Cannabis 12 000 Years of Good Medicine

It makes you wonder why one plant has been singled out and deliberately excluded from our medicine chest. For twelve thousand years people all around the world have grown and cultivated hemp for everything from paper and textiles to oil and medicine. Yet since the 1930s, hemp has been the subject of scare campaigns, wars on drugs and trillion dollar enforcement policies. Cannabis is now fully legal in four US states, decriminalised in twelve others and available for medicinal use in ten more. That’s twenty six of fifty states. Around the world the medical profession, the public and even politicians are beginning to support the legal and safe use of medical marijuana. Used in a variety of forms, cannabis can be used for the treatment of Epilepsy and Multiple Sclerosis, and of course, for the severe pain and nausea associated with arthritis, HIV and cancer. In countries like Australia, where both Federal and State governments are seriously contemplating the roll out of medical marijuana, primary producers and the regional communities they sustain are set to benefit massively form the reintroduction of the one of the world’s oldest crops. So if we’re serious when we say that everyone has the right to the best and most efficacious medical care, surely we can no longer deny the contribution that cannabis can make.