As Emerson once wrote: "a weed is an herb whose virtues have yet to be discovered." Or, paraphrasing the actions of an old college buddy: "herb is a weed whose virtues I discover daily." Needless to say, he never graduated, and has now moved on to harder drugs like Paxil and Lipitor which he gets at $5 a pop at Walmart with his employee discount and where a degree can be a liability anyway. Ironic that the ten dollar bills he spends on pharmaceuticals every month each have a picture of one of history's greatest hemp advocates. (There was always something I found oddly "Rastafarian" about the constitution, which was written - of course - on hemp paper).

Technically speaking, anything that can cure, prevent or treat a disease is by the FDA's definition a DRUG. Hops, for instance, is considered an unapproved drug which by definition can not legally be used to treat a disease. And yet, this euphoria generating member of the Cannabacea family, is consumed at the rate of thousands of tons every year (as an indispensable ingredient in beer) to combat the disease of sobriety. Dis-ease, after all, is what occurs when you are completely sober. If you aren't self-medicating with wheat and dairy (which contain the very addictive opiate like peptides: gliadomorphin and caseomorphine), or consuming your marihuana-like beer, or your heroine-like nicotine, sobriety brings to light the existential angst of having to deal with reality, which if you take a close look around, isn't all that pleasant. It can give you a headache or heartburn, just thinking about it.

<img src="http://sayerji.zoomshare.com/files/beer_5.gif" align="right"

Why is it that 106,000 Americans die from correctly prescribed drugs every year(according to the Journal of American Medicine; July 26, 2000; 284(4):483-5) and not a single death has ever been attributed to the consumption of "illegal drugs" like marihuana? I'm not a smoker, nor do I advocate illegal behavior, nor do I believe that marihuana is any less addictive than alcohol, or wheat or dairy for that matter, but obviously what makes it illegal is not the fact that it is unsafe. It is my opinion that the demonization and criminalization of this weed has far more to do with the interests of Big Pharma, who own the FDA (after all, historically the FDA has acted primarily as a taxpayer funded lobbying group for the Food and Drug industries), and who are threatened by the idea that natural herbs and food supplements, which are not patentable, nor can be held from the public through proprietary production procedures and sold at insanely high mark-ups, have succeeded in setting a precedent with marihuana that is beginning to send shockwaves throughout the natural products industry. Ephedra, for instance, is a revered Chinese Herb (ma huang), which preceding its criminalization, was used successfully to treat the asthma of millions of Americans. Unlike proprietary extract of this herb that concentrate the dangerous alkaloids (an approach that is the basis of all pharmacological medicines), the whole herb can actually reduce heart rate and blood pressure. Lobelia and many other herbs are now on the FDA watch list, and though they have not shown the toxicity of toximolecular medicines - even over the counter ones like Tylenol, which damage the livers of tens of thousands of Americans annually - they are being removed from the market because herb companies can not even afford the liability insurance needed to cover their manufacture and sale.

I believe it is a constitutional right to have access to affordable, safe and effective natural remedies. And for those of you who believe that natural remedies are "unproven," think again. You can visit www.PubMed.com, an international database of over 16 million biomedical citations, and search the terms "turmeric" and "cancer," and will find literally hundreds of studies demonstrated the chemopreventative and chemotherapeutic value of this herb in fighting cancer. Or try "licorice" and "virus," and you will find clinical data on its ability to destroy, inhibit or control SARS virus, Hepatitis, HIV, Influenza, Epstein-Barr, and many more. There is as much information on PubMed demonstrating the efficacy of herbs and natural supplements in fighting disease as there is for drugs, with the profound difference that herbs already have thousands of years of safe and effective usage, with multicultural consensual confirmation.

If you have any questions feel free to call in to the Health Matters Radio Show, which airs live every Saturday from 12-1pm on 98.9 FM Naples Talk Radio. Or, listen to archived broadcasts by visiting For Goodness Sake's website