Pubdate: Wed, 13 Aug 2014
Source: SF Weekly (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Village Voice Media
Website: http://www.sfweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/812
Author: Chris Roberts

DIRTY TRICKS: CANNABIS OIL'S ALLEGED HEALING POWERS ARE LEADING
DESPERATE PEOPLE TO BUY JUNK CURES

The mom from New Jersey was desperate. Desperate enough to try
anything to help her son overcome Lyme disease, and vulnerable enough
to buy a $125 jar of sludge over the internet.

Conventional medicine having failed her, she'd heard of an alternative
cure: cannabis oil, a distillation of marijuana plants into a viscous
potion with purported healing properties. But living on the East
Coast, in a state where medical marijuana is legal but so strictly
regulated that pot clubs have yet to appear, there was no way to get
her hands on the essence of a banned plant aside from uprooting her
life and moving west.

The "sludge," shipped from Colorado, promised to be the next best
thing because it contains "CBD," or cannabidiol, which - according to
information spread by CNN's Sanjay Gupta and a growing chorus of
American lawmakers and media outlets - is the ingredient in marijuana
that promotes healing.

Except the "cannabis paste," sold under the brand name "New Cure,"
isn't exactly marijuana. If it was, it would be illegal to ship. But
if it was marijuana, the paste might also have had a shot at helping
the sick kid.

Jon Marsh, an uprooted West Coaster and military veteran living in
Boston who says he dealt with his Gulf War Syndrome thanks to
marijuana, tells this story as a public service. He's out of the
marijuana game entirely - "I'm not growing, I'm not selling, I'm not
consulting," he says - aside from the eight hours a day he spends in
front of a computer screen, touting the promise of cannabis oil.

On Marsh's Facebook page, "Cannabis Oil Success Stories," hundreds of
people - with Lyme, epilepsy, cancer, and chronic pain - praise the
healing power of cannabis when distilled into oil (the oil, and its
supposed healing powers - still unverified by science - was the
subject of an SF Weekly cover story last year).

Cannabis oil is deceptively simple to prepare: All you need is a pot,
a bucket, and a solvent with which to separate the plant material from
the psychoactive and alleged healing compounds.

But nothing is ever simple or easy in the marijuana world. Marsh is
loathed by adherents of Canadian cannabis oil pioneer Rick Simpson,
whose method of making "RSO oil" requires naphthalene (a toxic
chemical that Marsh can't abide).

Marsh is also being targeted by the makers of "New Cure" and other
products whose sellers swear are high in CBD, at least one of whom is
trying to pressure Facebook to remove the success stories page. That's
because Marsh is also using the platform to warn the hopeful and
desperate about the prevalence of falsely advertised products, which,
like the hustle that deceived the Jersey mom, relies on a combination
of naivety, hucksterism, and federal drug laws.

Awareness of CBD is growing: A crew called "Realm of Caring" in
Colorado has a proprietary high-CBD strain of cannabis, and is making
its way around the United States pushing CBD-only "medical marijuana"
laws. But sophisticated understanding of how it works - in concert
with THC and the other myriad components of the pot plant, something
Gupta called "the entourage effect" in his CNN special, "Weed" - is
lacking.

Marijuana sold on the street has little CBD; marijuana sold in
dispensaries has more. Either way it's federally illegal thanks to the
THC content. But there's some CBD in hemp, which grows wild in the
U.S. and is legal to import from Canada and China. Therefore,
unscrupulous types are able to claim their jar of sludge has the
all-important healing ingredient in it when they market hemp "paste."

This is how all the "legal cure" products get out there, with their
less-than-straightforward promises. One, HempMeds, is a bit better
than "New Cure" - or at least it's more honest about its bogus product.

Visitors to HempMeds' Web site, where tubes of "CBD-rich hemp oil" are
on sale for $3,000 for a package of six, are greeted with a pop-up
from a doctor who assures the needy that all medical claims made
therein are accurate. Therein lies the rub: There are no medical
claims, just plenty of mentions of the magic acronym CBD. HempMeds'
FAQ states clearly that "Real Scientific Hemp Oil" (or "RSHO") is not
medical cannabis, but hemp, with no THC and only some CBD.

That means it's legal, and possibly similar to Realm of Caring's
proprietary strain. (UCSF researchers are also testing a similar,
CBD-only pharmaceutical drug on children with severe epilepsy.) But if
your ailment is cancer, CBD isn't going to be enough: a Spanish
researcher found THC shrunk tumors in rats.

And either way, "possibly" isn't good enough for sick
people.

Weed industry insiders have known about the CBD con game for a long
time. "The atmosphere around marijuana in America right now is a
perfect storm for fraud, corruption, and deception," wrote East
Bay-based marijuana activist Mickey Martin in a blog post earlier this
year.

But the housewives, the newcomers, the neophytes - they don't know.
All they know is that someone is sick, and there's maybe a glimmer of
hope with something called "CBD." That glimmer also inspires
hucksters, who are making bucks off of vulnerable people in their time
of need.
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MAP posted-by: Matt