{"id":2083,"date":"2013-08-17T02:17:42","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T02:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.420magazine.com\/?p=1709"},"modified":"2013-08-17T02:17:42","modified_gmt":"2013-08-17T02:17:42","slug":"these-are-the-9-reasons-that-sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-about-marijuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/these-are-the-9-reasons-that-sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-about-marijuana\/","title":{"rendered":"These Are The 9 Reasons That Sanjay Gupta Changed His Mind About Marijuana"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/these-are-the-9-reasons-that-sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-about-marijuana\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN&#8217;s chief medical correspondent, says he was wrong to ignore marijuana&#8217;s medical potential when he wrote an opinion piece in 2009 called &#8220;Why I would Vote No on Pot.&#8221;\u00a0Gupta filmed a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/video\/data\/2.0\/video\/bestoftv\/2013\/08\/05\/gupta-weed-promo.cnn.html\">documentary<\/a>\u00a0that aired on CNN on Sunday, August 11, and earlier this week wrote an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/08\/08\/health\/gupta-changed-mind-marijuana\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">editorial on CNN.com<\/a>\u00a0in which he admitted that the research for the\u00a0<a id=\"KonaLink0\" href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-on-weed-2013-8#\"><span style=\"color: #007705;\">movie<\/span><\/a>\u00a0changed his mind about the drug and its medicinal effects.<\/p>\n<p>After traveling the world, meeting with medical experts and medical marijuana patients, Gupta concludes &#8220;we have been\u00a0<strong>terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years<\/strong>\u00a0in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here are Gupta&#8217;s reasons for his change of stance:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Marijuana laws are\u00a0<strong>not based on science<\/strong>. Gupta wrote: &#8220;Not because of sound science, but because of its absence, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 substance&#8221; at the urging of Assistant Secretary of Health, Roger Egeberg in 1970.<\/li>\n<li>Gupta notes that marijuana\u00a0<strong>doesn&#8217;t have a &#8220;high potential for abuse&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0and it doesn&#8217;t lead people to use other drugs. &#8220;We now know that while estimates vary, marijuana leads to dependence in around 9 to 10% of its adult users.&#8221; Cocaine, classified as a (less addictive) schedule 2 substance, hooks 20% of those who use it. Around 25% of heroin users and 30% of tobacco users become addicted.<\/li>\n<li>In\u00a0<strong>some medical cases, marijuana is &#8220;the only thing that works.&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0Gupta met with one woman in Colorado who used marijuana to cut the number of seizures she had from 300-per-week to two or three per month.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s safer than a lot of prescription drugs: Someone dies from a prescription drug overdose every 19 minutes in the United States, but Gupta could not find a single person who died from a marijuana overdose.<\/li>\n<li>Other doctors believe in it:\u00a0<strong>Seventy-six percent of physicians surveyed would prescribe marijuana<\/strong>\u00a0to ease the pain of women suffering from breast cancer.<\/li>\n<li>While quitting marijuana can produce some withdrawal symptoms, like insomnia, anxiety and nausea, it is still\u00a0<strong>nowhere near as bad at drugs like heroin or cocaine, or even booze<\/strong>. &#8220;I have seen the withdrawal from alcohol, and it can be life threatening,&#8221; Gupta said. Not so with marijuana.<\/li>\n<li>Medicinal plants (including marijuana specifically) aren&#8217;t a new idea: The medical and scientific communities have been\u00a0<strong>studying medical marijuana since the 19th Century<\/strong>, and marijuana was actually used to treat neuropathic pain until 1943.<\/li>\n<li>Only\u00a0<strong>6% of research on marijuana published in the last year analyzed benefits<\/strong>. The other 93% are designed primarily to investigate harm. &#8220;That imbalance paints a highly distorted picture,&#8221; Gupta said.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/difficulty-of-study-medical-marijuana-2013-8\" target=\"_blank\">The\u00a0<strong>system is biased against research<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0into medical marijuana&#8217;s benefits. First, you have to get the marijuana for your study from one government-approved farm, and you have to get approval from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is tasked with studying and preventing drug abuse, not the medical benefits of drugs.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>In general, Gupta says he listened a bit too closely to medical marijuana opponents and skeptics, and he &#8220;didn&#8217;t look hard enough, until now. I didn&#8217;t look far enough. I didn&#8217;t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-on-weed-2013-8#ixzz2c6jYUvNw\">http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-on-weed-2013-8<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1Tqg2y3yYR0\" height=\"315\" width=\"420\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN&#8217;s chief medical correspondent, says he was wrong to ignore marijuana&#8217;s medical potential when he wrote an&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.420magazine.com\/2013\/08\/why-dr-sanjay-gupta-changed-his-mind-about-marijuana\/\" class=\"read_more\">[Read More]<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1597,9,1,3],"tags":[4165],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}