It seems like it was just yesterday that I wrote an article here on The 420 Times about how great it was that the U.S. Government was starting to publicly acknowledge some of the benefits of cannabis (a.k.a. medical marijuana). Oh, wait…it was just yesterday.

In an amazing, almost real-time drama, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), mentioned prominently in the article, has now removed some content from their own website, replacing it with less-controversial language. This might be understandable if we were talking about an embarrassing goof on a government political website, but NCI is a leading resource for physicians, patients, researchers, and other scientists.

“I was so excited, but also surprised, that the government was finally telling the truth about the many anti-tumor effects of marijuana that I outlined in my film, “What if Cannabis Cured Cancer“. I was angry, but not surprised, that the National Cancer Institute took their own quote off their official website within hours of it appearing. The truth slipped out, oops, somebody’s going to get fired. I guess big pharma got to them. The pharmaceutical industry funds most cancer websites in this country. Profits come first in the war on cancer as it’s fought in the United States of Corporations”. — Len Richmond, filmmaker

So what was so controversial? Very simple, and simply chilling in its implications.

The first version mentioned that doctors were using cannabis with their cancer patients for a number of reasons, including anti-nausea, pain relief, and antitumor effects.

The second “sanitized” version not only left out the bit about fighting tumors, but also changed the entire tone of the paragraph to imply that cannabis is only useful for comforting cancer patients, and nothing else.

Here’s The Smoking Gun

Original Version:

“The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.”

Today’s Version:

“The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Though no relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients who prescribe medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.”

What Does This Mean?

Back in the 1960s, Americans reveled in our freedoms and made fun of the poor Soviet people, who were insulated from the outside world by a government who controlled all media and was known for changing its official version of history. Politicians who fell out of favor with the government leaders, or the prevailing political mood at the time, were erased from official photographs and sent off to Siberia. We thanked our lucky stars that we lived in a free, open society where those sorts of things didn’t happen.

But we were wrong…we just didn’t know it.

Now, apparently, we live in a country which is approaching, in some ways, the dystopia described in George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four, in which Winston Smith, working at the Ministry Of Truth, would change the content of old newspapers to reflect the official government position on any particular subject. In effect, though the Internet wasn’t dreamed of in Orwell’s day, he was doing the equivalent of changing the content of what had already been written…a textbook example of (literal) revisionism.

The Original Ministry Of Truth (George worked here)

When scientists are forced to change the truth (as published, anyway), it means that we’re now living in a world much like Soviet Russia, where Pravda is the only allowed newspaper, so that what it says must be right. It means we’re stuck in the 1984 of Orwell’s fears…where some anonymous person in an anonymous office is told to rewrite the facts, because the facts conflict with what Big Brother wants you to know.

And Big Brother does not want you to know about cannabis. Big Brother wants you to keep thinking that cannabis is dangerous and will lead your children to perdition…just like the way they lied in 1937 to make it illegal in the first place. Big Brother does not want you to know about the medical research done since then, proving that cannabis alleviates or outright cures literally dozens of diseases, ailments, and mental and emotional conditions. Big Brother does not want you to know about Granny Storm Crow’s list comprising hundreds of pages of links to this proven medical research. Big Brother does not want you to know how Rick Simpson cured cancer using nothing but cannabis oil. Big Brother does not want you to know about Len Richmond’s film about curing cancer with cannabis.

And most of all, Big Brother does not want you to know that Big Brother knows that cannabis can cure cancer, and that Big Brother himself suppressed the news, sentencing untold millions of people to an early and painful death.

And now Big Brother is controlling scientists and telling them what to say and what not to say.

The 420 Times would like to thank Len Richmond for supplying the before-and-after and personal quotes.
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Old Hippie is a MMJ patient living somewhere in the wilds of California whose only link with the real world is a 420 MHz radio. He blogs on BeyondChronic.com and vapes on Sour Diesel.