(i must request if you start reading this than please finish it... also please watch every video and click on every link in order or you might miss what i am trying to convey with this article... thanks for your time!)
i am many things....the most important thing i am is a father..... i cant think of a more important job that one could do than this.... my son morris means the world to me.... he makes me the person i want to be not the person that i am...another super important thing i am is a husband. i feel i have the best wife that anyone on this planet has ever had. my family means the world to me...they have taught me to not only care about myself but to care about my surroundings.... i never cared about my body and my health until i met my wife ...she has taught me the importance of eating right, exercise, and staying healthy....my son has taught me about community and how important it is not only now but what i leave behind for him.... before him i didnt care much about my surroundings...i want to set a good example for him.. i want to teach him how important honesty is, how important others are and how if he doesnt like something about the way things are than he should work to change it (among other things)... he has already taught me many things...most of all he has taught me that things in this life are malleable .... things can change and for the better and faster than what you might expect.....12 months ago i was not a father had no idea i would ever be one and had no want of ever being one.... now i couldnt imagine him not in my life.... i would do anything for him.... as some of you might know we had some health scares with him early on (we were told he had glactosemia)... i am proud to report by gods grace he is completly healthy...during this time all other things i held important in my life got prioritised, well into the unimportant category.... i was ready to change everything for him and gladly would have... where i lived, what i did , what i ate, what i spend my money on, just to name a few... he has reset my priorites in life....he is my legacy what i leave behind... he is my recorder .... it is no longer art work or tattoos or people that i meet in passing that will record me .... he will record all my strengths and faults... after i am dead and gone he will say... .my dad la la la... i see this all day everyday at the tattoo shop... i wonder if people realize how much they talk about there parents... its alot, start paying attention and you will see...i want him to be proud of me... now i will never be president or a millionare or something....i wouldnt want him to be proud of me for those things if i were them anyway but i want him to be stoked im his dad....not because i let him do whatever he wanted but because i was a good father and was available for him any time he needed me to be and i showed him the right way to do things not the easy way to do things.... morris has forced me to take a wider view of many things.... i dont think as i have gotten older i have become wiser but i diffently feel i have been blessed with a wider view on life....
as i started this whole thing out i am many things... i am a father, a husband, a tattooer, a business owner, a home owner (or it owns me anyway as many of you with old homes can attest) ,a christian, and to the suprise of some a person who thinks marijuana, cannabis, hemp or whatever you would like to call it should be legal....now before you make judgements please read on....
the united states classifies marijuana as a schedule 1 drug meaning it has no medicinal value... i have found this to be a lie ... a customer of mine with epilepsy tells me that after taking every drug on the market he finds marijuana to be the only thing that helps him not have seizures... i also find it odd that our government says it has no medicinal value when the fda liscenses such drugs like marinol that are based on the "bad stuff" in marijuana that cost upwards of 4,000$ a year ....to grow marijuana in your back yard garden would cost pennies ..... i am also told that one of the reasons marinol is not effective for cancer patients is that they cant keep it down or even swallow it ..... where as marijuana is supierior because it can be vaporized or smoked...it seems many things are starting to come out about the health aspects of marijuana...
i was suprised to watch this as i thought smoking marijuana was the bad way to go compared to eating it or vaporizing it... but it seems like more and more evidence is starting to come to light like this abc news article ....
but lets stop and think for a second ...... who smokes marijuana regularly....one of my all time favorites louis armstrong did he lived to be over 70 which doesnt seem very old but when your consider his life expectancy for someone born in 1901 was under 50 70 doesnt seem to shabby....willie nelson 's life expectancy is slightly over 60 he is still alive at age 80...diego rivera also out lived his life expectancy just to name a few... to me the idea that marijuana shortens your life just doesnt add up.... if marijuana took off 5 minutes of your life like cigarettes do we all know cheech and chong would already be dead.... where are the public service announcements with black marijuana lungs that came so easily with cigarettes... could it be that there is a difference .....
i watched this the other day of a father who's son takes a cannabis tincture to help with his siezures it almost made me cry ... what would you do if you were in this mans position.... have you ever been faced with this? do you feel that the government truely cares for its citizens or maybe they care more about pharmacy profits..but we are not much better here in kansas since we make people move who need marijuana as a medication..its sad that we call ourselves christians but yet we make sick people move just because there medication doesnt align with what we think they should have.... this makes me ashamed to be a kansas resident....
i have been trying to dig up facts of the harmful effects of marijuana... it seems as though we are not really 100% to sure what they are even after 12,000 years of the plant being around.... here are a few statements i have found from drugabuse.gov
Numerous studies have shown marijuana smoke to contain carcinogens and to be an irritant to the lungs. In fact, marijuana smoke contains 50-70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke. Marijuana users usually inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer than tobacco smokers do, which further increase the lungs' exposure to carcinogenic smoke. Marijuana smokers show dysregulated growth of epithelial cells in their lung tissue, which could lead to cancer;6 however, a recent case-controlled study found no positive associations between marijuana use and lung, upper respiratory, or upper digestive tract cancers.7 Thus, the link between marijuana smoking and these cancers remains unsubstantiated at this time.
Research into the effects of long-term cannabis use on the structure of the brain has yielded inconsistent results. It may be that the effects are too subtle for reliable detection by current techniques. A similar challenge arises in studies of the effects of chronic marijuana use on brain function. Brain imaging studies in chronic users tend to show some consistent alterations, but their connection to impaired cognitive functioning is far from clear. This uncertainty may stem from confounding factors such as other drug use, residual drug effects, or withdrawal symptoms in long-term chronic users.
i found this one to be the most interesting.....
Marijuana increases heart rate by 20-100 percent shortly after smoking; this effect can last up to 3 hours. In one study, it was estimated that marijuana users have a 4.8-fold increase in the risk of heart attack in the first hour after smoking the drug.5 This may be due to increased heart rate as well as the effects of marijuana on heart rhythms, causing palpitations and arrhythmias. This risk may be greater in aging populations or in those with cardiac vulnerabilities.
so i did a little research on this statement.....and found this...
Mittleman, noted that as an immediate trigger for heart attack pot smoking is nearly twice as dangerous as sex for a sedentary person, exercise for a fit male or female, a tantrum of rage, or a bout of anxiety. But its less risky than a spurt of exercise for a couch potato or a snort of cocaine.
Despite the high percentage of people younger than 50 years old who report they use the drug – 12.5 percent – Mittleman doesn’t foresee an epidemic of pot-triggered heart attacks. For a 50-year-old baby boomer without other risk factors, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the absolute risk of having a heart attack in the crucial first hour after smoking marijuana is one in 100,000, he says.
hmmm ... so in other words our government has obscured the facts... maybe what they should have wrote was .... if you are a lazy couch potato and never exercise... marijuana may give you a heart attack... but dont run around the block because that will probably kill you first...
this statement was also on the national institue of drug abuse....
The potential medicinal properties of marijuana have been the subject of substantive research and heated debate. Scientists have confirmed that the cannabis plant contains active ingredients with therapeutic potential for relieving pain, controlling nausea, stimulating appetite, and decreasing ocular pressure. Cannabinoid-based medications include synthetic compounds, such as dronabinol (Marinol®) and nabilone (Cesamet®), which are FDA approved, and a new, chemically pure mixture of plant-derived THC and cannabidiol called Sativex®, formulated as a mouth spray and approved in Canada and parts of Europe for the relief of cancer-associated pain and spasticity and neuropathic pain in multiple sclerosis.
Scientists continue to investigate the medicinal properties of THC and other cannabinoids to better evaluate and harness their ability to help patients suffering from a broad range of conditions, while avoiding the adverse effects of smoked marijuana.
so we can make a drug to emulate something natural (so we can charge more for it possibly?) "while avoiding the adverse effects of smoked marijuana" which are what???? you havent made those clear....are you starting to see a pattern here.....
i found this one to be the most interesting.....
Marijuana increases heart rate by 20-100 percent shortly after smoking; this effect can last up to 3 hours. In one study, it was estimated that marijuana users have a 4.8-fold increase in the risk of heart attack in the first hour after smoking the drug.5 This may be due to increased heart rate as well as the effects of marijuana on heart rhythms, causing palpitations and arrhythmias. This risk may be greater in aging populations or in those with cardiac vulnerabilities.
so i did a little research on this statement.....and found this...
Mittleman, noted that as an immediate trigger for heart attack pot smoking is nearly twice as dangerous as sex for a sedentary person, exercise for a fit male or female, a tantrum of rage, or a bout of anxiety. But its less risky than a spurt of exercise for a couch potato or a snort of cocaine.
Despite the high percentage of people younger than 50 years old who report they use the drug – 12.5 percent – Mittleman doesn’t foresee an epidemic of pot-triggered heart attacks. For a 50-year-old baby boomer without other risk factors, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the absolute risk of having a heart attack in the crucial first hour after smoking marijuana is one in 100,000, he says.
hmmm ... so in other words our government has obscured the facts... maybe what they should have wrote was .... if you are a lazy couch potato and never exercise... marijuana may give you a heart attack... but dont run around the block because that will probably kill you first...
this statement was also on the national institue of drug abuse....
The potential medicinal properties of marijuana have been the subject of substantive research and heated debate. Scientists have confirmed that the cannabis plant contains active ingredients with therapeutic potential for relieving pain, controlling nausea, stimulating appetite, and decreasing ocular pressure. Cannabinoid-based medications include synthetic compounds, such as dronabinol (Marinol®) and nabilone (Cesamet®), which are FDA approved, and a new, chemically pure mixture of plant-derived THC and cannabidiol called Sativex®, formulated as a mouth spray and approved in Canada and parts of Europe for the relief of cancer-associated pain and spasticity and neuropathic pain in multiple sclerosis.
Scientists continue to investigate the medicinal properties of THC and other cannabinoids to better evaluate and harness their ability to help patients suffering from a broad range of conditions, while avoiding the adverse effects of smoked marijuana.
so we can make a drug to emulate something natural (so we can charge more for it possibly?) "while avoiding the adverse effects of smoked marijuana" which are what???? you havent made those clear....are you starting to see a pattern here.....
but the usa isnt all bad when it comes to marijuana ...they currently allow 4 people to receive federally grown marijuana.... no joke....you can watch a video on it here
now why would the government say its ok for these few people to have medical marijuana but not anyone else... are there conditions worse than others... hmmm doesnt make much sense to me but i guess keeping marijuana illegal doesnt make much sense to me either....it didnt make much sense to the us department of agriculture to make it illegal either evidently....
it seems to me the worst thing about marijuana is marijuana laws.... im pretty sure jonathan whitworth would agree with me since a swat team broke in his house with guns drawn on his wife and child and shot his dog all for a misdemeanor amount of marijuana....who is the greater evil in this story.....
earlier i stated i was christian ... i tend to side with pat robertson on the idea of marijuana legalization
Genesis 1:29
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the [a]surface of all the earth, and every tree [b]which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
now dont get me wrong i do not believe children should have access to marijuana... i dont want my son to start smoking marijuana when he is 16, unless he has a medical condition that it can help... growing up in hutchinson kansas it was easier to get marijuana than beer at a young age... perhaps it was because alcohol is regulated... i think colorado has it pretty figured out . i do agree that regulation would help keep it out of the hands of young people.
so why now... why has this become such an issue for me...well first and for most my son.... if he decides to smoke marijuana as an adult for whatever reason i do not want him to go to prison i do not feel for growing or ingesting a plant given to us by god he should be put in the same room as murders and rapist. If my son would have a condition that marijuana would help i want him to have safe access to it. also I do not feel we should give our money to anyone but hard working green thumbed americans who grow marijuana, we are making criminals and people outside of this country rich this makes no sense to me. i know many people here in kansas that would vote to legalize marijuana for one reason or another many who dont smoke but would like it to be legal... police, teachers,parents, you name it... many feel they cant speak openly about marijuana without facing some sort of punishment from there neighbors.... well i know their neighbors feel the same way... we are afraid of ourselves.... i feel that if every person who was pro cannabis spoke out we would change this law in no time...... i am a hard working american who pays all my taxes and now as of this year i am a voter... i plan to work for and vote for laws to legalize and regulate marijuana in my home state of kansas.. i do think this is possible.. work is already being done by the fine people at kansas medical cannabis network. if you think marijuana should be legal please vote.... voting really can change this on a local level. politicians want jobs.... they work for us ... if they dont work for us lets get rid of them and find ones that do ... thank you for taking the time to read all this... i welcome any comments and also any debate to mattcicada@hotmail.com please feel free to repost this any where as i feel there is alot of information that needs to be spread
ps. i view my writing as prose ...so i have little need for punctuation or spelling..haha besides i draw pictures for a living....
