Penny Coleman in AlterNet writes about the growing awareness among Iraq and Afghanistan war vets about the efficacy of marijuana in treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A recent study out of Israel confirms what many returning American soldiers are finding out on their own.
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It’s too bad veterans in Washington state will not be able explore this option without our boy Rob McKenna cracking down on them.
Pot can do wonders for stress! Years ago, I read in Esquire magazine about a Vietnam veteran who admitted the first time he smoked pot before going into combat was the day he won the Congressional Medal of Honor.
@1
No doubt. I plan to have more on that front soon.
Actually, the study (in rats) was not of marijuana, it was of cannabinoids. Given other data on THC in relieving stress this is not all that surprising.
But more than providing anxiety relief, cannabinoids could affect emotional memory and enhance PTSD treatments by modulating the emotional memory component, she argues. Akirav believes that in pill or drug form they could be used in combination with exposure therapy to stymie the effect of a trauma. And since cannabinoids are already widely used and in some cases prescribed as cancer therapies, they could potentially pass through regulatory hurdles quickly as a drug to treat PTSD.
I am not sure but I suspect that our law permits prescription of THC for this purpose.
It would also be worth knowing how the cannabinoids do vs other mild relaxants.
If you think I made that up, then read this:
“The Associated Press reported corroborative details from Detroit under a June 22, 1971, dateline:
“A Congressional Medal of Honor winner says he was ‘stoned’ on marijuana the night he fought off two waves of Vietcong soldiers and won America’s highest military honor ….
“It was April 1, 1970, when Mr. [Peter] Lemon, an Army Specialist 4, used his rifle, machine gun and hand grenades to smash a large attack on his position.
“He fought the enemy single-handed and dragged a wounded comrade to the rear before collapsing from exhaustion and three wounds. At a medical center, he refused treatment until more seriously injured men had been cared for.
“The dispatch quoted the injured hero as explaining: ‘It was the only time I ever went into combat stoned. You get really alert when you’re stoned because you have to be. We were all partying the night before. We weren’t expecting any action because we were in a support group.’
“Mr. Lemon continued: ‘All the guys were heads …. We’d sit around smoking grass and getting stoned and talking about when we’d get to go home.'”
http://www.druglibrary.org/sch...../cu57.html
Lemon, by the way, is the only Canadian citizen to win the U.S. Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War, and one of only 4 Canadian recipients since 1900. Most of the 61 Medals of Honor awarded to Canadians serving in U.S. armed forces were during the Civil War.
While I was in Vietnam, a fellow soldier in my unit who was killed in combat was subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor.
Since Vietnam, the Medal of Honor has been awarded 8 times, all posthumously, 2 to soldiers killed in Somalia (the “Blackhawk Down” episode), 4 to soldiers killed in Iraq, and 2 to soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
Living recipients of the Medal of Honor (there are slightly over 100 of them) receive a $1,024 monthly Medal of Honor pension and a 10% increase in their military retirement pay. It’s called the “Congressional” Medal of Honor because only Congress can approve the appropriation necessary for the monetary benefits that accompany the medal.
Only 1 woman, a Civil War nurse, has been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Some war heroes are in a class by themselves.
Tibur Rubin is a Hungarian Jew who was born in 1929 and imprisoned by the Nazis at the Mauthausen concentration camp. He lost his parents and a sister in the Holocaust. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1948 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1949 partly to acquire U.S. citizenship.
By the summer of 1950, he was fighting in Korea with the First Cavalry Division, under the thumb of Sgt. Artice V. Watson, an anti-Semite who tried to get Rubin killed by assigning him to dangerous patrols and missions. On one such occasion, Rubin singlehandedly held a hill against enemy attacks while his company retreated.
Rubin was recommended for the Medal of Honor three times by two commanding officers, but Watson refused to fill out the paperwork. Because both of these officers were subsequently killed in combat, no further action was taken.
When Chinese troops entered the war in October 1950, Rubin was severely wounded and captured, and spent the rest of the war in POW camps. Conditions in the POW camps were so bad that many of the G.I.s died. On a daily basis, Rubin risked torture or death by sneaking out of the camp to steal food from Chinese and North Korean army supplies, then crept back into the camp and shared the food with fellow prisoners. One of the survivors later wrote, “He also took care of us, nursed us, carried us to the latrine. He did many good deeds, which he told us were mitzvahs in the Jewish tradition. He was a very religious Jew and helping his fellow men was the most important thing to him.” Rubin’s captors offered him repatriation to Hungary, but he refused, and returned to the U.S. after being released after the truce.
The Jewish War Veterans Act, passed by Congress in 2001, established a process to review Medal of Honor nominations of Jewish veterans that may have been derailed because of antisemitism. As a result of this review, Rubin was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2005, more than fifty years after his unparalleled acts of bravery and selfless sacrifice in the Korean War.
Let ‘Em Eat Tax Cuts Dep’t
Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., calls increased food stamp aid to unemployed Americans “craziness.” He claims giving food to hungry people makes people get “comfortable … living off the government.” He says, “You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....mps03.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: As the former president of a lending company, Mr. Linder’s expertise on economic improvement is invaluable. If only we listened to people like him, we wouldn’t be in this meltdown!!
Linder is a leading proponent of the so-called “Fair Tax” that would eliminate virtually all business taxes and taxes on heirs and owners of capital, replacing them with a 31% national sales tax. Why should only Washington State have a regressive sales tax-based system that crushes the working poor when you can screw the whole country?
Well, here’s another idea from Roger Rabbit’s fertile liberal brain. There’s another article in today’s fishwrapper about communities “clawing back” tax breaks given to businesses that fail to deliver promised jobs:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ght03.html
So, my idea is — setting aside the wacky “Fair Tax” — tying all future federal tax breaks for business to job creation targets. In short, if businesses don’t deliver the jobs promised by the promoters of these tax breaks (e.g., Rep. Linder), they have to pony the taxes.
What could be fairer? If the alleged purpose of cutting taxes for business is to create jobs, then shouldn’t those tax breaks be doled out on the basis of actual jobs? And if the jobs don’t materialize, why should those businesses keep the tax breaks?
Roger ..
Tx for the post about Rubin!’
BTW, doing a post lilke that is itself a mitzvah!
John Finn, 100, still lives on his California ranch outside San Diego. The yard is littered with junk cars. The first president he ever met was Barack Obama in the spring of 2009.
A small man with a head of gray hair and a thin mustache, Finn says all that “hero stuff” is a “bunch of crap.” If you’re put in that position, he says, you simply do what needs to be done.
On December 7, 1941, Finn stood in the open at Kanoehe Bay Naval Air Station firing a machinegun at Japanese planes attacking the airfield. He was hit by strafing fire in the head, arm, hand, and foot, but stood his ground and refused medical attention until the attack was over.
John Finn is America’s oldest living Medal of Honor recipient.
interesting posts rabbit.
did you see the freedom watch episode with barry cooper? narc turned pot advocate.