Mays' Commentary on Med Marijuana

New, Hip Herb Tea

Formerly, on the home page, I have mentioned that there was a time when I was introduced to Herbs and subsequently to Herb Medicines and recipes.
When I was about twenty two ( almost 32 years ago) the first Health Food stores began to open in Toronto. They smelled of Foenugreek and curry, hay and honey. I loved the hip look of the new type of store, and bought hundreds of pounds of brown rice (at 17 cents a pound),cashews, raisins and figs.
As I slimmed from brown rice and vegetarian diet, I spent many happy hours over tea and cookies with my local friends. Each of us stocked with new herb sensations like Chamomile Tea, Red Zinger, or natural leaf tea like Gunpowder ( a green Chinese tea). As we sipped, we discussed the valuable properties of each tea - Sleepytime Catnip, Lemon, there were only a handful of teas at the time, but we enjoyed them.

We Always Cooked With Honey

"We always cooked with honey", and sweetened our brew naturally.
We did not really know it, but just the preliminary exploration into natures' way had automatically begun to improve our health. Even just using honey instead of white sugar.
Shortly, we began to talk about the "stone" or "high" we were acheiving from our exploration. In our set, all youth explored the Health Food stores and a newer concept- the Naturopath.

Our alternative healing centres were frowned on by some establishment people in Medicine.
It may seem very far away and impossible today, but Medicine in those days was almost 100% male-dominated. No-one dared buck the status quo, and if your GP told you sugar was good for your liver, that is what you ate, by the barrel !
Your Doctor did not approve of Homeopathy, calling it bunk and quackery. Herb medicines were treated with some paranoia - who could measure the amount necessary for safe healing if herbs were available wholesale?
In those days, the Canadian patient or consumer was treated roughly like the way Americans are sheltered , even today- they are treated like babies. (I have read that even their university libraries did not serve political readers with books on the subject of Marxism, for example.)
Since the days of McCarthy, a type of folk paranoia has been fostered by the very male patriarchy that forbade women to seek out Med doctorates in the old days,and this chauvinism lingers on.)
Information was not at our disposal readily, as it is today on the net. Instead, not wishing to be uninformed, we sought newer books on natural healing and diet.
I lived on minimum wage, so I do not know how I afforded so many glossy books on Natural healing, but I had many. One of the principal reasons I started to explore Herb remedies that I could grow or collect myself, is that young parents simply cannot afford the cost of Pharmaceuticals.

You Don't Need to Grow Your Own Marijuana

In Canada or the US, Marijuana is included in some regular pharmaceuticals.

Also given, cocaine dealing must be stopped.
But the researchers who have paved the way towards a better view of such worthwhile medicines as cannabis have had many roadblocks against their revaluing the herb away from street-level sales.
Some of the people arrested and jailed for growing weed may be tomorrows' par excellence pharmacists.Jailing them is a waste of human-power.
People these days have such greater access to information and supplies, that there may be millions of unpapered scientists or agrarians who are worth their salt but for the permits, and the jail sentences.

Naturally High

Back to the "stone" or natural "high" we young people felt, gradually making our bodies well with clean foods and benign beverages.
Almost overnight, we herb and food proselytists met with the pork and potato crowd of yesteryear.
They had "pork bellies", porky attitudes and were labelled MCPs, or Male Chauvinist Pigs, even if they were ladies of the pork persuasion.
We young people revelled in calling the then violent Toronto police force "pigs" as well.
We were surrounded by the enemy- PORK! Hysterically, we decried the pork ethics being shoved down our throats, and for a good reason. As the light dawned, it seems that officers, Meat producers and the A.N.N. were communally opposed and sometimes downright paranoid of our natural high from good, healthy ways.
These are ways fairly well accepted circa 2002 (time of writing), because of formal medical research.
We realized that we were being even physically attacked over pure foods diet alone.
We noticed that police stalked and pestered hippy yogin, eastern or transcendental meditators, in fact, anyone different who explored the reshaping Global Village our 70's Muse (Marshall McLuhan) had predicted.
These people became so mean that a knowledge of natural and herb medicine and of alternative healing themes became an essential in the fight against the Establishment.

Grow Your Own Miracle Drug? Not that Easy!

Our Doctors are not such willies as to dominate their patients today, when they seek alternative remedies. They explore them with the patient, with great interest. They, in fact, prefer non-violence and clean science to the heavy tactics of Policing establishments.But they prescribe drugs which can be narcotics the Police don't like.
I once had a Government - monitored anticoagualant which may have had an experimental coca derivative in it. It was not a high or a stone, just life-giving.
After I had been internally burned and even agonized several times by Government antagonists toward any coca derivative (in their search for its use) , I noticed that I was not alone. An officer of my acquaintance was suffering the same indignity of torture that I, and quite a few old ladies were having to bear, just to save our lives.
I was only too happy to find that Evening Primrose Oil and Yarrow tea were excellent, safe alternatives to my anticoagulant, Anturan.

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