In an ever aging society very few have not been touched in some way by a serious illness such as cancer, either directly or through someone they care about. As the dark mask of cannabis prohibition is slowly but surely being lifted off the beliefs of our population, cannabis is coming ever more into the forefront as a means to treat an ever increasing number of conditions.
The ability of the THC component of cannabis to kill cancer cells was shown in laboratory settings in the United States, in a study published in 1975 in the ‘Journal Of The National Cancer Institute‘. Yet much of the progress since with regard to what conditions cannabis can benefit has been done by activists and those willing to forgo their own freedom to provide sick people with a benign, beneficial plant. Due to the dire cost of mainstream science and research, countless sick and dying patients have been told by doctors that they would not support cannabis treatment because of a lack of scientific evidence to say that it actually works.
Not that there are no studies; there are, plenty. The majority of these studies are done overseas, but many of them are simply ignored or discarded by caregivers. In North America, the War on Drugs has aggressively prevented researchers from investigating the potential benefits of cannabis for an ailing population. With cannabis being a Schedule 1 drug in the United States, researchers there face an extremely difficult environment. The scenario leaves North American caregivers with a dearth of reliable information from which to evaluate their options.
First-hand accounts and patient testimonials are in abundance for good reason. A few minutes on your favorite search engine reveals thousands real accounts from real people who have used a form of cannabis to treat everything from acne to PTSD, cancer and much more. The patients who are getting the most attention are children who are combating horrific seizures with cannabis oil to reduce both the frequency and severity. In some cases, the seizures can be eliminated entirely.
Many parents who have treated their children in this way have had to do it illegally and live with the very real fear of imprisonment. Many have moved thousands of miles to a place where they can access this medicine so their child would not suffer. They are trailblazers who would say they are no more than loving, desperate parents.
Trailblazers come in all forms. Rick Simpson is a well known and persecuted example. His use of raw cannabis extract began as a curiosity after watching David Suzuki on The Nature Of Things-Reefer Madness 2, which aired on October 17th 1998. That program aired 20 years to the day before Canada would legalize recreational cannabis. Coincidence?
Rick Simpson took great inspiration from that episode and shortly afterward made his first batch of whole-plant cannabis extract, which he promptly put on a shelf and forgot about for about a year. When facing a recurring melanoma the next year he remembered the show and the oil he made. Simpson put some of the oil on the returning cancerous growth and it wasn’t long before everything changed for him. And for so many others since.
We as living, breathing, thinking beings are truly miracles of evolution. We are the wonders of our invention and creation. That said, we can be prone to sometimes missing the obvious, simple things that are right in front of us. That is a big part of this story.
Rick Simpson Oil, also known as simply RSO, while incredibly effective in restoring health under some conditions, has always had one effect that many did not want: it makes you high. Especially in the higher doses that are suggested and used for aggressive cancer, the psychoactive properties of THC may be considered unwanted or inappropriate by certain patients, especially children.
The high from RSO had always simply seemed a known but unavoidable side effect for which there was really nothing that could be done. This non-trivial side effect led many to not want to use RSO for treatment. Here is the funny thing, however: With all the effort to grow low-THC and high-CBD strains to circumvent the cannabis medicine ‘high’, the simplest answer was right in front of us all along.
Don’t cook it!
When you eat a raw cannabis bud — no matter how potent it is to smoke — you will not get high from it. The reason is there is no decarboxylation to convert the THC from its default non-psychoactive form to a psychoactive form. In the process of making RSO, low heat is used to aid and speed evaporation. This process effectively converts the THC to its psychoactive form.
When you do the same process, but do not use heat for evaporation, there is no decarboxylation taking place. As such, the THC doesn’t become psychoactive. The result is that the RSO has all the beneficial goodness of the whole-plant cannabis extract without the intoxicating effect. No high!
The reality of this came to me when I learned of a man named Justin Marshall on social media who was describing how he makes and uses an oil he calls JMO. When I learned why he calls it JMO and how it was very different than RSO, I became curious. The more I think about this simple change and resulting effect, I can’t help but think of those I have known who would have taken this treatment were it known to us. All the whole-plant compounds are in both JMO and RSO. RSO gets you high; JMO does not.
I asked Justin to tell his story and he agreed. Below is his article in his own words.
My name is Justin Marshall and I was diagnosed with late Stage IV metastatic colon cancer over 4 years ago . At that time, the doctor said there was nothing they could do for me and that I had approximately two months to live. I was very shook up, yet I knew there had to be something that could be done. So, I started researching and I learned about Rick Simpson’s oil. I found this encouraging because I have been a cannabis advocate all my life and was very familiar with the world of cannabis. I immediately learned how to make Rick Simpson’s oil and started taking a gram a day.
After 3 months of taking the oil daily, I flew to California to access a large amount of organic cannabis to continue making into oil. Once in California, I did another CT scan, which showed that the cancer was not growing or spreading but was dying. I realized this oil was working and keeping me alive. I did do a couple rounds of chemotherapy in conjunction with the oil and I feel that if it were not for the cannabis oil, I may not have survived the chemotherapy as it was very brutal.
About a year later, my dad was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer that spread to his brain. He wanted to try the cannabis oil, so I made him a batch of RSO. Unfortunately, he was not even able to take one tenth of a gram because it made him feel too high. I decided to make him a special batch of cannabis oil that was not activated. Basically, I extracted the cannabinoids using food-grade alcohol and then I evaporated the alcohol off at room temperature. I never heated the cannabinoids at any time during the extraction or evaporation process.
My dad was able to take a full gram of this JMO each day and it did not have the psychoactive effects. It did, however, have the cancer-fighting properties. Over the last 2 years, I have been taking JMO everyday and I am using myself as a clinical test patient to see how well this works. It is working well and keeping me in remission. I find this oil to be very beneficial for elderly patients and children who cannot handle the intense high.
When I am selecting strains for my JMO, I always pick strains that are high in THC and CBD and I only use organic cannabis. I feel that if pesticides were used on the Cannabis, it would be not good to use as medicine. I truly believe in the healing power of cannabis and I am living proof that this cannabis oil works miraculously well. It is very easy to make and I find that from one quarter pound of cannabis I can get 30 grams of oil. I found that taking 90 mg of oil in 90 days is enough to destroy cancer.
I have been taking very careful notes and, so far, I have found that the strain called Fire OG has worked best for fighting colon cancer, yet I am currently developing some new strains that hopefully will work even better. Justin Marshall Oil ( JMO ) is an amazing medicine that has been used for centuries by civilizations around the world, so I cannot take credit for it. I am simply just reintroducing it to the world as an effective way to fight cancer.
We want to give Justin a huge Thank You for sharing his story with us and for his work to spread the word on the benefits of JMO. JMO really does bring a whole new meaning to …
Health. Healing. Herb.
It is with great sadness that we at MellowMeds learned of Justin’s passing from cancer on February 19, 2019. His passing serves as a reminder that there is no single silver bullet with which we battle the Big C. Godspeed, Justin. You can visit his memorial page here:
https://www.gatheringus.com/memorial/justin-b-marshall/304?c=423