$1.7 Billion. That’s how much the federal government fined Columbia/HCA for Medicare and Medicaid fraud that took place under Rick Scott’s watch as CEO. That sum, which ultimately led to Scott’s ouster, set a record for the largest fine of its kind in history.

This is just one of many shady dealings Rick Scott, who is now running for U.S. Senator of Florida, has amassed throughout his private and political career.

Profiteering from drug tests of low-income families

Florida’s program was a tremendous success in the mind of Rick Scott. In actuality, it moved millions of public dollars into Rick Scott’s pocket. In 2011 he signed a law requiring that recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds undergo mandatory drug testing in order to receive benefits.

This was met with much ridicule, in that the supposed benefit of saving money not given to welfare recipients who tested positive for drug use was overshadowed by the cost of the tests—which were done by Solantic, a company that Scott started and transferred his ownership shares to his wife.

Never mind that 25% of welfare recipients are actually children. (Children of drug users do not need to eat. It is known.)

Scott made it a point to say these recipients of public money were required to be held accountable to the public. In a blatant display of hypocrisy, Scott refused to take a drug test as a recipient of public money when asked by The Daily Show.^[3]

So, when are we going to start checking for other crimes? It’s almost as if there’s some kind of stigma associated with welfare.

An about face on the Affordable Care Act

He’s opposed to Obamacare and came up with a thing called “Conservatives for Patients’ Rights”, managed by CRC Public Relations of Swiftboating fame, which uses scare tactics and deceit against universal health care.^[1]

Thus, pressured by the challenges of an aging constituency, Scott flip-flopped several times about expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. So far, the state House of Representatives has voted against expanding coverage. With no state-level exchange, ACA shoppers in Florida are directed to the federal exchange.

During the 2014 election, he came out in support of the ACA after his mother died without obtaining treatment. In 2015, after winning reelection, Scott promptly turned around and went back to opposing the ACA, because clearly, family is not as important as his career.

Baby killer

After it was discovered that two for-profit hospitals were in gross violation of the state health standards by having a death rate more than three times the national average on pediatric open-heart surgery, the state of Florida “fixed” the problem by repealing state standards. In what is assuredly a bout of amazing coincidence, Scott accepted a $100,000 donation from the company that owns the hospitals.^[4][5]

And what special sort of self-serving asshole do you need to be to accept a $100,000 “donation” from a hospital in the first place? Shouldn’t it be the politicians donating to the hospitals? Rick Scott’s net worth is estimated to be between $83 million and $220 million.^[6]

War on women

He signed into law an anti-abortion bill that cuts off women’s access and public funding to health services that provide abortion. It requires doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital – a type of formal affiliation that can be difficult to obtain. It requires annual inspection of clinics by health authorities and tightened rules on disposal of aborted fetal tissue. This in addition to slashing funding for cancer screenings, pap smears, and birth control. This runs the risk of having HIV and teen pregnancy rates skyrocket because of these regressive laws. ^[7]

Climate change

Despite living in the U.S. state most likely to be heavily impacted by anthropogenic global warming through hurricanes and rising ocean levels, Scott has verbally forbidden state employees from using the terms “climate change” or “global warming”.^[8][9] When asked to comment on what he thinks is responsible for the increase in hurricane activity over previous decades, Scott’s response was “I’m not a scientist.”^[10]

Denies critical healthcare to children and families living with HIV

“Given the increased number of those now living with HIV in Florida, it is deplorable that Governor Scott has continued to play with people’s lives while padding the pockets of a group of for-profit companies,” said Donna Stidham, Chief of Managed Care for AHF.

“Many of these patients, currently covered by PHC, have been seeing their doctor for years, even decades, and are thriving in care. These same patients will suffer disruption of treatment and can suffer substandard care if they are simply dumped into the general patient population, or if their care is jobbed out by huge, for-profit insurance companies for treatment by a family medicine doctor or general practitioner without HIV expertise.”

While Scott and his cronies continue to play “business as usual” politics, the 2,000 HIV patients currently covered by PHC have become vulnerable to maintaining the care they critically need to stay alive, as they will be forced to choose for-profit companies that don’t cover the doctors they have come to rely on and trust for over a decade of quality, life-saving care.^[11]

Denies access to smokable cannabis to thousands of patients

The Florida Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative, also known as Amendment 2, is a constitutional law which was approved by 71.3 percent of Florida voters in the November 8, 2016, general election in the State of Florida.

Florida Legislature passed, and Governor Rick Scott signed, a provision that defines “medical use” to exclude “possession, use or administration of marijuana in a form for smoking.” John Morgan, the Orlando trial lawyer who spearheaded and financed the successful campaign to make medical access to cannabis a constitutional right, filed a lawsuit in Leon County Circuit Court on July 6, 2017, asking the court to declare the law implementing the 2016 constitutional amendment unenforceable.

Circuit Judge Karen Gievers agreed with constitutional law expert Jon Mills who was a part of the case, that Amendment 2 included a definition of “all types of medical marijuana.”

The state, approved by Rick Scott, immediately filed an appeal, which effectively blocked the implementation of Gievers’ ruling denying thousands of medical cannabis patients the right, under the constitutional law, to use cannabis in smokable form.

Had Rick Scott not decided to appeal Gievers ruling, it would have allowed the 115,000 authorized medical cannabis users the opportunity to smoke their medicine on the orders of a physician. But the impact has been placed on a delay for the appellate review. On behalf of the Department of Health, lawyers from the office of Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a notice of appeal minutes after Gievers handed down her decision.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, Scott’s opponent running for U.S. Senate, said he, unlike Rick Scott, supports letting patients with cancer, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS and other conditions smoke medical marijuana in private.^[12]

Gievers said the state’s ban caused irreparable harm to patients who could not get the treatment recommended for them.^[13]

Hurricane Irma

An investigation by WFOR-TV found that after Hurricane Irma, Scott ignored existing debris removal contracts and instead issued emergency contracts for hurricane clean-up efforts. Florida state officials sent an email to several companies on September 11 inviting them to hand in bids for debris clean-up by the next day.

On September 13, state officials decided to use the services of MCM and Community Asphalt, two firms owned by individuals who are major contributors to the Republican Party and Scott’s campaigns. According to the television station, the emergency contracts cost $28 to $30 million more than the existing contracts. ^[14]

References

The post The Shady (and Criminal) Life and Times of Rick Scott appeared first on Natural Revolution.

Over the past decade, his family has tried to combat his syndrome with 17 different pharmaceutical medications, a specialized diet and alternative forms of therapy like acupuncture. The various medications have caused him to gain weight, become incoherent, experience extreme cramping and lose his ability to sleep, but they’ve never stopped the seizures.

“His brain could never function well,” Dr. Margaret Gedde, one of Zaki’s doctors, told The Huffington Post. “He could never be present.”

Gedde recommended Zaki start taking a strain of medical marijuana that’s high in cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive ingredient known for treating seizures, and low in THC, which causes pot smokers to feel “high.” Since Zaki began the treatment more than a year ago, he has been seizure-free.

“He had 10 years of nonstop seizures and sedating medication,” Gedde said. “He’s now able to start developing as a normal child. He’s a delightful, charming kid. Before that he couldn’t even be in contact with people. It was a dramatic, complete change.”

Zaki is one of more than 180 Colorado children currently being treated with a special strain of medical cannabis that’s helping to combat their extreme seizures and other debilitating conditions. The strain, known as “Charlotte’s Web,” was developed by a group of brothers who run the Realm of Caring Foundation in Colorado Springs. It is named for 7-year-old Charlotte Figi, whose successful treatment was featured in Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s CNN documentary “Weed” last year.

Charlotte’s Web and similar strains are administered in liquid or capsule form and, Gedde says, produce little to no side effects. Because of the low THC count, users don’t experience a traditional marijuana high.

“It’s amazing; it’s completely remarkable,” Gedde said. “It does stop seizures. It doesn’t hurt them.”

Marijuana has a long history of effectively treating seizures. In 1843, British Army doctor William O’Shaughnessy published an article documenting his use of cannabis oil to stop an infant’s near-constant convulsions. But because marijuana remains illegal on a federal level, modern research scarcely focuses on the plant’s medical benefits.

The use of cannabis treatment in cases like Zaki’s is “groundbreaking, in that we haven’t had the chance to document this,” Gedde explained. “We’re trying to pull the experiences of these parents into publishable work. Animal and laboratory studies help support and explain what we see.”

Gedde, who holds a doctorate in biophysical chemistry from Stanford University, spent years in the pharmaceutical industry before switching to a focus on alternative medicine. She recently decided to dedicate her Colorado-based clinic solely to medical cannabis.

“I realized the substances being chosen for development in the pharmaceutical industries weren’t necessarily the ones that patients need,” she said. “Marijuana can do all these things, but it’s not toxic or harmful.”

Since the story of Charlotte’s recovery made national news, hundreds of families in similar situations have relocated to Colorado from states where medical marijuana is illegal in the hopes that their sick children might experience the same results. More than 100 families are currently on a waiting list for Charlotte’s Web.

Hailey McGuire, the 7-year-old niece of Colorado-based photographer Nichole Montanez, is one of the children on that waiting list. Hailey suffers from Dravet Syndrome, the same severe form of epilepsy that causes Charlotte’s seizures. “We’ve said goodbye to her a number of times,” Montanez said. “When she was four, she was placed into a medically induced coma.”

Montanez began volunteering at support groups for families in similar situations. Last August, she launched a photography project, Face of Cannabis, featuring portraits of Zaki, Charlotte and other children who use marijuana to treat their debilitating symptoms.

“I identified with each child as if they were my own,” she said. “They have feelings, they laugh. I want that to be what people see when they look at the project — not the disease or the brokenness, just the child.”

Realm of Caring isn’t the only clinic to successfully treat sick children with medical marijuana. California’s Harborside Health Center, which the Obama administration has been threatening to shut down for years on the grounds that it’s become “too large” of an operation, provides low-THC cannabis tinctures to a number of young patients. Gedde pointed to another program in Michigan and added that a number of small-scale providers are beginning to treat children in states where the plant is legal for medicinal use.

And in states where medical cannabis remains illegal, individuals are fighting for sick children to have safe access to the plant. A coalition of Mormon mothers in Utah recently formed an advocacy group with the support of their conservative state representative. State Rep. Allen Peake, a Republican lawmaker in Georgia, unveiled a bill earlier this month that would legalize cannabis oil, a move inspired by Peake’s visit with a constituent’s daughter who suffers from hundreds of seizures a day. Florida legislators are currently considering a similar measure.

Montanez said she herself was opposed to legalizing medical marijuana until she saw the effect it could have on sick children. She hopes others with similar beliefs will see her photographs.

“My ultimate goal is that people might be open to the possibility that there’s a better way — that cannabis is a medicine,” she said. “Kids across the country and internationally should have access to this medicine.”

Below, take a look at Zaki, Charlotte and many of the other children Montanez has photographed, who are either using marijuana for their symptoms or waiting for access so they can begin treatment.

Maggie, 20 months old

Piper, 2 years old

Calvin, 14 years old

Emily, 4 years old

Jordan, 18 years old

Tyler, 11 years old

Cora, 6 years old

KC, 9 years old

Charlotte, 7 years old

Zaki, 10 years old

The post Meet The Children Who Rely On Marijuana To Survive appeared first on Natural Revolution.

Those of us who are either new, or long-time vigilant advocates of supporting legal medical cannabis with Amendment 2 (A2), it was a long time coming that it finally passed, and now that medical cannabis is now a constitutional law in Florida, those who sought to help those who were sick or in pain, can now find comfort knowing that 6.5 million Floridians voted to help ease their suffering.

We finally won this long battle to bring medical cannabis to Florida for patients who will now have the opportunity to be treated with something natural, God-given, and is NOT a synthetic, and potentially, deadly prescription drug.

There are currently over 400,000 seriously ill people in Florida that will now have the legal right to consume medical cannabis. A person who is suffering with a debilitating disease or is in pain in the state can no longer be denied medical cannabis from their doctor for any reason as soon as Amendment 2 goes into effect in 2017.

If you voted Yes for A2, let me personally take this opportunity to say THANK YOU! If it wasn’t for you that voted Yes, millions of Floridians would not have the chance from legal medical cannabis to relieve their pain and suffering. You made a BIG difference in the lives of potentially millions of people. How amazing is that?!

To every single person in this group who supported us and our goals to see that A2 passed, with an overwhelming 72% of the vote (Yes, amazing!) by spreading the word and getting out there among the millions and beyond, THANK YOU!

So congratulations and thank YOU for championing the cause and ‘Fighting The Good Fight For Cannabis’.

Let me also add, that by voting Yes on A2, you were instrumental in helping reduce the number of certain drug cartels in our state, cities and in our communities. When there’s a safer competitive market, the black market always diminishes. So when there are less drug dealers on the street, it profoundly contributes to the benefit of communities everywhere and, there is one less avenue for kids to get drugs, which will help keep those children out of harm’s way.

Just like with alcohol, the black market with prohibition is what created incredible violence, gangs and a myriad of problems for cities. When prohibition ended, they finally saw a dramatic decrease in guns on the street and people getting killed by alcohol-pushing criminals.
Now, like in almost every state in the US, when there is a much safer market for cannabis, through legal dispensaries, it keeps caregivers, and patients safe and helps lessen the activity of drug dealers on the street, and online.

A2 will also have regulatory guidelines that are setup to ensure strict safety protocols to see that there are NOT dangerous additives mixed in with cannabis, like harmful drugs, pesticides, and other toxic substances.

The legalization of medical cannabis is also providing for our courageous police officers the ability to not have to be bothered by petty crimes like people smoking small amounts of cannabis, and then having to cite, fill out long reports or arrests the thousands of people who are using cannabis each year. That not only saves their department an immeasurable amount of money and time each year, but it also enables police officers to allocate more time to focus on keeping violent criminals off the streets who are a profound scourge to our society.

Lastly, the amount of tourism and tens of millions of dollars that will be generated with the many new cannabis industries to our cities and state, there’s no question that government and city employees will potentially see not only an increase in their wages, but those millions of dollars will be directed towards increased budgets for departmental programs which will help our cities thrive with new amenities, that will not only improve our city, but improve the quality of life of every single person who lives in Florida.

So again, thanks to every single person who helped get The Florida Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative, also known as Amendment 2, passed; we couldn’t have done it without you!

Greatly appreciative,

Steven Peters

The post Finally Realizing the Dream of Legalized Medical Cannabis in Florida appeared first on Natural Revolution.

An overwhelming 71.3 percent of the vote in Florida passed the medical cannabis Amendment 2 bill which would allow physicians the discretion to recommend medical marijuana in any instance where they believe that its medical use “would likely outweigh the potential health risks” for their patients.

However, the proposed new rules the Florida Department of Health (DOH) seek to change would not permit physicians to recommend cannabis therapy to patients with chronic pain, and also would limit patients to one of only ten limited qualifying conditions.

The new DOH draft rules also seek to significantly minimize the number of licensed medical cannabis cultivators and providers, and are also considering limiting patients from legally accessing herbal forms of the product, instead requiring those in the program to consume cannabis-infused liquids or extracts.

So in other words, the whole plant in its natural form would be prohibited from sale.

Because of the new proposed rules by the DOH, there’s been a justifiable frenzy in the cannabis community, and they showed up in large numbers, an estimated 600 attendees, to speak their minds about these questionable new rules.

At the Department of Health in Fort Lauderdale, the meeting room at capacity, the crowd overflowed into an adjacent room outside of the meeting’s chamber, which filled up quickly into the front lobby for a public hearing about medical cannabis and the implementation of Amendment 2. One of the attendees stated:

“My condition doesn’t fall under amendment 2,” said a medical marijuana patient at the hearing. “I’m not a criminal, I’m a father of three. My wife is a teacher. I deserve the right to access proper medication at a proper price.”

Many are concerned about limited access to the medication. As it stands, there are only seven licensed dispensaries in the state. Another stated:

“Patients need and deserve access to this plant,” said a medical caretaker at the hearing. “They need a variety of strains of this plant and not just one. They need access that is affordable which, when you look at the vertical system, the costs are through the roof. I’m talking to patients who are being told $2500 to $5000 to treat their cancer.”

Daniel Oates, former Colorado police chief and current Miami Beach police chief, spoke for his city and chiefs across the state.

“We all want local control of how medical marijuana treatment centers and dispensaries operate,” said Oates. “It’s very important to law enforcement that 24 hours a day we know who is in lawful possession of marijuana.”

The superintendent of schools in Miami-Dade County is compassionate for the patients in need, but he’s asking for clear regulations.

“We’re looking for three things,” said Alberto Carvalho, Miami-Dade School Superintendent. “First, safe distance between dispensaries and schools no fewer than 2500 feet. Absolute prohibition in terms of packaging as candy and soft drinks that can send wrong message to kids. And third, let us have latitude of having regulations specific in the dispensaries of these products in the workplace to children as prescribed medication.”

For more information about other public hearings on the implementation of medical cannabis in other cities in Florida, visit this link.

The post Outcry From Cannabis Supporters Jampack Public Hearing on Amendment 2 appeared first on Natural Revolution.

The U.S. government has been funding medical cannabis research for the past five decades. Only, they’ve been outsourcing that research to another country. For half of a century, the National Institute of Health has provided an annual grant to Israel for research on the herb.

You may have heard of Dr. Raphael Mechoulam. Dr. Mechoulam is the man who first discovered THC.

Back in the early 1960s, Mechoulam asked the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) for funding on his cannabis research. Unfortunately, true to form, they turned him down.

However, according to a Newsweek report,  one year after Mechoulam’s first inquiry, he got a call from the NIH. Apparently, after an unnamed U.S. Senator caught his son smoking a little cannabis, the senator called the NIH to find out what the herb actually did to the brain. No one had the answer.

So, the same official that once rejected Mechoulam’s research called him with some good news. The NIH would grant $100,000 to Mechoulam’s team each year for further study on the health effects of cannabis.

This funding has continued for over 50 years. This is amazing, as it is really tough to get an NIH overseas grant.

A half-century’s worth of medical discovery

In that time, Mechoulam and his team have unearthed a wealth of medical potential in the cannabis plant. This includes findings that suggest that:

• Cannabinoids aid in recovery after brain injury
• Cannabinoids have neuroprotective properties
• CBD has antipsychotic properties
• Cannabinoids may aid in autoimmune conditions
• CBD lowers incidence of diabetes 
• CBD aids in epilepsy 

The few findings mentioned here are only the very beginning of what Mechoulam and associated teams have discovered. The research conducted in Israel since the 1960s has lent itself to cannabis reform time and time again.

Without Mechoulam’s contributions, we may not have the medical cannabis programs that we have today. In his own country, Mechoulam has won several major awards and honors for his work.

In his own country, Mechoulam has won many prestigious awards and honors for his work. Now, Israel’s medical cannabis industry is booming. There, patients can access medical cannabis for cancer, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, pediatric epilepsy, arthritis, and Crohn’s disease.

Though $100,000 can go quickly in scientific research, the federal government’s generosity helped fund these incredible discoveries.

So, after all of that funding, why is cannabis still seen as having “no medical value” by the DEA and other governmental agencies?

In 2013, the NIH released even a study that described that the endocannabinoid system plays a role in “essentially every human disease”. The U.S. government currently holds a patent on cannabinoids as a neuroprotective antioxidant, which is helpful in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Alan Shackelford, a Harvard-trained, medical cannabis prescribing doctor in Colorado, explained that the U.S. doctors had no trouble prescribing the herb prior to the Reefer Madness era. He tells Newsweek,

Marijuana was an integral part of American medicine for more than 100 years, from the 1830s through the 1940s, and it was used safely and effectively for all of that time. – Shackelford

So, what’s with all of the hypocrisy? Recently, large pharmaceutical companies have made substantial donations to anti-legalization campaigns. At the same time, other companies have received special permission to test cannabis-based pharmaceuticals in U.S. patients.

Yet, everyday doctors who wish to prescribe the herb cannot since the herb has Schedule 1 status.

All but a select few independent and pharmaceutical researchers are blocked from experimenting with cannabis on U.S. soil. Though the federal government has respected state rights thus far, patients, recommending doctors, and cannabis businesses are still shunned to remain in a gray area of the law.

More than half of U.S. states have implemented some form of cannabis reform.

Why do you think cannabis remains illegal in the U.S.? Share this article, and your thought in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

This article first appeared on Herb.co website.

The post U.S. Has Funded Israeli Cannabis Research For 50 Years appeared first on Natural Revolution.

Earlier this year, the US government’s Department of Health admitted that Cannabis kills cancer cells. It is vital to understand that this is not a ‘discovery’, because it has been known for decades that the active ingredient of this naturally occurring plant – called Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – is highly effective at destroying cancer cells!

In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, instead found that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer in his book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”, but the final nail in the coffin, was President Gerald Ford’s unilateral decision to put an end to all public cannabis research, at the same time granting exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies to develop synthetic forms of THC. Not only did these companies fail to get the Golden Egg they were after, they also killed the Golden Goose through their suppression of legitimate research.

Countless numbers of human lives have been lost to cancer and other diseases in the past 40 years, whilst these companies have continued to rake in sickening amounts of profit, all-the-while claiming to do ‘research’ for the benefit of humankind.

Make no mistake, the natural cancer cure is BIG Business! Does the theme of ‘profits before people’ sound familiar?

According to one of the top stories on Alternet, back in 2000, researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, and this marked only the second time in history that THC had been administered to tumour-carrying animals.

The Madrid researchers reported in the 2000 March issue of “Nature Medicine” that they injected the brains of 45 rats with cancer cells, producing tumors whose presence they confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). On the 12th day they injected 15 of the rats with THC and 15 with Win-55,212-2 a synthetic compound similar to THC. “All the rats left untreated uniformly died 12-18 days after glioma (brain cancer) cell inoculation … Cannabinoid (THC)-treated rats survived significantly longer than control rats. THC administration was ineffective in only three rats, which died by days 16-18. Nine of the THC-treated rats surpassed the time of death of untreated rats, and survived up to 19-35 days. Moreover, the tumor was completely eradicated in three of the treated rats.” The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.

The Spanish researchers, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense University, also irrigated healthy rats’ brains with large doses of THC for seven days, to test for harmful biochemical or neurological effects but they found none.

The psychoactive chemical in marijuana promoted the death of brain-cancer cells by helping them feed on themselves in a process known as autophagy. The results were published in the April 2009 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and are available free online.

Today, most people remain unaware of the Madrid discovery and the earlier Virginia discovery because these discoveries were either entirely squashed or not deemed ‘newsworthy’. Incredibly, the Madrid announcement was not carried by major newspapers! Certainly, for those believe that the mainstream media are simply the puppets of those in power, this will certainly not come as a surprise. Instead, the media continues to run gutter-science reports on marijuana’s effects. With so much conflicting information out there, it’s no wonder people are downright confused, not to mention ‘fearful’ of ingesting even small quantities of this health plant for medicinal purposes.

Guzman’s investigation is the only time since the 1974 Virginia study that THC has been administered to live tumor-bearing animals but, in an email interview, the Madrid researcher said he had heard of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate literature on it. “I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I have attempted many times to obtain the journal article on the original investigation by these people, but it has proven impossible,” he said.

In 1983 the Reagan/Bush Administration tried to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries, and large amounts of information have since disappeared.

What is sad to see is that the story of ‘cannabis killing cancer’ has again been ‘leaked’ this year as though it was something new!  The new story also doesn’t tell you that THC is the reason cancer cells die. It has now mixed the ‘facts’, emphasizing the necessity of radiation treatment in conjunction with  tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).

“Recent animal studies have shown that marijuana can kill certain cancer cells and reduce the size of others,” the NIDA report said. “Evidence from one animal study suggests that extracts from whole-plant marijuana can shrink one of the most serious types of brain tumours. Research in mice showed that these extracts, when used with radiation, increased the cancer-killing effects of the radiation.”

Do you notice the difference? The natural medicine isn’t good enough on its own (apparently) but ‘must’ be used in conjunction with radiation therapy.

If you read the latest information carefully, you will see (quite clearly) that the emphasis has been placed on radiation, and not on THC. It’s a subtle but powerful from of hypnosis because if you already believe that radiation/chemo is the only way you will ‘kill cancer’, then this subtle type of suggestion will reinforce that belief.

The suppression of key information to the public back in 1974 and then 2000 is sinister enough, and now we have a ‘timed media release’ by those in authority to twist the information to suit their own agenda of profiteering, whilst appearing humanitarian.

Those of you reading this article need to know that these events run in parallel to the wholly unnecessary persecution of a law-abiding and most wonderful Canadian citizen named Rick Simpson, strung up on false charges of ‘drug trafficking’ even though he made and gave away Cannabis Oil to cancer patients for free – so he didn’t make any money!

Man’s history has been dark and protracted largely due to human ignorance and greed. This is another of those stories that will mark the annals of time. One man’s quest to share Cannabis Oil with the world is unjustly persecuted whilst Big Pharma’s tentacles continues to assert its dominance through our mainstream media stories.

What triggered Rick Simpson’s personal journey to discover the medicinal use of Cannabis (also known as Hemp, Marijuana or Pot) was his cousin’s diagnosis of cancer in 1972 and subsequent, rapid progression to death within just a few months.

This event severely impacted Simpson as his cousin was like a brother to him. Two years later, in 1974, Simpson was listening to his car radio when he heard the results of the medical study at the University of Virginia claiming that THC reduced brain tumors in mice. However, ‘the guy on the radio was laughing like a fool’, Simon recalled, so he thought it was a joke. Due to the suppression of that information and further studies on Cannabis, he never heard anything more about it, so he figured it must be a joke.

As we already know, President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research two years later and granted exclusive rights to major pharmaceutical companies to develop synthetic THC.

In December 1997, more than twenty years later, a severe accident at work lead Rick Simpson down the path to ‘discover’ what is now finally being admitted, in part.

He was covering asbestos on the boiler pipes with duct tape, using an aerosol spray that allowed the tape to stick to the asbestos. The fumes caused a nervous-system shutdown and he fell backwards off his ladder, striking his head on a steel loading ring.

When he eventually came to, he was hung up in the pipes by the side of the boiler. He slowly made his way back to his office and fumbled around for over an hour trying to call for help, but he couldn’t even make the phone work. Finally, when another engineer showed up for his shift, he took Simpson to the emergency room.

When asked his name, Simpson had no response. He was taken to the trauma center and put on oxygen.

“It felt like my head was going to explode,” he says. “I remember it looked like people were moving funny — they were kind of jerky. I told the doctor, and he just kind of shook his head.”

After three hours in the trauma center, the sensation went away and Simpson was told to go home.

He doesn’t remember much about the next few days, including the drive home, but somehow he made it. When his next scheduled shift came up on Christmas Eve, Simpson reported for work even though he was still feeling woozy. At around 10pm that night, while still at work, Simpson’s head began ringing. The ringing got louder and louder. By 3am, he was back in the emergency room seeking immediate treatment. When the nurse checked his blood pressure, she was so alarmed that she immediately gave him a pill and called a doctor.

The ringing never went away.

“At lower levels, it’s about 93 decibels,” he says, “which is about the same as having a lawn mower running in your living room. I became very short-tempered. They tried every possible drug, but nothing worked. It got so bad I wanted to shoot myself.”

Within a year, Simpson was having trouble remembering anything because he was taking 1,000 mg of Tegretol (carbamazepine), an anticonvulsant, a day. Tegretol is an anticonvulsant which works by decreasing nerve impulses that cause seizures and pain.

One day, rather synchronously, Simpson watched an episode of Dr. David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things, Canada’s longest-running documentary series, focusing on the enormous promise of marijuana as a natural medicine, and this triggered his memory of the radio announcement on the Virginia study in 1974.

He immediately went back to his  doctor to ask if marijuana would help but was told it was bad for the lungs and still ‘under study’. Heeding his inner voice, Simpson went out nonetheless, got hold of some marijuana and tried it to see for himself.

The results were nothing short of incredible in terms of pain-relief – and based on his experience, Simpson went back again and asked for a prescription for ‘medical use of marijuana’. They still wouldn’t give it to him.

Simpson was facing an entrenched belief system that said ‘Cannabis was bad’ and that the people who used it were drug addicts. There was also the issue of ‘power’ and ‘money’ behind the scenes as to what information was allowed to be given out to the public, and how that information was disseminated.

Since 1972, Cannabis has been on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the most tightly restricted category reserved for drugs which have ‘no currently accepted medical use’.

By 2001, Simpson was a chemical zombie from all the drugs he’d been taking but ever hopeful to get legal medical access to marijuana, so he asked his doctor, “What would you think if I took the plant and made an essential oil, and then ingested the oil rather than smoked it?”

The doctor agreed that this would be a more medicinal way to take it, but still refused to write a prescription allowing Simpson legal access to the plant!

A few months later, the doctor informed him that they had tried every possible ‘legal’ treatment (remember, ‘legal’ treatment is basically when the pharmaceuticals make a profit from you, and ‘illegal’ when they don’t) and nothing had worked.

Simpson was now on his own and, quite rightly, he decided to stop taking pharmaceuticals and start ingesting cannabis oil exclusively. His testimony shows that the truth doesn’t depend on the approval of man-made laws, which actually seek to control the actions (not to mention access to health) of the many just to increase the wealth and power of just the few.

“I didn’t really believe the hemp oil could bring me back the way it did,” he recalls. “But once the medical system gave up on me, I just continued making oil and taking it on a regular basis. The ringing was still there, but now I could live with it. Within a few months, people saw the difference. The oil controlled the pain, my blood pressure, and it allowed me to sleep. I lost weight and looked 20 years younger.”

For many years, Simpson had lived with three suspicious spots on his skin — two on his face and one on his chest.

In January 2003, the doctor surgically removed the spot near Simpson’s eye and sent it in for a biopsy. A week later, Simpson was sitting at home when he recalled the 1974 news report about THC and cancer. “I knew I was supposed to go back and get the other two spots removed,” Simpson says. “When I removed the bandage from the spot they had removed, I noticed it looked red and infected, and there was pus coming out of it. That’s when the news report from 30 years earlier kicked in. I looked at the oil and I thought, ‘Well, this is full of THC, and I’ve probably got skin cancer.’ I put a little oil on two band-aids and covered the two little bumps. Four days later, I took the band-aids off and both bumps had disappeared!”

Within a few weeks, the cancer tissue that had been surgically removed reappeared. So Simpson tried the same treatment with the oil and band-aids and got the same results – no further surgery required, and no side effects from the ‘drug’.

Simpson was overjoyed by his innocent discovery, triggered by hearing the radio report on THC back in 1974, and he could hardly wait to share this information with his doctor, who had for so long resisted marijuana as a treatment for his head injury!

After picking up his pathology report, he casually mentioned to the receptionist (who was also the doctor’s wife) that he had something important to discuss with her husband. “I treated my skin cancers with hemp oil — ” he began, but he’d barely gotten the words “hemp oil” out, he recalls, before the receptionist went ballistic: “The doctor will not go there!” she yelled. “The doctor will not prescribe this!”

“I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone,” Simpson says now. “I’d just told her I cured my cancer, and she should have been interested. It was freaky.”

Simpson soon made a visit to his mother’s house. For years, she had suffered from weeping psoriasis. He applied the oil to her infected skin, and within a few weeks the sores were healed and the scales had disappeared.

Thus began the long journey of Rick Simpson and his miraculous cannabis-oil medicine, which has now become affectionately known as RSO (Rick Simpson Oil).

At first, a lot of people didn’t want to put the oil on their skin but, nonetheless, he treated 50 to 60 people for various skin conditions in the first year.

The following year, he was treating a man with a melanoma cancer on his left cheekbone which had been removed five times. “It was a nasty-looking thing — you could put your finger right into the hole. I told him I could heal it, but of course he didn’t believe me. Three weeks later, it was completely healed. And that’s when he mentioned to me he had glaucoma. I said, ‘Well, hemp is the best treatment for glaucoma.’ He was the first one to start eating the oil other than me. At that time, he also had arthritis and had to sleep with a pillow between his knees. About two weeks after taking the oil, he stopped sleeping with a pillow, and his ocular pressure was already way down. When I started giving him the oil, the pressure was around 31 or 32. Last time I checked, it was 13 or 14.”

Simpson wasn’t a doctor, but he didn’t need to be!

Once Simpson started giving people the oil to take internally, it was only a matter of time before he tried it with cancer patients. Simpson became increasingly confident of the oil’s healing properties after it was successfully used by several people with internal cancers. Even patients with Stage 4 terminal cancer — people who had been given only weeks to live — were miraculously brought back to health. Not only did the oil heal diabetic ulcers with a topical application, it also cured diabetes and allowed some patients to stop using insulin. Simpson kept treating patients until they got better, but he soon determined that a 60-gram treatment was necessary for serious illnesses.

The oil is eaten as quickly as possible, starting with small doses until a resistance is established. Eating a gram of cannabis oil a day can be disorienting at first, but many adapt rapidly to the pharmacological effects.

Simpson wanted to share this information with the world, and with the ‘authorities’ but ingrained belief systems are virtually impossible to shift, especially when there is a power struggle.

After Simpson successfully treated a woman with cervical cancer, she visited the local chapter of the Royal Canadian Legion, a veterans’ organisation whose lodges function as unofficial town halls in remote areas of Canada, to share her story and Rick Dwyer, the bartender, was so fascinated by the woman’s story that he asked her to invite Simpson to drop by.

“I met Rick in 2005,” Dwyer recalls now. “He told me he could cure skin cancer and diabetic ulcers and other skin diseases. I didn’t believe him, but I could see he was sincere, so I asked if I could go with him to visit some of the people he was treating. So I interviewed his patients, and there was no doubt there was something to what he was doing.”

Within a short period of time, Simpson found himself treating members of Dwyer’s Legion chapter, and the cannabis oil continued to show successful results against a variety of chronic illnesses and infections.

As a past president of the organization, Dwyer knew the Legion’s mission — to serve veterans and their dependents, promote remembrance, and act in the service of Canada — and he felt strongly that this included a responsibility to share the information about Simpson’s oil with as many people as possible. Dwyer also contacted the local public-health authorities and asked them to investigate. He made calls to elected officials.

“Nobody would even come look at the evidence,” Dwyer says. “I told the zone commander, ‘People are suffering, and this stuff works.’ But I just kept running into brick wall after brick wall.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had already raided Simpson’s property in 2003, after hearing reports that he was circulating cannabis oil. They seized all the plants in his backyard and confiscated his oil, but no charges were filed. In 2005, Simpson voluntarily returned to the RCMP office to drop off scientific information supporting his treatment, as well as a videotape containing interviews with patients. He made it clear to the RCMP that he intended to keep helping people who had nowhere else to turn. He continued to get plants to make the oil by working out trades whereby local marijuana farmers brought in their buds and split the oil they generated with Simpson.

Shortly after Simpson dropped off his video with the RCMP, the Mounties returned and seized 1,620 plants from his backyard, this time arresting him and charging him with ‘marijuana possession, cultivation and trafficking.’

Meanwhile, Dwyer’s father had checked into the hospital with Stage 4 lung cancer. “He also had a bad heart and sugar diabetes,” Dwyer says. “I remember telling him, ‘Dad, don’t take the chemotherapy — if you take it, you’re dead. Go to Rick and get some oil and your chances of survival will be a lot better.’ I remember my father looking at me, and what was he thinking? ‘My son has no medical background.’ Who’s he going to trust?

“After his first chemotherapy treatment, he swelled up real bad. His legs swelled; his arms were full of fluid. He was suffering horribly. The doctors told us he wasn’t going to make it. He talked to us and said the things a father says to his children when he knows he’s going to die. I just kept thinking about the oil. I knew it worked on skin cancers and diabetic ulcers, but I wasn’t sure it would work internally. So I called Rick and said my dad only had 24 hours to live, 48 at the most. Rick didn’t know if it was too late. I think my dad wanted to die, he was suffering so horribly. It was like he was breathing out of a straw. I had a tube of oil in my pocket, and I remember thinking, ‘I’ll probably get arrested if I give this to him.’ I asked the nurse to give him the oil, but she refused. The doctors didn’t want to be responsible. So I put some oil on a cracker, and my father ate it. Then I left the hospital, and my brothers stayed on the death watch.”

When Dwyer returned the next morning, something truly miraculous had taken place: His father had slept soundly for the first time in weeks, and he continued to sleep throughout the day. When he finally woke up, he had a smile on his face. “I thought to myself, ‘My God, he’s got a chance, but I’ve got to get him out of this hospital,’” Dwyer says. An ambulance took his father home, and he continued eating the oil for the next few months. “He was breathing better and didn’t want the oxygen anymore. The oil healed two sores on his legs. The fluid went out of his arms and legs. But what really shocked me was that his prostate was shot, and one day he asked the nurse to take out the catheter. She said he’d have to go back to the hospital to have it put back in, and that would hurt like hell. And I looked at him and said, ‘Dad, can you pee?’ And he said, ‘Yes!’ I told the nurse to take it out, and I watched him pee like a racehorse.” Then something even more remarkable happened: “The nurse came to check his lungs one day and said, ‘Clear as a bell.’”

After that, says Dwyer, “I decided to hold a meeting at the Legion and invite the politicians, the police and the media so they could meet the people who had been cured of cancer and other diseases. The meeting was just supposed to look at the evidence so they could draw their own conclusions.”

But on the day that the meeting was scheduled to be held, Maritime Command changed the locks on his Legion chapter’s doors and informed Dwyer that his rights and privileges had been revoked. The Legion hall would remain closed until a new executive committee could be formed. An anonymous phone caller to Dwyer’s wife said ominously: “Tell Rick he’s getting in over his head.” She took the call as a veiled threat and broke down.

Rick Simpson’s trial in September of 2007 was a carefully stage-managed affair. Simpson had obtained 48 sworn affidavits from patients, but the presiding judge decided that no medical testimony would be allowed. “I had people cured of terminal cancer sitting in the court waiting to testify — they wouldn’t let them on the stand! They wouldn’t let me introduce any scientific evidence. I defended myself, and when I cross-examined the Mounties, first thing I did was hold up a copy of an interview I’d given to the Spring Hill Record from September of 2004, one year before I was charged. It was a full-page article detailing everything I was doing. Would a criminal have a full-page article in the newspaper detailing his activities? Then they brought out their expert. So I said, ‘You are a marijuana expert for the RCMP, correct? What do you know about hemp?’ He said, ‘Nothing, because hemp and marijuana are different plants.’ I got out the book and read the law from 1923, which says nothing about ‘marijuana,’ but does call it ‘Indian hemp.’ So I shredded him—I beat them hands down, even without the medical testimony.”

The jury needed only three hours to deliberate. But when Simpson was called back into the courtroom for the verdict, he noticed that the crown prosecutor wasn’t in the room. A witness later told him that the prosecutor was seen departing the jury room right before the jury was brought back into the courtroom. It proceeded to find him guilty on all counts. “So I got in touch with the judge, but he wouldn’t do a damn thing. They can tamper with juries, but not us. Then he called me into the side room before sentencing and said, ‘Rick, the truth of the matter is that the government wants the researchers to bring this out.’ I looked at him and said, ‘If one of your kids was diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, what would you be looking for?’ And down went his head. So we go back into the courtroom, and he says: ‘In my 34 years in the legal system, I’ve never seen a case like this. There was no criminal intent.’ He admitted the scientific evidence exists to back up what I was doing. Now I was facing 12 years in jail, but he gave me a $2,000 fine and didn’t even put me on probation, because he was getting a little bit of conscience. One time I used to be proud to be a Canadian; now that word means nothing to me.”

Thanks to an Internet video titled Run From the Cure, which Simpson produced with filmmaker Christian Laurette, hundreds of thousands of people have been introduced to his cannabis-oil treatment.

Unfortunately, not everyone is saved by the oil. Simpson estimates that his success rate with terminal-cancer patients is about 70%. “The ones that can’t be saved are usually the ones who’ve had the most chemotherapy and radiation, or wait too long to start the treatment,” he says. “They have to be able to stay alive long enough for the oil to start to work.”

The fact is that most patients who undergo chemotherapy die from the treatment, not the disease – but because chemotherapy is a trillion dollar industry that supports the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, so it’s unlikely these mega corporations – ruled by a handful of greedy, self-serving hypocrites – will give up this immense, continuous profit stream without a severe struggle, no matter how many dead bodies pile up.

It’s your duty to stop believing the crap you are fed in the media. Do your own research, get informed, and test this out for yourself! If you, or a loved one, can benefit, why would you wait for the ‘powers that be’ to grant you the gift of life.

How utterly insane that we have given our power away to such an obscene degree!

Eventually, the law must change when enough people demand change but, right now, you can either tremble in fear of ‘the law’ (made by the same politicians who get paid huge backhanders from Corporate Giants to keep things exactly as they are) or you can take care of yourself without revealing your own healing process to others who are not willing to accept it at this time.

Follow Rick on Facebook, and watch this inspiring 30 minute video below titled, “The Rick Simpson Story: Healing Cancer with Cannabis’.

Learn how to make RSO, or you can buy it from these links www.marijuana2go.com/cannabis-oil.htm or www.rawmmc.com/product/thc-oil-concentrate. It’s one of the only two makers of RSO online in the US that make and sale Rick Simpson Oil, which they make themselves. RSO is extremely hard to come by, so we do hope that you will either be able to buy and use it from these links, or you can learn to make it yourself by following this link to Risk Simpson’s official website at www.phoenixtears.ca.

But just like with anything that treats diseases, there are some cautions that you should consider when using RSO. Visit 7 MISTAKES RICK SIMPSON OIL USERS MAKE.

The post Meet the Man Who Found the Natural Cure for Cancer appeared first on Natural Revolution.

“It is not acceptable that many young people have criminal records for smoking marijuana, while the CEOs of banks whose illegal behavior helped destroy our economy do not.” -Bernie Sanders

Bernie has introduced legislation in the Senate to federally decriminalize marijuana by taking it out of the Controlled Substance act altogether. This would also put an end to the failed war on drugs, which for many years has disproportionately targeted minorities and low-income communities. No other presidential candidate is willing to do the same.

Below is a fantastic event idea called “Donate $4.20 to Bernie Sanders on 4/20“, via Facebook. Please consider joining the event and invite your fellow cannabis supporters, friends and family to join in for a very good cause.

We urge all cannabis reformers, activists, patients, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, advocates and professionals to donate on April 20th, $4.20 (or $42 or $420) to Bernie Sanders campaign and send a message to the establishment that alone we’re harmless bees, but together we’re a ferocious swarm that will not be silenced!

If you may not be familiar with Bernie Sanders, please take a look at his issues on his official website at BernieSanders.com.

If you feel you would like to support Bernie Sanders on his stance against the war on drugs and other important issues facing us and our country today, please make donations directly to the official Bernie Sanders campaign at https:// secure.berniesanders.com/ page/contribute/contribute

#BernGreenGiveGreen

The post [VIDEO] Bernie Sanders to Take Marijuana Off Controlled Substance Act as President appeared first on Natural Revolution.

The post Why Marijuana Was Really Made Illegal in The U.S. appeared first on Natural Revolution.

The post Hundreds of Legal Ways You Can Get Paid To Smoke Weed appeared first on Natural Revolution.

The post Health Organization Creates Fake Marijuana Use Disorder Issuing Warning appeared first on Natural Revolution.