By Katerina Gribkoff ‘12, News Writer   
 
For 10,000 years, people have been smoking cannabis: it’s only been illegal for the past 100. But tobacco is the number one killer in America, beating out aids, heroine, alcohol, coke, car accidents, fires, and murders, combined. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention lists that cigarettes claim over 400,000 lives per year, and alcohol follows with 80,000. Even too much caffeine can help kill up to 10,000 a year, while common pain medicine kills 7,000, according to filmmaker Brett Harvey in the documentary, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. Surprising, isn’t it? So how many deaths are caused by marijuana use each year? Hundreds? Thousands?
How about none?
Not a single death has ever been attributed to smoking marijuana, according to Dr. Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School and Daniel Denoon of WebMD, but not many people know that. Just as not many people know that smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer, though cigarettes remain the number one cause of cancer today and are sold at pretty much every gas station in America. According to COED magazine, marijuana has actually been proven to have health benefits, relieving symptoms of PMS and migraines, and helping treatment of glaucoma, tumors, and ADD/ADHD. Biochemist Dr. Hornby tells us in The Union: The Business Behind Getting High that for marijuana to kill, someone would have to smoke about 15,000 joints in 20 minutes. That’s quite a challenge.
 
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http://thenews.choate.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1010%3Aim-sorry-what-health-dangers&catid=3%3Aopinion&Itemid=2

Obtaining weed from the government? That’s a lot harder.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its kind study to test whether marijuana can ease the nightmares, insomnia, anxiety and flashbacks common in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But now another branch of the federal government has stymied the study. The Health and Human Services Department is refusing to sell government-grown marijuana to the nonprofit group proposing the research, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
 
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http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/52668614-68/marijuana-drug-veterans-doblin.html.csp

New animal experiments show that a marijuana extract called ‘Cannabidiol’ could help prevent painful neuropathy in patients receiving the chemotherapy drug Paclitaxel.
 
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http://www.medindia.net/news/Nerve-Pain-After-Chemotherapy-may-be-Prevented-by-Marijuana-Extract-91183-1.htm#ixzz1ZUaQVgOr

By Phillip Smith
 
In a memo released last week, the US Department of Justice has notified federal firearms dealers that medical marijuana patients are “addicts” or “unlawful drug users” who cannot legally own weapons or ammunition. A medical marijuana registration card is proof enough to deny a weapons sale, the memo said. That has medical marijuana advocates crying foul, but national gun rights groups — not so much.
 
Read complete article here:
http://cannabis.hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/09/29/atf-says-no-guns-for-medical-marijuana-patients-feature/