When I got involved with cannabis legalization in 1987, I didn’t know much even though I’d been using cannabis off and on for over 15 years. The first big revelation came after I read an unpublished manuscript called The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer.
Jack had been touting hemp as the answer to the world’s petrochemical problems for a long time, as he believed it was the only plant that could save the world from petrochemical collapse. Unfortunately, Jack was being treated like a quack by the cannabis community. Were his claims exaggerated? Yes, but the truths far out-weighed the exaggerations.
But after I began publishing Jack’s research and taking him seriously, Jack quickly became the poster boy of legalization, famous world-wide. Shortly before he passed away, Jack called me and asked if I would do a feature on Rick Simpson. I’d heard of Rick, although no one in the cannabis community (except Jack) was taking him seriously. So on Jack’s word it was an important story worth pursuing, I took a trip to Canada, interviewed Rick, and wrote the first national magazine article on his cancer cure. Everything about Rick reminded me about Jack when I first met him. They were both impassioned about spreading the word about the powers of cannabis. And both tended to exaggerate, but the exaggerations were far out-weighed by the truths they’d uncovered.
I expected Rick would soon be elevated to the same status as Jack, and even talked about that evolution at Jack’s funeral. But that still hasn’t happened. In fact, the second I published that article many years ago, a huge backlash appeared against Rick, coming from all directions. Instead of embracing the potential news of a powerful new medicine in the fight against cancer, Rick was attacked as being a fraud. While it’s true Rick is a barefoot doctor practicing medicine without a license, he also has a string of success stories to back up his claims. And Rick’s exaggerations about the healing powers of cannabis were never any more wild than similar statements Jack had made about hemp. If you want to concentrate on proving some claims are slightly exaggerated, that’s easy, but that ignores the revelations they were unveiling.
Meanwhile, people inside the cannabis community came after Rick with all guns blazing, some claiming the oil Rick was using was deadly and poisonous because it was made with petroleum products. Meanwhile, many of those same people were no doubt firing-up joints with butane lighters, ingesting far more petrochemicals than could ever be found in any of Rick’s oil.
Rick exposed the Cancer-Industry-Complex, which includes not only the corporations and for-profit hospitals, but also the cancer charities that have collected billions to supposedly cure cancer, when, in fact, over the last fifty years cancer continues exploding. Aside from a few exceptions, death rates have improved little. If the Cancer Complex really wanted to find a cure, why is it not a single cancer charity put a dime into investigating Rick’s claims? And why is it not a single international cannabis magazine put Rick on its cover or gives him the respect he deserves as the father of this movement?
I have to believe one reason the cannabis community is so divided is because it’s penetrated by spooks who constantly pump out disinfo and seek to turn us against ourselves and divide our energies. Right now the biggest craze in cannabis is smoking oil. And the biggest political development is the rise of CBD oils that don’t get people high, which are quickly being legalized everywhere. But no where do I see anyone giving Rick Simpson credit for instigating this move to embrace cannabis oil. It was really a campaign he started, and obviously it’s been a huge success, even if no one wants to give him the credit for starting it.
Meanwhile, scientific verification of Rick’s protocol continues to gain steam, even if many of the patients using it are only days from death when they start his therapy. I was particularly struck by a paper published recently about a young girl who’d gone through intensive chemo and after it had zero impact on her cancer, she was sent home to die. As a last resort, her parents put her on oil. Testing showed the oil had an immediate impact on her cancer, something chemo did not. The problem, however, was there was no reliable source of oil, and no testing of the resin content. Some oils worked better than others, but if you don’t have proper testing, you don’t really know what you’re dealing with. She was already so weakened by standard therapies that she didn’t survive, but her charts show the benefits of oil are real.
If you’d like to examine the published paper, you can find it here:
http://karger.com/Article/FullText/356446#AC
How Rick Simpson got started
From the time he was 12 years old, Rick Simpson just wanted a job so he could make some money. He was smart enough to get by in school without having to open a book, so education wasn’t something he took very seriously. After getting in trouble for supplying his teacher with a case of beer as a Christmas present in the 9th grade, he dropped out rather than face the consequences from the school administrators. At age 16, he went to work in the steel mills in Ontario, Canada. Two years later, he moved back to his hometown in Spring Hill, Nova Scotia, and got married. Before long, he had a job maintaining boilers for All Saints’ Hospital. Then his cousin was diagnosed with cancer.
“They found a little bump on his rib cage and cut him open. He went from 200 pounds down to about 130. In 1972 we were having a drink and he collapsed right in front of me. I knew damn well it had to be the cancer coming back. They gave him six months to live, and he made it through three. I was 22 years old and didn’t know anyone who had died from cancer. He was down to about 50 pounds when he died on November 18, 1972. I used to shave him and it was like trying to shave a skeleton.”
Two years after his cousin died, Simpson was listening to his car radio when he heard the results of a medical study from the University of Virginia claiming THC reduced brain tumors in mice.
“I stopped my car and just stared at the radio,” recalls Simpson. “At the time, I didn’t smoke pot or anything, although most of my friends did. The guy on the radio was laughing like a fool. Like this was all a big joke. I never heard anything more about it, so I thought it must be a joke.”
It was no joke. The Medical College of Virginia had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence marijuana damaged the immune system. Imagine their surprise when the results came back indicating the opposite effect: instead of hastening the death of mice implanted with brain cancer, marijuana dramatically slowed the growth of their tumors and extended their lives.