The Emperor Wears No Clothes
by Jack Herer
Official Corruption: Carlton Turner
In all the research this author has done about the misapplication of public funds and trusts, nothing, it seems, compares with the either totally ignorant or willful manslaughter of fellow Americans by the bureaucrats and politicians of the following story:
One Man & His Drug Scams
The U.S. government policy, starting in the Nixon and Ford administrations and continuing under Carlton Turner* (Drug Czar under Reagan 1981-1986), allowed federal medical marijuana, supplied to the individual state marijuana medical programs, to consist only of the leaf of the marijuana plant, even though it’s usually only one-third as strong as the bud and doesn’t contain the same whole spectrum of the “crude drug,” i.e. the THC and CBNs.
* Prior to becoming Special White Hose Advisor (read: National Drug Czar) Carlton Turner, from 1971 to 1980, was the head of all U.S. government marijuana grown for drugs by reason of his position at the University of Mississippi. The U. of Mississippi Marijuana Research Program is directed by state charter to discover initiate or sort out the constituents of THC a “simple” crude cannabis drug that works as a medicine then synthesize the substances with beneficial medicinal properties to attain their full potential for pharmaceutical companies.
For example, the leaf’s relief of ocular pressure for glaucoma patients is much shorter lasting and therefore unsatisfactory, compared to the bud. Also, the leaf sometimes gives smokers a headache. The federal government until 1986 used only the leaf. Turner said to the pharmaceutical companies in an interview, that leaf is all Americans would ever get although the bud works better. Still today in 1999, the seven legal marijuana users in the U.S. only get leaf, branch, and bud chopped up and rolled together. Although buds work better for chemotherapy, glaucoma, etc., the branches can be as toxic as smoking wood.
Turner said, in 1986, that natural marijuana will “never” be given as a medicine and, as of April 1998, it still hasn’t. (Except in California, where citizens successfully voted, in November 1996, to overrule the federal government on medical marijuana!)
The Reasons Given:
– Buds are too hard to roll through a cigarette machine. (Forget the 25 million Americans who do quite well at rolling bud everyday.)
– By extracting compounds from the “crude drug” of the bud, there would be no pharmaceutical patents, therefore no profits. Therefore, his program would have worked against his former employers, the Mississippi University’s legislative charter and funding.
(Interviews by Ed Rosenthal for High Times magazine; Dean Latimer, et al; NORML.)
Although buds work better for chemotherapy, glaucoma, etc., Turner said they will “never” be given. It also became evident the famous marijuana ‘munchies’ (appetite stimulation) were not working for the cancer chemotherapy patients using federal leaf.
And even though no studies have been allowed to compare leaf with bud, we know of doctors who unofficially recommended bud and watch their wasting cancer patients put on weight (NORML).