Watching Weed The People it is impossible not to get hugely frustrated at the fact that marijuana is not used to help cancer patients, as it shows just how much it can assist and even cure those stricken with the disease.
But why is the use of weed by doctors still frowned upon and illegal across the United States, even though its benefits are obvious? I recently had the chance to talk to “Weed The People’s” director Abby Epstein, who talked me through the history of its prohibition.
“I was doing an interview today with Dr Bonnie Goldstein, who is in the film, and she brought up the really good point that as a physician she can’t get other doctors interested in this or to take it seriously.”
“In medical school they do not learn about the endocannabinoid system and they are trained to think that this is drug abuse. There is a lot of brainwashing that goes into medical education.”
“As a researcher or physician you can really risk your practice if you prescribe the substance to a patient. You have to jump through all of these hoops to do that. It is not respected, so you have a federal block that might risk your funding or grants.”
“Part of it is that there is a real lack of interest. There is also a real agenda from big pharma to suppress this information.”
“If you look at it when they were trying to pass the medical marijuana in Arizona, who do you think was paying for all of the lobbying for people to vote no? It was the opioid manufactures. They don’t want something that you can grow in your backyard that could replace drugs.”
“So there is no real economic interest behind it, because it is a plant and it is not a chemical that you can isolate and patent and make millions of dollars off of. That is how our medical system is set up.”
“Doctors prescribe and perform surgeries, pharmaceutical companies are profit driven and are looking for drugs that make money, it is not about healing. It is not about children, health, healing people, wellness, it is about money.”
“That is our system. So it doesn’t surprise me that something like this is suppressed, or not taken seriously, and takes a long time to get out to the public.”
But why is marijuana illegal?
“It is very clear that the prohibition of marijuana has nothing to do with public health,” Epstein explained. “It has nothing to do with protecting children from a dangerous drug, or protecting our environment.”
“It is everything to do with reefer madness and an anti-immigration policy. It was like, ‘Oh these Mexicans. They’re crossing the border and bringing their crazy weed. We need to affiliate this with them.’ They used it is a political tactic to turn the tide against Mexican immigrants.”
“Later it is African American jazz musicians that are using it. It was used as a fright tactic. As real reefer madness. Like, ‘These people of color smoke this stuff. Get crazy, And then rape your white women.’ That was literally the campaign.”
“It was just used to stoke fear. It was completely disconnected from the medical community. The medical community was prescribing cannabis liberally, all through the 20s and the 30s and the American medical association protested when cannabis was prohibited.”
“They were like, ‘We don’t have substitutes for this. There is a lot of potential with this cannabis extracts.’ And they were shut-down.”
“There are deeper stories that we don’t get into in the film. There other economic interests and battles between the paper industries and the nylon industries, they didn’t want hemp to replace paper and nylon.”
“So it was economic interests and controlling the public, and then when Nixon got in and he wanted to do this scheduling thing with drugs and threw marijuana in with schedule one with other drugs that have no medical value and are much more dangerous.”
“He was even told it didn’t belong in there, but he did it anyway. It was a political move that outrageous.”
But after decades of marijuana behind prohibited from medical use, Epstein is hopeful that the tide is finally beginning to turn.
“We are at a point in time right now, where people are waking up to that on all levels. People are waking up to it about the food industry, the Pharma industry, the environment, and looking at profits over people and alternative affordable, holistic solutions being suppressed so that other people can get rich.”
“Whether it is drug companies, all at the cost of human life. That is one of the points of the film, we wanted to say it is a human rights issue. It is just bigger than cannabis.”
“There is something out there that can help ease pain, suffering, cancer, how can people not have unfettered access to it?”
“Weed The People” is in cinemas now.
