Medical weed needed
Re: “Govt issues cannabis guideline for visitors,” (BP, Jan 6).
My parents in the USA were born of the “hippie generation” of the 1960s. I am now 56 years old. I grew up in Northern California, ground zero for cannabis use and cultivation. Back in the early 1980s — my high school days — recreational cannabis use was very common among both young and old Californians. Thailand’s cannabis (Thai Stick) was particularly famous for its low price, high potency and exotic origins.
After high school, I served in the military for nearly two decades where all illicit drug use was strictly prohibited. Later in life, some of my friends worked hard to petition Californian leaders to change the law and allow cannabis as medicine. It worked. Now cannabis is legal for medical use in most of the USA and, recently, many countries around the world, including Thailand. When I saw Thailand legalise cannabis, I was happy.
My grandmother lived to be 94, and she would have suffered much less in her final days had cannabis been allowed for medical use in Texas. Many years later, as my own mother in California was battling cancer, legal medicinal cannabis provided her great relief near her life’s end.
Now that cannabis is legal in Thailand, I hope government and industry leaders will work hard to develop this medical gift from nature. Around the region, in places where cannabis is still outlawed, one can see many people suffering through disease without access to this amazing medicine that goes back thousands of generations as one of the world’s great natural cures. Countries embracing cannabis as medicine are on the right road.
However, public education and research on the many therapeutic applications for different medical conditions is still a challenge. There is so much more to using cannabis as medicine than lighting up a joint. Cannabis oil from the “Indica” variety, for example, has shown great promise in treating melanoma.
My hope is that Thailand will continue embracing medical cannabis and leading all of South East Asia into the new era of medical cannabis education, research, therapeutics ... especially in the fight against cancer.