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O'Shaughnessy's is a unique medical journal in which doctors who approve cannabis use by patients share their findings and observations. O'Shaughnessy's News Service reports scientific developments in the field of cannabis therapeutics and related legal and political areas. Readers who use or appreciate the material on this site are asked to support our work. Contributions are tax-deductable and much needed. The Winter/Spring 2007 issue, by default of the book publishing industry, is THE history of the medical marijuana movement in California. Individual copies are $5/per. Order by check from O'Shaughnessy's, po box 490, Alameda CA 94501.

Some back issues are available, their contents listed below.

Continue reading "O'Shaughnessy's Winter/Spring 2007" »

Posted by Fred at 4:50 PM | Permalink

In May, 1978, The Village Voice put these posters up on newstands and racks to publicize an article about paraquat, an herbicide being sprayed on Mexican marijuana by the DEA. Paraquat-laced herb was being hastily harvested, processed and sold; traces of the dangerous compound had been detected on samples of marijuana sent to Pharm Chem, an analytical lab in Menlo Park, California. I scanned in the poster after getting an email the other day from Keith Stroup, the founder of NORML.

Continue reading "Paraquat Poster" »

Posted by Fred at 7:17 PM | Permalink

This is the Congressional debate that culminated in the banning of marijuana, formatted for reading at a teach-in.

"Nice Work If You Can Get It" and other hits of 1937 are playing as the audience arrives. The NARRATOR sits on a stool. CONGRESSMEN and WITNESSES take their places at a table on stage. A place card gives each man's name, party and state. Committee members include Democrats Robert "Muley" DOUGHTON of North Carolina, the chairman; Fred VINSON of Kentucky; John DiINGELL and Roy WOODRUFF of Michigan; John McCORMACK of Massachusetts; Jere COOPER of Tennesee; Claude FULLER of Arkansas; Wesley DISNEY of Oklahoma. The Republicans include David LEWIS of Maryland; Daniel REED and Frank CROWTHER of New York.

The first witness is Clinton HESTER, a lawyer for the U.S. Treasury Department, a pinstripe-suit type.

NARRATOR: What you're about to hear is taken from the Congressional Record for Tuesday, April 27, 1937. The Committee on Ways and Means, the Honorable Robert L. Doughton, presiding.

Continue reading "Prohibition '37" »

Posted by Fred at 6:07 AM | Permalink

Malcolm Gladwell is an influential New Yorker writer, the author of two best-sellers, "The Tipping Point" and “Blink.” In January the NYer published a Gladwell piece called "Open Secrets," a convoluted defense of Jeff Skilling and his fellow Enron execs. Joe Nocera of the New York Times expressed surprise that the renowned Gladwell could write something so inaccurate and slanted.

"Already 'Open Secrets' has been embraced by those who argue that the Enron prosecutions were an effort to 'criminalize' what amounted to flawed business decisions," wrote Nocera. "The efforts to weaken Sarbanes-Oxley are also rooted in the idea that the country overreacted to Enron and the other corporate scandals. In effect, the central defense argument -that Enron didn't really do anything illegal- has been given new life by Mr. Gladwell. And it isn't remotely true."

It should come as no surprise that Malcolm Gladwell is a corporate shill. In 1997 the New Yorker published his paean to hormone replacement therapy, “The Estrogen Question: How Wrong is Dr. Susan Love?,” in which Gladwell derided Love’s warning that HRT could cause breast cancer. (Love, a distinguished clinician and UCLA professor, had been publicizing The Nurse’s Health Study finding that women taking Wyeth’s Prempro had a higher rate of breast cancer.) Gladwell’s piece culminated in a plug for Eli Lilly’s new drug Raloxifene, which was about to be marketed as Evista. “Before very long,” wrote Gladwell, “women worried about raising their breast-cancer risk will have the option of taking a different kind of hormone that doesn’t affect their breasts at all —or that may even protect against breast cancer.”

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Posted by Fred at 5:11 PM | Permalink

Jackie Robinson was the handsomest man anybody ever saw. He had an unusual walk. His feet would turn in about 5 degrees as he finished each step. Once I saw him steal home at Ebbets Field... Like Babe Ruth, whose independence of mind was also resented by the bosses, Robinson wanted to manage but nobody would hire him. Roger Kahn has written a very good memoir, "Into My Own," with a revealing chapter about Robinson, who saw through the fake left but somehow fell into the false embrace of Nelson Rockefeller, David's show-off brother.

Baseball jobs were among the first to be outsourced from the United States. Starting in the early 1950s, executives of the Spalding Sporting Goods Company realized they could pay women in Haiti much less than the women of Chicopee, Mass., to wrap the horsehair at the core of the ball and stitch on the leather and stamp the thing with the League President's signature. Even then they were moving production overseas to exploit non-union labor while the AFL-CIO leaders busied themselves with fighting "Communism."

Posted by Fred at 11:19 AM | Permalink

Two significant errors in one sentence marred a front-page story in the Wall St. Journal March 29 about the FDA's looming decision on Acomplia, a drug manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis. Acomplia reduces appetite by blocking one of the body's own cannabinoid receptors. The doubly misleading sentence began: "Cannabis, the active ingredient in marijuana, acts on the same receptors..."

"Cannabis" and "marijuana" are names of the same plant, which is also known as "hemp" (especially when grown for fiber from the stalk or oil from the seeds). Cannabis, the Latin name, was used widely by doctors who prescribed and drug companies that marketed herbal extracts in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century. "Marijuana" is the colloquial term used by Hispanics in the southwestern U.S. who smoked it and were the primary targets of state and local prohibition laws. The Hearst press and the federal Bureau of Narcotics employed the Hispanic term, spelling it "marihuana." During the House Ways and Means Committee debate on marihuana prohibition in 1937, several representatives and witnesses expressed confusion over the terminology, observing that cannabis and hemp were being used in medicine and industry.

Continue reading "Medical News from the Business Pages" »

Posted by Fred at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another Walter Reed Scandal

Screaming Chris Mathews and the corporate media would have us believe that it's only the living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that are deplorable, not the medical care itself. Donna Shalala and Bob Dole have been assigned to investigate the situation. A superficial clean-up will ensue.

Out in California, doctors in the Society of Cannabis Clinicians question the care doled out at Walter Reed and other military hospitals where wounded soldiers and vets are treated with toxic medications while the safest painkiller known to man is systematically withheld. "If anybody needs and deserves cannabis-based medicine, it's the thousands of soldiers who have been seriously wounded in Iraq," says Philip A. Denney, MD. "Cannabis would help in treating insomnia, pain, PTSD, and a whole array of symptoms that wounded vets typically face."

Continue reading "Cannabis for the Wounded" »

Posted by Fred at 8:55 PM | Permalink