Cannabis Facts

United States Patent 6630507 | Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants | source: http://tokesignals.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/US-PatentTrademarkOffice-Seal.pngThe next time someone tries to tell you that medical marijuana is bunk and that all those potheads should be locked up, point them to US Patent #6630507: Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants (filed April 1998). The US Patent Office has accepted that cannabis has medical use, shouldn’t the DEA?

 

US Patent 6630507 and the Controlled Substances Act

The Controlled Substances Act, which is the driving force behind all DEA & US Attorney action against state marijuana laws has marijuana as a Schedule I substance (along with heroin). Schedule I substances are well defined as substances with:

  1. High potential for abuse
  2. No current accepted medical use in the United States
  3. Lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision

A substance must meet all three criteria to be designated as Schedule I in the Controlled Substances Act… except for cannabis. Cannabis/marijuana sadly remains on the list because President Nixon didn’t want those war protesting hippies on the White House lawn (he also didn’t trust the Jews on marijuana), so they added marijuana to the list of Schedule I substances so that they could start arresting and removing folks who were anti-war. The irony is that Nixon’s own National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse report (Shafer Commission) suggested marijuana decriminalization and allowing for adult cultivation of cannabis.

Now marijuana has been a Schedule I substance for over 40 years and we’re finding that we have to defend why it shouldn’t be Schedule I rather than having a rational debate about what should be a Schedule I substance (after thousands of years of use as a human medicine). This debate has become akin to the argument of faith for many people, there’s just no changing people’s minds, even in the face of facts people just want to believe what they’ve been told their whole lives is true.

Contradictions Between US Patent #6630507 and Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act

Those of us who regularly use cannabis know know that marijuana does not have a high potential for abuse (or addiction). As comedian Doug Benson said, when you run out of weed, the withdrawal symptoms amount to… “bummer, I’m out of weed”. Of course the science can be debated about cannabis addictions, but the real reason that the science can be debated is that scientists are not allowed to study cannabis because it’s a Schedule I substance (do you see the circular logic here?).

To add insult to injury, the US Patent Office issued patent #6630507 in October 2003 to Aidan J. Hampson, Julius Axelrod, and Maurizio Grimaldi which describes how cannabinoids have antioxidant and neuroprotectant properties, clearly an acceptable medical use. The DEA has yet to acknowledge this fact.

Please share this patent with anyone who smokes weed.

United States Patent 6630507: Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants

US Patent 6630507 Abstract

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH3, and COCH3.

View the full text of US Patent 6630507 on Google →