Shocking results from Jamaican ganja study (Sarcasm)

[Sir X]

Ganja Medicine
Local doctors approve patients' use of marijuana

BY BALFORD HENRY Senior staff reporter balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com

Friday, November 29, 2013



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MORE than one-third of Jamaicans who use ganja as medicine informed their doctors about the practise, and half of the times the doctor approved the continued use of the drug for treatment.

This was disclosed yesterday by pollster Don Anderson, as he highlighted the findings of a Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) survey carried out by his Market Research Services Limited and commissioned by local scientist Professor Henry Lowe's Biotech R&D Institute and Pelican Publishers.


Local doctors approve patients' use of marijuana
Local doctors approve patients' use of marijuana 1/1


"This is an important piece of finding," Anderson told the audience at the briefing held at Lowe's Eden Gardens Wellness Resort & Spa on Lady Musgrave Road in Kingston.

"There is use of marijuana for treatment of medical condition. One in every three persons who use ganja for some medical condition tell it to their doctor and, probably, in 50 per cent of those cases the doctor approved the treatment," he stated.

Anderson said that 85 per cent of the persons interviewed in his islandwide poll believed "strongly" that medicinal products extracted from ganja should be made

commercially available.

"We are talking about the wide range of products that have been identified should be made available commercially, not just for home use. It should be commercially available,"

he said.

He added that it was also important to note that the majority of Jamaicans who knew the laws regulating the use of ganja believe that they should be revisited.

According to Anderson, 86 per cent of the persons interviewed felt that the Government should play a role in promulgating new regulations covering the use of the drug for medicinal purposes. He stated that 56 per cent of those interviewed saw good prospects for the use of ganja for medicinal purposes, while 15 per cent were more interested in the economic gains from expanded use. "The predominant factor is that they see it as a benefit for medical use," he noted.

According to the poll, 57 per cent of all persons interviewed claimed to have used ganja at some time in the past; 55 per cent were in favour of relaxing the laws so that it is no longer a criminal offence to use ganja; the predominant use appeared to have been to smoke it, with 66 per cent claiming to have done so, while 61 per cent have used it as a drink; six per cent used it in food; six per cent as a balm; and five per cent to wash their hair.

Fieldwork for the survey was conducted during October and early November 2013 and involved interviews with approximately 500 persons aged 18 years and over in all

14 parishes.

Professor Lowe, who noted that the study was the first of its kind in Jamaica and which extended into the uses of herbs outside of marijuana, suggested that the results could provide significant and enlightening information on the uses of marijuana. He said, too, that it could also provide important information to aid policymakers in their decision-making on the subject.

"The results could also help local scientists and doctors to understand how marijuana is being used locally, inform on research areas for the potential uses of medical marijuana and also provide information on possible products that can be developed from marijuana,"

Lowe said.

"It could have a multiplier effect by catalysing other industries, such as health and wellness tourism, nutraceutical and cosmeceutical industries, agriculture and even the pharmaceutical industry and ultimately transform Jamaica's fledgling economy," added Lowe, who is known for his cancer research and development of nutraceuticals using Jamaican plants.

Government MP for North East St Elizabeth, Raymond Pryce, who recently piloted a motion through the House of Representative seeking to have the use of small amounts of ganja decriminalised, chaired the function



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[Sir X]

Why are we going around the wheel,havent we done this before ,isnt this common knowledge ? given what H.L study just found Rubin , Vera,etc & Chevnannes and others before him this only proves criminalization has been a crime.

Ganja in Jamaica: The Effects of Marijuana Use.

Rubin, Vera, and Comitas, Lambros.(1976).
Garden City, NY: Anchor.


ISBN: 0-385-12172-5


Description: Paperback, xxii + 217 pages.


Contents: Foreword by Raymond Philip National [US] Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, preface, acknowledgements, Jamaica Project Staff, 12 chapters, 8 appendices: A. " Ganja Smoking as a Danger to the Natives of this Colony," (Editorial from Daily Gleaner, Jamaica, June 10, 1913); B. Summary of ganja legislation in Jamaica, 1913-1972; C. Laboratory Analyses of ganja samples; D. Demographic profile of clinical sample based on life histories; E. Chromosome studies, steroid excretion and peripheral thyroid hormone levels; F. Estimated THC content of cannabis used in the U.S. and other countries; G. Responses to questions concerning reaction to first experiences with ganja & Responses to questions concerning subsequent experiences with ganja; H. Life expectancy table; bibliography.


Note: This book was originally published in hardcover as Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use in 1975 by Mouton & Co.


Excerpt(s): Dragons in dark caves, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once reminded us, are far more fearsome than when they are seen in daylight. How refreshing it is, therefore, to have available an objective study which not only exposes but also demolishes many emotional and "fright-symbolic" dragons which have clouded our perspective in recent years with reference to cannabis. It is refreshing, also, to see the results of so many individuals and institutions working together, scientifically, separating "fact from fiction" in an area so important to human beings everywhere, namely, the use of a psychotropic substance such as marihuana.

The Jamaica study, sponsored by the Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health, was the first project in medical anthropology to be undertaken and is the first intensive, multidisciplinary study of marihuana use and users to be published. (Foreword, Raymond Philip Shafer, pages v-vi)


... Almost unanimously, informants categorically stated that ganja, particularly in spliff form, enabled them to work harder, faster and longer. For energy, ganja is taken in the morning, during breaks in the work routine or immediately before particularly onerous work.

The belief that ganja acts as a work stimulant and the behavior that this induces casts considerable doubt on the universality of what has been described in the literature as "the amotivational syndrome," or a "loss of desire to work, to compete, to face challenges. Interests and major concerns of the individual become centered around marijuana and drug use becomes compulsive." In Jamaica, and one would suspect other cannabis-using agricultural countries, ganja is central to a "motivational syndrome," at least on the ideational level. Ganja, in the cultural setting of rural Jamaica, rather than hindering, permits its users to face, start and carry through the most difficult and distasteful manual labor. (page 58)


In addition, ganja, unlike alcohol, has special symbolic attributes. Rastafarian metaphysics, for example, emphasizes and brings into focus general concepts derived from working-class views of ganja. For them, it is "the wisdom weed," of divine origin, an elixir vitae, documented by Biblical chapter and verse which over-rides man-made proscriptions. Religious authority thus validates and fortifies commitment to its use; ... the sacred source of ganja permits a sense of religious communion, marked by meditation and contemplation. (page 151)


The psychiatric findings do not bear out any of the extreme allegations about the deleterious effects of chronic use of cannabis on sanity, cerebral atrophy, brain damage or personality deterioration. There is no evidence of withdrawal symptoms or reports of severe overdose reactions or of physical dependency. The psychological findings show no significant differences between long-term smokers and non-smokers.

Over the past one hundred years, the ganja complex has developed and proliferated in Jamaican society and is extraordinarily well integrated into working-class life styles. Ganja serves multiple purposes that are essentially pragmatic, rather then psychedelic: working-class users smoke ganja to support rational task-oriented behavior, to keep "conscious," fortify health, maintain peer group relations and enhance religious and philosophical contemplation. They express social rather than hedonistic motivations for smoking.

Ganja as an energizer is the primary motivation given for continued use. ...

The failure of policy makers to realize the importance of informal social controls in preventing drug abuse is beginning to be recognized. Michael Sonnenreich, Vice-President of the National Coordinating Council on Drug Education in the United States, observed that drug-taking is socially controlled "when it is routinized, ritualized and structured so as to reduce to a minimum any drug-taking behavior the surrounding culture considers inadvisable. From this analysis there should follow a new approach." The multidisciplinary findings reported in this volume highlight the underlying role of culture in regulating the use of ganja and conditioning reactions to it-within a structured system of social controls. (Summary, pages 172-3)


A REPORT

OF THE

NATIONAL COMMISSION ON GANJA

TO

Rt. Hon. P.J. PATTERSON, Q.C., M.P.
PRIME MINISTER OF JAMAICA

Chevannes:

http://www.cannabis-med.org/science/Jamaica.htm

[Sir X]

The Commission, after very careful consideration of the legal issues involved, concludes that decriminalisation will in no way breach the United Nations Drug Conventions, which have been ratified by Jamaica. Especially is this so, when arguments of human rights, including the proposed Charter of Rights being discussed by Parliament, are taken into account.
Accordingly, the National Commission is recommending:

1. that the relevant laws be amended so that ganja be decriminalised for the private, personal use of small quantities by adults;
2.that decriminalisation for personal use should exclude smoking by juveniles or by anyone in premises accessible to the public;
3.that ganja should be decriminalised for use as a sacrament for religious purposes;

4.that a sustained all-media, all-schools education programme aimed at demand reduction accompany the process of decriminalisation, and that its target should be, in the main, young people;
5. that the security forces intensify their interdiction of large cultivation of ganja and trafficking of all illegal drugs, in particular crack/cocaine;
6. that, in order that Jamaica be not left behind, a Cannabis Research Agency be set up, in collaboration with other countries, to coordinate research into all aspects of cannabis, including its epidemiological and psychological effects, and importantly as well its pharmacological and economic potential, such as is being done by many other countries, not least including some of the most vigorous in its suppression; and
7. that, as a matter of great urgency Jamaica embark on diplomatic initiatives with its CARICOM partners and other countries outside the Region, in particular members of the European Union, with a view (a) to elicit support for its internal position, and (b) to influence the international community to re-examine the status of cannabis


Proposal 5 needs to be revisted , times have changed that much as it pertains to ganja.