Joy Smith lives in the United Kingdom, where \u2014 up until last fall \u2014 cannabis was illegal in all applications (and, despite some advances in drug-policy reform, remains prohibited on a practical level). In 2016, Joy Smith was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer and given six weeks to live.<\/p>\n
In pain, desperate,\u00a0Smith supplemented her chemotherapy with cannabis oil<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 full-spectrum Rick Simpson oil, THC and all, which she had to break the law to obtain.<\/p>\n You probably know where this is going. In 2019, Joy Smith is alive. Her cancer is no longer terminal. Smith credits cannabis oil for her remarkable turnaround. She credits the medicine for saving her life, for \u201ccuring\u201d her cancer.<\/p>\n Which means \u2014 sorry, but it\u2019s true! \u2014 that Smith is also a bit of a bullsh*tter. And whether she knows it or not, she\u2019s making it easier for many other much more unscrupulous and vile bullsh*tters to prey on susceptible and desperate people.<\/p>\n Cannabis\u00a0absolutely appears to help people suffering from cancer<\/a>. Cannabis helps them sleep, cannabis helps them eat, cannabis is good for pain. Cancer causes pain, cancer treatments like chemotherapy can make it difficult to eat, and stress and anxiety are hell on sleep, which the body needs to heal. These are observations supported by research as well as anecdotes.<\/p>\n But treating symptoms or side effects is different than treating the disease. Does cannabis do that? Maybe! But we just don\u2019t know yet.<\/p>\n Yes, there is that\u00a0Guzman study<\/a>, in which THC was found to shrink tumors in rats. Yes, there are plenty of people who are using cannabis as part of their cancer treatment and having success. But is it chemo and cannabis, radiation and cannabis? Does cannabis make the conventional treatments more successful, or just easier to handle? Is it THC, is it CBD, is it a particular terpene? Is it good for this cancer, or bad for that one?<\/p>\n The only honest answer is that we don\u2019t know. We don\u2019t, because nobody knows \u2014 not researchers, not physicians \u2014 and anyone saying they know for certain is full of sh*t and probably selling something.<\/p>\n As some medical researchers observed\u00a0in a recent article published in the journal<\/a>Cureus<\/a><\/em>,<\/a>\u00a0the internet is full of such charlatans in search of easy prey \u2014 and whether terminal or not, cancer patients and their families appear especially susceptible to such flummery,<\/p>\n Siyu Shi, Arthur Brant, and Erqi Pollom are radiation oncologists at Stanford University, which is located in Palo Alto, California. That\u2019s in the Bay Area \u2014 that is, one of the most marijuana friendly regions in the world. Aaron Sabloch is also a radiation oncologist, in Portland, Oregon, also a legal state with a thriving cannabis industry.<\/p>\n Troubled by promises of cancer treatment proliferating online (possibly the marijuana world\u2019s most pernicious example of \u201cfake news\u201d) the oncologists took a look at some internet search trends and found that over the past seven years, there\u2019s been a marked increase in the number of Google searches for cannabis and cancer.<\/p>\n Fulfilling this need, several\u00a0questionable websites that source poorly\u00a0or not at all have posted content that\u2019s gone absolutely viral \u2014 that promises, without qualification, that cannabis cured various cancers.<\/p>\n Of the ten most viral online stories that made these claims, at least two referenced \u00a0Smith, the researchers found. The accurate information is out there, but in what\u2019s become a sad trend \u2014 visible during the 2016 election, and visible now \u2014 it was the fake news that went wild on Facebook and that your excitable relatives and friends won\u2019t stop posting about.<\/p>\n \u201cThe top false news story proposing cannabis as a cancer cure, \u2018Cancer institute finally admits marijuana kills cancer,\u2019 generated 4.26 million engagements,\u201d the researchers wrote. \u201cSnopes<\/a>, a fact-checking organization, published a report challenging this false news story, but this report generated only 2,207 total engagements.\u201d<\/p>\n Essentially, there\u2019s an information war afoot on the internet about cannabis and cancer \u2014 and facts and truth are losing, bad.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not at all that mainstream medicine doesn\u2019t like cannabis. Far from it. According to the researchers, 80 percent of oncologists discuss cannabis with their patients, and 46 percent recommend using cannabis to control their symptoms.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an anecdote for you: my dad has cancer. Stage IV. Metastatic cancer. I tried to get him to use cannabis for years \u2014 years! \u2014 before he finally started taking a 1:1 gelcap mix, about 10 milligrams each of THC and CBD, before bed. He\u2019s doing great now, but he\u2019s also on immunotherapy and other conventional cancer treatments. Had he ditched his oncologist for cannabis, I am positive he would be dead. I believe the cannabis is helping in some how, but I have no proof for this and I cannot be sure.<\/p>\n Not everyone exists in a network, personal and online, that is so rational. As per the researchers, almost 40 percent of news stories shared on social media concerned alternative cures \u2014 and of these, the most common claimed alternative treatment was cannabis. That is, most stories about treating cancer in unconventional ways are bullsh*t.<\/p>\n \u201c[T]he false news of a cannabis cancer cure is spreading quickly online and interest in such news stories is rapidly rising,\u201d the research article concludes. \u201cIn the face of this concerning increase, there has been a minimal online presence by major cancer hospitals and organizations,\u201d who have an opportunity and a challenge to present measured and accurate information.<\/p>\n I would like to think that Smith \u2014 who, you should remember, did not abandon her conventional cancer treatment but supplemented it with cannabis \u2014 isn\u2019t consciously guilty of spreading false hope. I think she believes the cannabis helped. But for now, that is exactly what anyone who claims \u201ccannabis cures cancer\u201d is doing.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, have you read an article that claims cannabis cures cancer?\u00a0<\/p>\n The post Cannabis & Cancer: Fake News is Winning, and That\u2019s a Problem<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Joy Smith lives in the United Kingdom, where \u2014 up until last fall \u2014 cannabis was illegal in all applications (and, despite some advances in drug-policy reform, remains prohibited on a practical level). In 2016, Joy Smith was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer and given six weeks to live. InContinue 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":[1140,50,9667,4934,53,9668],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34429"}],"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=34429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34430,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34429\/revisions\/34430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Cannabis & Cancer: Fake News is Winning, and That\u2019s a Problem<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"