Has the opium myth gone up in smoke?

DdC · 12-08-2003, 01:45 AM

LONDON - British Home Secretary David Blunkett has reclassified cannabis to the lowest grade on the scale of controlled substances. The British government - and others including Canada and several US states - are re-evaluating their narcophobic views which took root a century and a half ago in China and led to the Opium Wars.

Governments are realising that not all drugs are an unmitigated evil and a difference is being drawn between synthetic hard drugs that threaten society and purified natural substances with medicinal values and a place in Asia's traditional cultures.

The war that Western imperialism forced on the decaying Qing empire, and which identified China as the original victim - Patient Zero - of a global drug plague, actually coincided with the conviction among both the Chinese and British governments that drugs were bad and required suppressing.

Understandably, the opium trade has been called 'the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times' perpetrated by the West on a vulnerable Asian nation. But what exactly was the effect of this supposedly pernicious substance?

Opium's impact on health has been dramatised. Medical evidence points to only one effect - mild constipation. In Britain, frequent users did not suffer any detrimental effects. On the contrary, they enjoyed good health into their eighties.

South Asians took opium pills without any serious social or physical damage. In contrast, imported European spirits faced strong opposition from India's Hindus and Muslims. Contrary to folklore, few opium users in China or elsewhere lost control of themselves.

In the late 1930s, when prices soared in Canton, most users halved their consumption to make ends meet. Obviously, spiralling addiction was not the inevitable result of smoking.

China's elite in the tumultuous 1800s regarded opium as the new status symbol - like fine calligraphy in traditional society. Connoisseurship was a carefully cultivated gentleman's art and 'Patna opium' the exotic indulgence. Smoking paraphernalia became collectors' items, much like Europeans collected Wedgwood tea sets. Expensive pipes fashioned out of precious blackwood or jade and inlaid with ornate silver decoration became social markers.

Rock-bottom prices in the late 19th century nationalised an elite pastime without any of the sinister effects that haunt the lay imagination. A British consul in Hainan reported that 'although nearly everyone uses it, one never meets the opium skeleton vividly depicted in philanthropic works, rather the reverse - a hardy peasantry, healthy and energetic'.

Seeking the dismal opium den of lore, Somerset Maugham found clean and tidy places, as a League of Nations report in 1930 noted, where the only customers were an elderly rubicund gentleman reading a newspaper, two friends chatting over a pipe, and a family with a child!

'Opium was our medicine, it was all we had,' cried an ex-Kuomintang soldier. Opium was the only pain-killer available to Britain's working classes until penicillin appeared in the 1940s.

In the early 1820s, a painful global cholera epidemic proved opium to be the perfect analgesic though, admittedly, it also caused constipation.

So why did the world engage in what Professor Frank Dikotter of London's School of Oriental and African Studies calls a narcophobic discourse?

As modern medicine developed, the new European medical associations sought moral authority and legal power by transforming opium from a European and Asian folk remedy into a controlled substance.

At the same time, narcophobia became an effective scapegoat for China's rulers. Opium was both the enemy within - morally depraved and physically weak addicts - and the enemy outside - conniving foreign powers bent on enslaving the country.

But the cure proved worse than the disease. Smokers incarcerated in detoxification centres died often within days after relying for years on opium to combat various diseases.

Tragically, the ban encouraged smuggling of hard drugs like morphine, heroin and cocaine which are a menace to stability. They did not require complicated user paraphernalia. What was needed were syringes, which the poor re-used without disinfecting. Needles spread disease and hundreds of bodies with injection marks were found by the road in Manchurian cities.

In trying to erase an unhappy past, communist China also stamped out a sophisticated smoking culture that had evolved over centuries. Europeans introduced tobacco in the 16th century, the Chinese laced it with opium in the 18th century, and dropped the tobacco in the 19th as the quality of British opium improved and stabilised.

The circle closed in the 20th century with a return to tobacco in the form of cigarettes. Deng Xiaoping attributed his longevity to cigarettes. 'Young Asia no longer smoked (opium) because grandfather smoked,' noted the famous French philosopher Jean Cocteau.

Mr Blunkett is forcing Britain to shake off a century of narcophobia by downgrading marijuana and focusing on the very real danger posed by synthetic substances. That is well and good. What is still required, though, is more examination of Patient Zero's example and experience, and a truly effective global drug policy that protects public health without counter-productive alarms and excursions.

The author, a visiting researcher at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies, is currently pursuing an MA at King's College, London.

Has the opium myth gone up in smoke?
DEEP K. DATTA-RAY
THE STRAITS TIMES (Singapore)
E-mail dkdattaray@yahoo.co. uk
straitstimes.asia1
Posted: PuffTuff

“The Emperor Wears No Clothes”
Debunking “Gutter Science”
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts

Our drugs do not work on most patients By Steve Connor
Glaxo chief: Science Editor 08 December 2003
A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them. It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. His comments come days after it emerged that the NHS drugs bill has soared by nearly 50 per cent in three years, rising by £2.3bn a year to an annual cost to the taxpayer of £7.2bn. GSK announced last week that it had 20 or more new drugs under development that could each earn the company up to $1bn (£600m) a year.

Therapeutic area: drug efficacy rate in per cent

Alzheimer's: 30
Analgesics (Cox-2): 80
Asthma: 60
Cardiac Arrythmias: 60
Depression (SSRI): 62
Diabetes: 57
Hepatits C (HCV): 47
Incontinence: 40
Migraine (acute): 52
Migraine (prophylaxis)50
Oncology: 25
Rheumatoid arthritis50
Schizophrenia: 60

Very British Approach To The Business of Cannabis
Geoffrey Guy has a conviction: possession of cannabis, with intent to supply. Not a criminal conviction, of course, since Dr Guy is an upstanding businessman and pillar of the community in Dorset. Just an evangelical belief that cannabis has an array of medical benefits and that his own painkiller, developed from the plant, will be available on the National Health within months. He is the G in GW Pharmaceuticals, its founder, executive chairman, and cheerleader-in-chief. He saw that the Home Office was sympathetic to multiple sclerosis sufferers who had long argued cannabis had medical benefits, but that outright legalisation was a non-starter. So he asked for a license to grow the plant and, barely five years later, GW is tantalisingly close to launching its under-the-tongue spray, called Sativex.

GW’s ADS (Advanced Dispensing System) is a novel secure drug dispensing technology. ADS provides high levels of security for dispensing drugs and also provides clinicians with the ability to monitor drug use remotely. Cannabis consists of many different cannabinoids which provide GW with a rich source of new medicines. GW is developing a large product portfolio based on standardised whole extracts of proprietary cannabis plant varieties. These extracts are incorporated into advanced drug delivery technologies. They have rapid development timescales and low development costs.

DdC · 12-08-2003, 01:49 AM

As a cannabis activist having zero tolerance for cannabis prohibition, John Lasker's story ( "Pot RX," 11/19 ) is quite an eye-opener. It is regrettable to hear educated people support caging sick humans for using a plant.

My experience with Marinol is really my dead son's experience. With leukemia, chemo, surgeries, spinal taps and all its implications, he just vomited it up, only to be billed highly for what was known to not stay in the gut long enough to possibly be effective. He should have been allowed smoke or vapor of pure cannabis plant material, that works much quicker, that he couldn't vomit. Instead he was allowed to self administer morphine every six minutes for pain.

It seems the more the U.S. government fights to exterminate cannabis ( which I know of biblically as kaneh bosm ), the more cancer rates increase; indeed when my son died, stats indicated that 1 out of 4 U.S. citizens will directly confront cancer, and today that number has risen to 1 out of 3. Since every American family will have to confront cancer and cannabis helps, citizens should consider directly requesting that Congress reschedule cannabis from schedule one ( in the same category as heroin ), to schedule two.

A sequel story might investigate and report what is known about the ability of cannabis/THC, to shrink cancerous tumors; the ability of cannabis to stop some viral forms of leukemia from forming; and how the government has known this since 1974.

A Father's Tale by Stan White Dillon, Colorado
Wed, 3 Dec 2003 Source: Cleveland Free Times (OH)

Testimony of Lester Grinspoon, M.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School
Only 43% said the available legal antiemetic drugs (including Marinol) provided adequate relief to all or most of their patients, and only 46% said the side effects of these drugs were rarely a serious problem. Forty-four percent had recommended the illegal use of marihuana to at least one patient, and half would prescribe it to some patients if it were legal. On average, they considered smoked marihuana more effective than Marinol and roughly as safe.

Patients Out of Time
Medical Cannabis, Government grown, Rolled and Shipped to the remaining patients.

Pot Rx
Cannabis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74
FDA-Approved Medical Marijuana Research Blocked
Ganja/hemp lnfolinx

US PRAISES THAI DRUG WAR!
U.S. prison population largest in world

Using Your Brain on Drugs
Agitation in Patients

United Nations Drug Report “Disappointing” XTC v Meth!
United States' Answer To Drug War Proves Harmful

Police Unload Property on Internet Auction Sites
Police departments across the nation are flocking to the Internet to sell their inventories of stolen property, confiscated items and worn-out equipment. They're discovering that customers are willing to buy almost anything.

Stratford Students File Suit By Tony Bartelme
Source: Post and Courier December 06, 2003
In a federal class action lawsuit filed Friday, 18 Stratford High School students allege that a Goose Creek police officer pointed a gun at the back of a student's head, that officers waved guns in students' faces and that they used other illegal search and seizure tactics in last month's drug sweep at the school. Filed in U.S. District Court and coordinated by a group of prominent local trial lawyers, the lawsuit is the first civil action to emerge from the controversial drug search. It frames the debate as a struggle over students' constitutional rights.

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy

Restore-Digest Sunday, December 7 2003 Volume 2003 : Number 295
001 NIDA Sponsoring Anti-Cannabis Drugs
002 US: Web: Gambling Pioneer Goes To Pot
003 VA: Activists Push for Change in Marijuana Law

Brash · 12-08-2003, 05:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DdC
Geoffrey Guy has a conviction: possession of cannabis, with intent to supply. Not a criminal conviction, of course, since Dr Guy is an upstanding businessman and pillar of the community in Dorset. Just an evangelical belief that cannabis has an array of medical benefits and that his own painkiller, developed from the plant, will be available on the National Health within months. He is the G in GW Pharmaceuticals, its founder, executive chairman, and cheerleader-in-chief.

Bayer has bought them out, Dr Andrew Katalaris (Well know Australian Cannabis researcher) has warned me that the GW products are not as good as Bayer would have people believe. Can't speak from personal experience though, never tried any of the pharmaceuticals (not available in Oz yet). ALL my HIV doctors (not just some but all) recommend the use of whole cannabis - as they put it - in the way that suits the patient the most, they don't care if I smoke or eat, the important thing to them is to have 'happy & hungry' patients, who can hold their pills down and I am happy to oblige.

kitch · 12-08-2003, 10:09 AM

yeah I know it, everyone's always like "LEGALIZE MARIJUANA" no one is doing SHIT for opium.

guru the third · 12-08-2003, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kitchkinet
yeah I know it, everyone's always like "LEGALIZE MARIJUANA" no one is doing SHIT for opium.

baby steps man, baby steps.

12-08-2003, 01:45 AM	#1 (permalink)
DdC Decade Yahookan Join Date: Feb 1999 Location: Santa Cruz,CA,USA Posts: 2,088 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 47 Thanked 570 Times in 378 Posts	Has the opium myth gone up in smoke? LONDON - British Home Secretary David Blunkett has reclassified cannabis to the lowest grade on the scale of controlled substances. The British government - and others including Canada and several US states - are re-evaluating their narcophobic views which took root a century and a half ago in China and led to the Opium Wars. Governments are realising that not all drugs are an unmitigated evil and a difference is being drawn between synthetic hard drugs that threaten society and purified natural substances with medicinal values and a place in Asia's traditional cultures. The war that Western imperialism forced on the decaying Qing empire, and which identified China as the original victim - Patient Zero - of a global drug plague, actually coincided with the conviction among both the Chinese and British governments that drugs were bad and required suppressing. Understandably, the opium trade has been called 'the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times' perpetrated by the West on a vulnerable Asian nation. But what exactly was the effect of this supposedly pernicious substance? Opium's impact on health has been dramatised. Medical evidence points to only one effect - mild constipation. In Britain, frequent users did not suffer any detrimental effects. On the contrary, they enjoyed good health into their eighties. South Asians took opium pills without any serious social or physical damage. In contrast, imported European spirits faced strong opposition from India's Hindus and Muslims. Contrary to folklore, few opium users in China or elsewhere lost control of themselves. In the late 1930s, when prices soared in Canton, most users halved their consumption to make ends meet. Obviously, spiralling addiction was not the inevitable result of smoking. China's elite in the tumultuous 1800s regarded opium as the new status symbol - like fine calligraphy in traditional society. Connoisseurship was a carefully cultivated gentleman's art and 'Patna opium' the exotic indulgence. Smoking paraphernalia became collectors' items, much like Europeans collected Wedgwood tea sets. Expensive pipes fashioned out of precious blackwood or jade and inlaid with ornate silver decoration became social markers. Rock-bottom prices in the late 19th century nationalised an elite pastime without any of the sinister effects that haunt the lay imagination. A British consul in Hainan reported that 'although nearly everyone uses it, one never meets the opium skeleton vividly depicted in philanthropic works, rather the reverse - a hardy peasantry, healthy and energetic'. Seeking the dismal opium den of lore, Somerset Maugham found clean and tidy places, as a League of Nations report in 1930 noted, where the only customers were an elderly rubicund gentleman reading a newspaper, two friends chatting over a pipe, and a family with a child! 'Opium was our medicine, it was all we had,' cried an ex-Kuomintang soldier. Opium was the only pain-killer available to Britain's working classes until penicillin appeared in the 1940s. In the early 1820s, a painful global cholera epidemic proved opium to be the perfect analgesic though, admittedly, it also caused constipation. So why did the world engage in what Professor Frank Dikotter of London's School of Oriental and African Studies calls a narcophobic discourse? As modern medicine developed, the new European medical associations sought moral authority and legal power by transforming opium from a European and Asian folk remedy into a controlled substance. At the same time, narcophobia became an effective scapegoat for China's rulers. Opium was both the enemy within - morally depraved and physically weak addicts - and the enemy outside - conniving foreign powers bent on enslaving the country. But the cure proved worse than the disease. Smokers incarcerated in detoxification centres died often within days after relying for years on opium to combat various diseases. Tragically, the ban encouraged smuggling of hard drugs like morphine, heroin and cocaine which are a menace to stability. They did not require complicated user paraphernalia. What was needed were syringes, which the poor re-used without disinfecting. Needles spread disease and hundreds of bodies with injection marks were found by the road in Manchurian cities. In trying to erase an unhappy past, communist China also stamped out a sophisticated smoking culture that had evolved over centuries. Europeans introduced tobacco in the 16th century, the Chinese laced it with opium in the 18th century, and dropped the tobacco in the 19th as the quality of British opium improved and stabilised. The circle closed in the 20th century with a return to tobacco in the form of cigarettes. Deng Xiaoping attributed his longevity to cigarettes. 'Young Asia no longer smoked (opium) because grandfather smoked,' noted the famous French philosopher Jean Cocteau. Mr Blunkett is forcing Britain to shake off a century of narcophobia by downgrading marijuana and focusing on the very real danger posed by synthetic substances. That is well and good. What is still required, though, is more examination of Patient Zero's example and experience, and a truly effective global drug policy that protects public health without counter-productive alarms and excursions. The author, a visiting researcher at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies, is currently pursuing an MA at King's College, London. Has the opium myth gone up in smoke? DEEP K. DATTA-RAY THE STRAITS TIMES (Singapore) E-mail dkdattaray@yahoo.co. uk straitstimes.asia1 Posted: PuffTuff “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” Debunking “Gutter Science” Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts Our drugs do not work on most patients By Steve Connor Glaxo chief: Science Editor 08 December 2003 A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them. It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. His comments come days after it emerged that the NHS drugs bill has soared by nearly 50 per cent in three years, rising by £2.3bn a year to an annual cost to the taxpayer of £7.2bn. GSK announced last week that it had 20 or more new drugs under development that could each earn the company up to $1bn (£600m) a year. Therapeutic area: drug efficacy rate in per cent Alzheimer's: 30 Analgesics (Cox-2): 80 Asthma: 60 Cardiac Arrythmias: 60 Depression (SSRI): 62 Diabetes: 57 Hepatits C (HCV): 47 Incontinence: 40 Migraine (acute): 52 Migraine (prophylaxis)50 Oncology: 25 Rheumatoid arthritis50 Schizophrenia: 60 Very British Approach To The Business of Cannabis Geoffrey Guy has a conviction: possession of cannabis, with intent to supply. Not a criminal conviction, of course, since Dr Guy is an upstanding businessman and pillar of the community in Dorset. Just an evangelical belief that cannabis has an array of medical benefits and that his own painkiller, developed from the plant, will be available on the National Health within months. He is the G in GW Pharmaceuticals, its founder, executive chairman, and cheerleader-in-chief. He saw that the Home Office was sympathetic to multiple sclerosis sufferers who had long argued cannabis had medical benefits, but that outright legalisation was a non-starter. So he asked for a license to grow the plant and, barely five years later, GW is tantalisingly close to launching its under-the-tongue spray, called Sativex. GW’s ADS (Advanced Dispensing System) is a novel secure drug dispensing technology. ADS provides high levels of security for dispensing drugs and also provides clinicians with the ability to monitor drug use remotely. Cannabis consists of many different cannabinoids which provide GW with a rich source of new medicines. GW is developing a large product portfolio based on standardised whole extracts of proprietary cannabis plant varieties. These extracts are incorporated into advanced drug delivery technologies. They have rapid development timescales and low development costs.

12-08-2003, 01:49 AM	#2 (permalink)
DdC Decade Yahookan Join Date: Feb 1999 Location: Santa Cruz,CA,USA Posts: 2,088 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 47 Thanked 570 Times in 378 Posts	Marinol? A Father's Tale by Stan White As a cannabis activist having zero tolerance for cannabis prohibition, John Lasker's story ( "Pot RX," 11/19 ) is quite an eye-opener. It is regrettable to hear educated people support caging sick humans for using a plant. My experience with Marinol is really my dead son's experience. With leukemia, chemo, surgeries, spinal taps and all its implications, he just vomited it up, only to be billed highly for what was known to not stay in the gut long enough to possibly be effective. He should have been allowed smoke or vapor of pure cannabis plant material, that works much quicker, that he couldn't vomit. Instead he was allowed to self administer morphine every six minutes for pain. It seems the more the U.S. government fights to exterminate cannabis ( which I know of biblically as kaneh bosm ), the more cancer rates increase; indeed when my son died, stats indicated that 1 out of 4 U.S. citizens will directly confront cancer, and today that number has risen to 1 out of 3. Since every American family will have to confront cancer and cannabis helps, citizens should consider directly requesting that Congress reschedule cannabis from schedule one ( in the same category as heroin ), to schedule two. A sequel story might investigate and report what is known about the ability of cannabis/THC, to shrink cancerous tumors; the ability of cannabis to stop some viral forms of leukemia from forming; and how the government has known this since 1974. A Father's Tale by Stan White Dillon, Colorado Wed, 3 Dec 2003 Source: Cleveland Free Times (OH) Testimony of Lester Grinspoon, M.D. Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School Only 43% said the available legal antiemetic drugs (including Marinol) provided adequate relief to all or most of their patients, and only 46% said the side effects of these drugs were rarely a serious problem. Forty-four percent had recommended the illegal use of marihuana to at least one patient, and half would prescribe it to some patients if it were legal. On average, they considered smoked marihuana more effective than Marinol and roughly as safe. Patients Out of Time Medical Cannabis, Government grown, Rolled and Shipped to the remaining patients. Pot Rx Cannabis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74 FDA-Approved Medical Marijuana Research Blocked Ganja/hemp lnfolinx US PRAISES THAI DRUG WAR! U.S. prison population largest in world Using Your Brain on Drugs Agitation in Patients United Nations Drug Report “Disappointing” XTC v Meth! United States' Answer To Drug War Proves Harmful Police Unload Property on Internet Auction Sites Police departments across the nation are flocking to the Internet to sell their inventories of stolen property, confiscated items and worn-out equipment. They're discovering that customers are willing to buy almost anything. Stratford Students File Suit By Tony Bartelme Source: Post and Courier December 06, 2003 In a federal class action lawsuit filed Friday, 18 Stratford High School students allege that a Goose Creek police officer pointed a gun at the back of a student's head, that officers waved guns in students' faces and that they used other illegal search and seizure tactics in last month's drug sweep at the school. Filed in U.S. District Court and coordinated by a group of prominent local trial lawyers, the lawsuit is the first civil action to emerge from the controversial drug search. It frames the debate as a struggle over students' constitutional rights. Students for a Sensible Drug Policy Restore-Digest Sunday, December 7 2003 Volume 2003 : Number 295 001 NIDA Sponsoring Anti-Cannabis Drugs 002 US: Web: Gambling Pioneer Goes To Pot 003 VA: Activists Push for Change in Marijuana Law __________________ Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol then Ganja//Hemp.

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