Her visiting card has an imprint of the familiar five-bladed leaf of the cannabis plant on both sides, leaving no room for doubt about the cause she espouses. Dr Uma Dhanabalan is trained in family medicine, with a Masters in public health from Harvard University, but over the past four years, she has been on a mission to educate people about the therapeutic benefits of cannabis (marijuana).
In her home state Massachusetts, she does medical marijuana authorisation's and is involved in efforts to reform US government policy on marijuana.
Excerpt from Interview with Dr Uma Dhanabalan
You say cannabis became the victim of propaganda. How did that happen?
From India, O'Shaughnessy went to Afghanistan and Nepal to learn about cannabis and took that knowledge to the US and Europe. In 1850, it was part of the US Pharmacopeial Convention (which sets standards) and prescribed by doctors from 1850 to 1942. Those are the facts! Now why did this change? The evidence points not to facts, but propaganda. It began in the 1930s,
What are the precautions people need to take?
We need more education and research. We already have over 25,000 research articles on cannabis and endocannabinoids but we need to learn more. What we've learnt is that in the states that have had legalisation and medicinal use, we have a 25% decrease in opioid consumption in two years. That becomes 33% in five years. There's decrease in alcohol consumption, opioid overdose, and a saving of $165 million in medicare expenses. ..
Read More