S<\/span>omewhere in between the master cleanses and seeing if electrical currents surging through a bucket of water in which she\u2019d immersed her feet would \u201cpull\u201d toxins from her flawless body (they did not), Gwyneth Paltrow also tried some cannabis.<\/p>\n Hollywood royalty all her life and an A-plus-lister for more than 20 years, Paltrow has served as the founder and high priestess behind Goop<\/a>, a carefully manufactured and aggressively marketed \u201cwellness lifestyle brand,\u201d for the past nine years.<\/p>\n Earlier this summer, Goop hosted a \u201cwellness summit.\u201d This is a nice and \u201cconscious-consumer\u201d-friendly way to say \u201ccarefully assembled brand showcase.\u201d Among the brands promoted at the sold-out, $1,500-per-head affair<\/a> were the single-use cannabis vaporizer pens made by hmbldt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cannabis is unlike most everything else in Goop\u2019s portfolio, in that it works. There\u2019s enormous potential in marketing marijuana to health-conscious, upwardly mobile women and it\u2019s hard to imagine a more influential celebrity endorser than Paltrow, who gave the brand a mention in Goop Magazine\u2019s inaugural cover story<\/a>.<\/p>\n Apparently, hmbldt barely missed an unbelievable brand coup: A photo of Paltrow puffing on a hmbldt pen was considered for the magazine\u2019s cover art. Instead, they went with a shot of a near-nude Paltrow, covered in mud.<\/p>\n In the magazine, Paltrow cops using cannabis \u2014 \u201cOh, I\u2019ve tried it, and yes, I inhaled!\u201d \u2014 but doesn\u2019t share any insight into its value for her family. That\u2019s surprising, as alternative cures for her father\u2019s cancer is what kicked off Paltrow\u2019s interest in new-age healing in the first place (or so Goop\u2019s narrative goes).<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s really interesting to see, with all the legalization of marijuana happening, is how there\u2019s evidence that it can be helpful in a medicinal sense for people,\u201d she says. \u201cThat it can really be an alternative pain management system, and, in some cases, helpful for depression.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think there is a lot of pushback against [medical marijuana], because I don\u2019t think we can monetize it with the same kind of margin you can with an anti-anxiety pill that you get from behind the counter. But it\u2019s incredible to see people who can\u2019t sleep, or people who have chronic pain, report really positive results, and it\u2019s a natural substance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo, we\u2019re just at this very interesting, I think, paradigm shift, because, we can tell that culturally people are so fascinated, and they want to try ways to take control over their health and well-being. They want to be the steward of their own ship. There\u2019s just a ton of really interesting back and forth, and it\u2019s interesting to be at the crux of it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s a general reticence to this idea that we can be autonomous over our own health, that there are other options. So, that if you have arthritis or IBS, you can maybe, possibly, make a diet change that\u2019s really impactful. There might not be board-certified physicians doing double-blind studies that can lay out the results in the same way; the empirical evidence is anecdotal. But, you\u2019ll have people really resistant to the idea, like it\u2019s better to be on five prescription drugs than to maybe cut gluten out of your diet.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Part of the problem with Paltrow\u2019s take is that cannabis isn\u2019t \u201cincredible\u201d at all. It works because we know how it works. We know cannabis\u2019s compounds activate receptors in the human brain and body<\/a> that regulate core functions like sleep, appetite and mood. Evidence for this was gleaned through rational inquiry \u2014 that is, science.<\/p>\n Still, there is an unfortunate dearth of science on cannabis. This is because the U.S. government still outlaws the drug. That\u2019s something that needs remedying. It would be significant for someone with Paltrow\u2019s influence to lobby for rescheduling, or to advocate for parents who risk having their children snatched away from them and jail time to acquire cannabis oil.<\/p>\n The potential is stunning. Imagine, instead of lining up to buy a signed cookbook women with wealth and time-to-spare pressured their members of Congress! Imagine if Paltrow lent her star power to Moms for Marijuana<\/a>!<\/p>\n Marijuana\u2019s other recent celebrity mention came from another earnest promoter of questionable cures. Heart surgeon Mehmet Oz is a professor at Columbia University\u2019s medical school, but you know him from TV, where he promotes pseudoscience while wearing surgical scrubs<\/a>. A review in the British Medical Journal once found that nearly half of the remedies<\/a> promoted on Oz\u2019s show were either proven frauds or unsubstantiated. But Oz is good on TV, and so he is, as the New Yorker observed<\/a>, possibly the most influential physician in the United States.<\/p>\n Oz recently appeared on \u201cFox and Friends\u201d<\/a> to ostensibly discuss matters of great national importance. On his own initiative, Oz steered the discussion towards the country\u2019s great \u201chypocrisy\u201d on cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople think it\u2019s a gateway drug to narcotics. It may be the exit drug to get us out of the narcotic epidemic,\u201d Oz said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not allowed to study it, because it\u2019s a Schedule I drug, and, personally, I believe it could help.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a fresh turn. Oz promoted cannabis as a solution to opiate addiction in 2016, featuring Krishna Andavolu, host of VICE\u2019s \u201cWeediquette\u201d<\/a> on an episode of his show. And in this at least, Oz has research to stand on. Cannabis absolutely has proven value in treating chronic pain<\/a>, the chief malady for which opiates are prescribed, and where marijuana is available, opiate-related prescriptions and attendant overdoses are vastly reduced.<\/p>\n\n Anyone with an internet connection can discover those vital and very relevant facts. But in our celebrity-obsessed, fact-challenged culture, there\u2019s no substitute for a recommendation from a tastemaker or an influencer.<\/p>\n Look no further than the spike in credibility cannabis received after CNN\u2019s celebrity TV doctor, Sanjay Gupta<\/a>, aired his special on cannabis. Gupta broke no new ground \u2014 he merely repeated what was already known to a rapt audience.<\/p>\n Oz could do that. Paltrow could do that, too! But mentioning marijuana without citing the proven science is worse than peddling inoffensive nothings to people with disposable income. Cannabis deserves celebrities that step forward with the real data.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> what should celebrities do to promote knowledge of cannabis\u2019 health benefits?<\/p>\n The post Dr. Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow & the Endorsements Cannabis Actually Needs<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Gwyneth Paltrow and Dr. Oz recently declared their support for medicinal cannabis. But these two celebrities aren\u2019t known for their scientific rigor \u2014\u00a0what does this mean for marijuana\u2019s image? Somewhere in between the master cleanses and seeing if electrical currents surging through a bucket of water in which she\u2019d immersedContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,1370,80,119,139,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19905,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions\/19905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Dr. Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow & the Endorsements Cannabis Actually Needs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"