Personally I believe the primary mistake the anti-prohibition campaign has been making for decades is using the words Marijuana, THC and Cannabis interchangeably. These terms are not the same things at all and if we started using our language more precisely, I think, we would win this debate far easier and far faster.

Marijuana is and always has been a colloquial slang term first coined by Mexican migrant workers for the wild tobacco plants they dried and smoked during the Great Depression because they could not afford commercial tobacco products. This slang term was attached to cannabis to villianize the production of hemp in America after the invention of the Hemp Decorticator to prevent hemp from competing with the financial interests of those behind the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Marijuana is still be used as a slang term to villianize both hemp and herbal cannabis plants because a slang term can have imprecise definitions, have different meanings for different people and thus can be used to shift or deflect the debate.

THC or Dronabinol (the only scheduled cannabinoid drug) is only one of the more than sixty cannabinoid drugs found in cannabis resins and another primary cannabinoid, cannabidiol or CBD, has even more potential medical value. The resin glands that produce cannabinoids are almost exclusively located in the female flowers of the cannabis genus of plants. The leaves contain very few resin glands and no other part of the cannabis plant produces resins or cannabinoids at all.

Cannabis is an entire genus of plants including the hemp varieties of cannabis plants that don't produce significant concentrations of the THC cannabinoid which produces the psychoactive effects. The hemp varieties of cannabis plants will very likely affect our domestic productive economy in profound and in very positive ways once liberated. Hemp could very easily start a renaissance in our domestic manufacturing sector. For more information on the value of industrial hemp upon our domestic economy visit my website.

I think we all should try to keep the debate focused upon the actual verifiable medicinal value of the cannabinoid drugs found in cannabis resins instead of falling into the marijuana trap. It is very easy to list the effects that THC has on the CB1 endocannabinoid receptors in the brain and how THC also activates the CB2 receptors throughout our body's immune system but we will never be able to prove that a colloquial slang term with shifting definitions has medicinal value.

