This is an excerpt from an article. I know this can turn into a controversial subject here on DS. But please, don't argue! Everybody has their beliefs. Mine? I wish it was finally legalized here in the U.S. I know what it can do for depression! It makes people happy!

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JR: In your book, Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine, there are many references to the medicinal uses of cannabis. What are some of the medical problems you have seen medicinal cannabis help?

Dr G: The most common cancer treatment in the last couple of decades is with the cancer chemotherapeutic substances. A big problem with some of these is the severe nausea and vomiting. It is the kind of nausea that anybody who has not experienced it can only imagine. It is very important that this nausea be defeated so patients can be reasonably comfortable with this treatment. As I have mentioned, there are conventional drugs available; it is just that cannabis is often the best.

Then there is glaucoma which is a disorder of increased intraocular pressure in the eyes. If that pressure is not brought down, glaucoma can eventually lead to blindness. There are conventional medicines that work pretty well; but, for some people, cannabis works better and with fewer side-effects.

Epilepsy is a disorder which has been treated by cannabis for centuries. About 25 per cent of people in the US who have various forms of epilepsy don't get good relief from the conventional medicines. Many of them do get relief from one of the oldest anti-epileptic medicines, cannabis.

Multiple sclerosis affects more than two million people in the US, and one of its distressing symptoms is muscle spasm. It is very painful. Anybody who has had a cramp while swimming will know what muscle spasm pain is all about. Cannabis is very effective for the muscle spasms of not only multiple sclerosis but also of paraplegia and quadriplegia.

Furthermore, cannabis helps people with MS who may have trouble controlling their bladders. Cannabis is very helpful in reducing this kind of loss of control. Not long ago I was in London doing a TV debate on the topic of medicinal cannabis use. There was a woman in the audience who said she had come down from Leeds, two-and-a-half hours on the train, to be in the television audience. She has MS. The part that was so distressing for her was the social embarrassment of losing control over her bladder. Well, she said cannabis has restored her bladder control and she could now make the two-and-a-half-hour trip from Leeds with no trouble.

Cannabis has been used for centuries in the treatment of various kinds of chronic pain. It was used on the battlefields of the Civil War as an analgesic medicine until morphine displaced it. Morphine was much quicker for the pain and a much more powerful pain-reliever than cannabis. Cannabis cannot defeat very powerful pain. The price of using morphine was that many people suffered from what was then called "soldier's disease", which was addiction to morphine.

Cannabis is very useful in the treatment of migraine headaches. Sir William Osler, in his last textbook on medicine, describes cannabis as the best single medicine for the treatment of the pain of migraine.