

Oh yeah, did you ever see the Mr. Show sketch about medical marijuana. The pharmacist who has the brownies? Yeah, yeah, and he always wants to play like the music he recorded on his four track Yeah for everybody. Well, it's it's funny. You mentioned that though, because at some of these dispensaries, um, you can buy things like brownies and butter and cookies and smoothies and yeah, because not everybody

wants to smoke pot. Who has a medical cannabis exactly? Okay, so you have a recommended and you have a caregiver that you go to, and the caregiver, um, so this is where it gets really cloudy. They the Feds don't go after patients, even during the Bush years um and now which is worse than the Bush years. Um. They they have never gone after patients. It's basically, don't go

after patients. Caregivers used to be protected, but because caregiver is also basically synonymous for pot dealer in medical marijuana states that that's no longer you're if you are one of those caregivers who's really like spending your You live with your elderly grandmother and you're taking care of her, and she has medical marijuana that she takes and you go get it for you're in jeopardy now too, because a lot of these operations have gotten very, very big,

and though they may be bona fide and legitimate, they may not be making any profit, which is part of the law. Um, they are considered caregivers rather than like dispensaries or anything like that. So that's what's clouded the issue. You that's where a lot of the protections for regular

people who are caregivers are being stripped away. It got out of hand and it was people like Dr Cush sprung up and all of a sudden there were dispensaries that weren't co ops where you have actually members growing the weed for the co op. That's just say weed stead of marijuana, medical weed, medical weed. Um. They supposedly a lot of them were buying it illegally, making profit off of it and kind of screwed it up. For the legitimate ones. It is a cloudy issue. That's where

we're at right now. Basically, it sounds like some there were either um, some groups who just want pro or decriminalization of marijuana altogether, who were using this issue to just force it through, hammer it through, or probably more realistically, there were just a bunch of hoot dealers who found like a lot a very easy cuss immers by supplying these co ops. Americans, by and large, if you believe poles, are in favor of medical marijuana for people who really

need it. Um CBS News did a poll last year UM seventy seven percent of Americans thought doctors should be allowed to prescribe it for serious illness. And there was a gallop pole in two thousand and ten UM that said, do you favor or oppose to reduce to allow medical marijuana just to reduce pain and suffering for people with disease, and seventy were proc said oh, and three percent said no,

absolutely not. So it's pretty pretty low percentage. And again we're pointing out this is for people who need it for their disease. It's not to be confused with pot legalization for recreation. Two different things did you know that the v A in two thousand and ten, I believe UM said that recommended cannabis, medical cannabis for soldiers returning home them. What for PTSD, I believe PTSD. I'm sure all sorts of other things. It's a legitimate course of

treatment for soldiers returning from the front lines. Wow, isn't that crazy? It's interesting? Uh. And speaking of l A, you know they hit their peak in uh two thousand nine ish with you know what, they said, anywhere from six hundred to a thousand dispensaries, and they said, you know what, the city said, this is getting way out of hand, Like you've got a strip mall over there with like three medical marijuana dispensaries in it. That's kind

of ridiculous. So they ordered, um, four hundred and thirty nine of them to be closed. Uh. And I think what was the It was only dispensaries that registered with the city after the council adopted the moratorium in two thousand seven were allowed to operate. So about a hundred and thirty of the six hundred roughly were allowed to stay open that were registered after the moratorium or for it says, after which that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, it doesn't make any The most unfair law This is

from the LA Times too. But now people are, you know, filing lawsuits and and such on on patients rights lawsuits and uh, stuff like that. It's a it's a wild ride, man. It's interesting to watch. You need to see anybody who can use the help of something like medical marijuana being denied it and suffer well. And that's the point of one of the attorney says, He's like, why should we treat them any different than the vicat and patient or

the OxyContin patient. Um. They did do a study to when they closed down all those hundreds of dispensaries about crime, and it was a Rand Corp study and they found that crime went down, um with the dispensaries, and crime went up when they closed him. But it was a pretty hinky study. Admittedly, Yeah, they only looked at ten days before and ten days after, and um, it was within three tenths of a mile of the closed facility there was a increase in crime. H within six tenths

It was just it was a pretty hinky study. Basically, Even the people that are for it were like, come on, you need to do a better job than this. If you're going to study crime, well, I will tell you this. UM. In that Rolling Stone article, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union estimates that umred jobs have been lost since the federal crackdown starting in the beginning of two thousand and eleven. Jobs in this economy. That's unconscionable us. All right,

do you have anything else? No? I don't. Let's do a follow up on this in five years. Good idea. Yeah, you got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. If you want to learn more about medical marijuana, you can type those words into the search bar how stuff works dot com. UM. That's m A R I JU A n A. I believe uh. And since I said handy search parts the time for listener mail. Actually I did have one more thing. Brownie Mary. You ever heard

of her? She was a famous uh medical marijuana activists in San Francisco, This elderly woman who would make brownies for people, UM and you know, really went to the mat for for people in need. Her name was Mary Jane. That was her real name, Mary Jane. I can't think of her last name. Let's call her that. I don't know Brownie Mary because she delivered the brownies. I guess Brownie Mary or Brownie Mary Jane. That's much better. She

always laughed about her name. Supposedly she was like, Hey, I guess I was destined to do this, but those of you don't know, Mary Jane is a street term for marijuana. If it's okay, Josh, I'm gonna call this. Uh. It was just sort of a weird email from a dude in Minneapolis. Hey, guys, I was just listening to the Mexican Wrestling podcast and you called for something to knock your socks off. I thought i'd shared this with you.

Please take a moment to aim your feet away from anyone's face unless they want a knocked off sock up in their grill. Are you ready for this? I was an anthropological expedition. I was on one into the heart of the darkest Iowa, researching archaeological and cultural leads regarding a Mayan prince who fell out of favor and may or may not have traveled up the Mississippi in twelve seventy BC, setting up a kingdom in exile somewhere around

the current town of Farmersburg. Ancient text also hint that he appointed a monkey as his head of agriculture, which was particularly interesting to me because I think monkeys are hilarious. Anyway, I was excavating near Farmersburg, uh their single stop sign, when I was suddenly surrounded by a street gang. They

all had switchblades, so you knew they meant business. Their leader threatened me by saying, I only need to touch you once, like touching the wings of a butterfly, then you're dead, to which I replied, actually that's a myth. You can touch their wings without killing them as long as you know break the veins. Clearly a reference to

our show on your dethence right, uh? Or no? Was that part of your Desthence in this manner, I opened up a dialogue and we discussed briefly butterfly anatomy, the difference between cumulus and Sirrhus clouds, and the way the sun works. They were so impressed by my knowledge they not only let me live, but they gave me a gift certificate to Applebee's made an honorary member of their gang,

the Lords of Lepidoperative lepidoptery. This is the study of flies. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you and share a first day knowledge. Uh is truly power yours innertitude Matt from Innneapolis that I don't think it's true at all, but I think it's hysterical. And Matt took great time and crafting a very clever email. So yeah, of course not a monkey head of agriculture. I don't know, man, maybe that parts true. The minds were awfully rich, true, and

they were I guess in Iowa. Yes, Um, well, let's see. If you want to take the time to craft a very clever email that captures our attention, we are always happy to read it. Um you can, well, you can tweet it to us if it's really short, tweet to s y s K podcast, hit us up on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new

video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you