Sidarta Ribeiro: Marijuana doesn’t make people lazy – 11/06/2023 – Science

Undoing the strictness with which the therapeutic and recreational use of marijuana is separated is one of the intentions of neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro’s new book, “As Flores do Bem”. “Because what is recreational is already being therapeutic, especially if it is benign,” he says.

Available in bookstores from this Tuesday (7), the work revisits the history of Cannabis since its functions as a medical therapy were discovered.

According to Ribeiro, several countries have made more progress than Brazil in this discussion — he cites the United States, Canada, Israel, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and several European countries as examples —, but progress is “a matter of time.”

Despite the delay, he says that the debate on medicinal use has improved despite what he calls political setback. “Because when people get sick, they lose their prejudices. They want to get treatment. And then they’re not worried about whether it’s a plant, whether it’s not, whether it’s possible or not. They want to have the right.”

There is scientific evidence that proves the beneficial effect of using medicinal Cannabis in the treatment of diseases such as epilepsy, autism, cancer, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s.

The book tells stories of children with Dravet syndrome, a disease that causes a type of severe epilepsy, who managed to control their seizures with Cannabis. This is the case of young American Charlotte Figi, who died as a teenager in 2020.

When the girl’s mother learned that cannabidiol (CBD) could help, she visited marijuana producers and discovered that they had a variety of the plant with a high CBD and low THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) content. “The treatment with the oil produced from this variety of marijuana radically changed the lives of Charlotte and her family”, says an excerpt from the book.

Even with reports of successful cases in the country, according to the author, Brazilians do not look for scientific and historical foundations to base their opinions. “It’s all based on the guesswork of misinformed or malicious people.”

The book describes that around 3,000 years ago, in India, the process of genetic separation of the two main types of Cannabis began: hemp and marijuana. The first used to produce fibers, and the second, resins and medicines. “If we combine the historical-archaeological evidence with biology, this must have happened in the Bronze Age or earlier.”

The neuroscientist states that marijuana became prohibited in earnest in the 20th century. “Many began to believe that marijuana was the ‘devil’s herb’, to the point that to this day people think it is harmful, without any other information to respect other than the prejudice that is the result of this war against marijuana.”

The criminalization of Cannabis has as one of its key points the war on drugs, started in the United States to stigmatize blacks and Mexicans, according to the author, and also to put hemp out of the fabric and fiber market, which, at the time, was dominated by cotton and then nylon.

In the book, Ribeiro explains why “marijuana doesn’t kill neurons, it makes them bloom.” The idea that the substance harms the brain and makes people lazy is not correct, according to him: in fact, Cannabis can induce the formation of new neurons and synapses.

“That old story that teenagers shouldn’t smoke marijuana because it kills neurons is a lie. The truth is that they shouldn’t smoke marijuana, unless they have a medical recommendation, because it produces new neurons and teenagers already have many.”

According to the author, marijuana is addictive, but at a lower level than tobacco and alcohol. “We must also problematize the concept of dependence, because it seems that it is a property of the substance when, in fact, it has to do with the person’s relationship with it.”

The book also brings together personal testimonies about the recreational use of marijuana. Sidarta talks about his first experience with Cannabis until he made the decision to start researching the topic. There are also reports from other people, such as rapper Mano Brown and musician Louis Armstrong, who stated that marijuana was an insulator for him against the pain of racism.

“When Armstrong says this, and I learned a lot about him from writing the book, he’s praising marijuana as something that allows him to overlook all the injury, all the insult, all the pain and be cool with white people.”