​By Al Byrne

While the U.S. federal government’s regulators and lawyers, drug czar and others are paid to say whatever is dated and wrong about therapeutic cannabis, medical and nursing professionals are in wonder that so many can so willingly display their ignorance of therapeutic cannabis in public.

On November 23, 2011, the associate director for public affairs of the Office of National Drug Policy (ONDCP), Rafael Lemaitre said, “The Food and Drug Administration has not found smoked marijuana to be either safe or effective medicine for any condition.”

This statement made by a person of responsibility for citizen health in the U.S. is apparently in denial of a decades-long study of cannabis “smokers” by Donald P. Tashkin, M.D., medical director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory, Professor of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

At the Patients Out of Time clinical cannabis conference in Pacific Grove in April 2008, Dr. Tashkin announced his study showed that no patient, of more than 2,200, who smoked only cannabis had lung cancer, COPD or other pulmonary problem other than mild bronchitis.