Make sure that the product you are using is safe. This is best accomplished by going through the legal market if available (as these products are carefully monitored for pesticides and molds, and are regulated), growing your own, or knowing your grower. Previously he has been a member and then Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD - 1998-2009), a member of the HEFCE/NHS Senior Lecturer Selection Panel and of the MRC Neuroscience Board. Other previous national contributions include serving as the medical expert on the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act (2000 Runciman report), and membership of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, the Committee on NHS drugs and the Ministry of Defence Science Advisory Board. He was the clinical scientific lead on the 2004/5 UK Government Foresight initiative "Brain science, addiction and drugs" that provided a 25-year vision for this area of science and public policy. Ideally, skeptics can work with true believers to advocate for safe practices, many of which most of us can agree upon, such as avoiding cannabis during pregnancy and breastfeeding (except under certain very narrow circumstances), before driving, and during adolescence. There are certainly benefits that we can all agree upon, such as using cannabis to treat chronic pain and insomnia. We do better when we work together. By focusing on the most critical purported harms—driving, pregnancy, addictiveness, memory—and by focusing on the most commonly cited medical benefits—relieving chronic pain, sleep, anxiety, PTSD, autism, and cancer—Seeing Through the Smoke will help patients, parents, doctors, health experts, regulators, and politicians move beyond biased perceptions and arrive at a shared reality towards cannabis.

Use legalization as an opportunity to redress as many harms of the War on Cannabis as possible. Let nonviolent cannabis prisoners out, expunge all records for nonviolent cannabis offenses, and find a way to fund profits from the nascent industry to the families and communities that have been harmed heal their traumas and regain financial stability.As we reconsider what is and isn’t true about cannabis, hopefully we can bridge, or at least narrow, the divide between those who continue to remain skeptical about cannabis, the ‘Reefer Pessimists’ and the cannabis enthusiasts, or the ‘Cannatopians’. One of the most powerful actions of cannabis, both helpful and inconvenient, is that it helps us to forget. Forgetting is going to constitute a large piece of this reconciliation between the dueling parties about the nature of cannabis. Both sides have to do their share, with or without the use of the temporary, short-term fuzzifying effects of cannabis. Limiting or banning advertising for cannabis, at the same time as we ban it for tobacco, alcohol, and Big Pharma too. None of these ads are helpful to society Peter Grinspoon is uniquely qualified to dispense verifiable knowledge about cannabis use and misuse as both prescriber of therapeutic cannabis to qualified medical patients and a councilor to cannabis misusers.Steeped in a deep pharmacological understanding of cannabis and aided by up-to-date analysis of scientific cannabis-related studies, Seeing through the Smoke amplifies a voice trusted by both sides of the ongoing debate about functional and responsible cannabis policies post-prohibition.” -Allen St. Pierre, former Executive Director of NORML

Opinion on cannabis, particularly medical cannabis, is broadly positive. Ninety-four percent of Americans are in favor of legal access to medical marijuana. Can you name any other issue about which 94 percent of Americans agree? Can you even imagine it? I’m not sure that 94 percent of Americans believe the earth is round, that we actually landed on the moon, or that the sky is blue.

Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Neuroscience Research Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA. As for the cannabis activists, I’m reminded of an aphorism from Nietzsche, which I can only paraphrase: “If you automatically react against something, you are just as controlled by it as if you comply.” Confronted with relentless negative, and at times dubious, information about cannabis from the U.S. government and from anti-cannabis researchers, cannabis advocates have counterreacted and reflexively dismissed concerns about potential harms. Many of these studies are valid and important, or at least hypothesis generating, with major implications for health and harm reduction. Cannabis Unites Seeing Through the Smoke provides refreshing insights into the biases that have challenged cannabis research to date. Grinspoon presents both sides of the divisive issues polarizing society today, allowing the reader to reconsider what is and isn’t true about cannabis. Honest, personal, poignant, comprehensive, and totally current, this book emphatically reminds us that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence of effectiveness for this extremely therapeutic botanical.”– Donald I. Abrams, MD , professor emeritus of medicine, University of California San Francisco

Dr. Grinspoon is a widely recognized expert on cannabis science and drug policy. He regularly appears as an expert on national television and radio programs, including NPR’s All Things Considered, NBC Nightly News, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Fox and Friends and Fox News. He is quoted frequently in the national media, in such venues as People, the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune,and the Boston Globe.He is a TEDX speaker. Dr. Grinspoon is a widely recognized expert on cannabis science and drug policy. He regularly appears as an expert on national television and radio programs, including NPR’s All Things Considered, NBC Nightly News, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Fox and Friends and Fox News. He is quoted frequently in the national media, in such venues as People, the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. He is a TEDX speaker.THE DISRUPTION OF MIND WANDERING We need to let our minds wander. By constantly being in a rush and distracting ourselves with tasks, distractions, and entertainment, we never give our minds the ability to just wander. And this is impacting our ability to be imaginative, thoughtful, and reflect on what is going on around us. And as we let our minds wander, we develop greater attention and focus. And by letting our minds wander, we form new connections between ideas and thoughts which can help us to solve problems. Since reading this chapter, I have put my phone down more, and just try to let my mind be freer. I have found this important. If people drive when impaired or act in a violent or antisocial way, such as they might do under the influence of alcohol, that reasonably becomes a law enforcement issue. One could argue that treatment is always more productive than punishment (which doesn’t at all help people with the disease of addiction), although intoxicated drivers do need to be taken off the roads. Otherwise, the harms of being involved with law enforcement and the court system, including the carceral system, are often worse than the harms of the drug use itself, to individuals, their families, and their communities. The very involvement of law enforcement deters people from admitting they are struggling and from seeking help. Ideally, we could make our criminal justice system more rehabilitative and less needlessly punitive, like it is in many European countries. The Reefer Pessimists must forget, or at least contextualize, much of what they have learned because so much of this knowledge was manufactured with an agenda (if not flat-out fabricated) by the dictates of the War on Drugs. This led to unrealistically negative beliefs and a lot of unhelpful mythology (e.g., breasts, sperm, I.Q.). The cynicism regarding cannabis from the War on Drugs, along with vastly lopsided funding into purported harms (but not into potential benefits), created an echo chamber of presumed negativity and flat-out dismissiveness, which continues to artifactually distort and obscure continuing explorations into the true nature of cannabis. My one gripe is that at times it does feel somewhat like an extended advertorial for Drug Science, a UK based drugs advisory body and research organisation founded by Nutt in the aftermath of his infamous dismissal from the chairmanship of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009. Ask your doctor, or a cannabis specialist, about any potential reactions there may be between THC, CBD, and any medications you are taking. This is particularly true if you are on blood thinners or other medications that need to be kept within a narrow range (e.g., antiepileptics, immunosuppressants, chemotherapeutic agents). Also, if you use cannabis frequently, make sure the anesthesiologist knows, before surgery, as you might have higher anesthesia requirements.

By focusing on the most critical purported harms—driving, pregnancy, addictiveness, memory—and by focusing on the most commonly cited medical benefits—relieving chronic pain, sleep, anxiety, PTSD, autism, and cancer— Seeing Through the Smoke will help patients, parents, doctors, health experts, regulators, and politicians move beyond biased perceptions and arrive at a shared reality towards cannabis. An unflinching and utterly personal journey through the often-confusing cannabis landscape. Readers will delight in the historical as well as the scientific focus brought to life by Grinspoon, whose roots and professional experience provide a unique and fascinating perspective. Seeing through the Smoke has something for everyone – from the novice to the expert and everyone in between with an interest in cannabis.”– Staci Gruber, MD , Director of Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School Writing in a conversational and engaging style, Peter couples solid science with personal anecdotes, and tempers cold hard facts with his informed opinions. Bibliographic endnotes document the text, yet scholarly research rarely impedes the flow of the narrative. While credentialed as an MD, Grinspoon is no stuffy pedantic academic. As an undergrad lit major and grad student in philosophy, the medical doctor taps into his creative inner writer throughout the book. Don’t smoke! (Unless you are a very occasional user). There’s no reason to expose yourself to combustion products, such as tar, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc. (Even though cannabis has never been shown to cause lung cancer or COPD, there’s no reason to inhale all of this crap.) If you prefer to use cannabis inhalationally, use a dry herb vapor- izer, which doesn’t combust the cannabis, but instead heats it to a lower temperature (which is enough to extract the cannabinoids) and which produces a less irritating vapor. Or explore edibles, tinctures, inhalers, oils, suppositories, patches, and lotions—there are lots of options these days.A Passani et al., “Cannabinoids in glaucoma patients: the never-ending story,” J Clin Med, 9, 3978 (2020). PMID: 33302608. Chapter 4, “Doctors and the War on Drugs,” brands this MD as a heretic within his courtly profession. Nevertheless, he is respectful of and circumspect about his medical colleagues’ ignorance or skepticism regarding cannabis as a therapeutic herb. He lays blame mostly on the institutional bias of the old school medical schools whose curriculums are still teaching politically motivated falsehoods. In the United States, the falsehoods were propagandized during the losing War on Drugs waged by the Nixon administration, then were escalated into the lost War on Weed waged by the Reagan administration, and under the present Biden administration are still soldiered on by diehards and holdovers within the DEA, the FDA, and NIDA. If your own doctors plead ignorance about medical marijuana, bestow upon them copies of this book. If you must be thrifty, then make them photocopies of just Chapters 4 and 22. Allow hospitals to allow inpatients to use medical cannabis so they don’t have to either withdraw from cannabis in the hospital, use it surreptitiously, or interrupt their care regimens. (This doesn’t mean smoking or vaping in a hospital.) Grinspoon’s Harvard Health articles have reached tens of millions of readers, have been widely referenced in the national media, and have been cited in congressional testimony. His writing has been published in The Nation , the Los Angeles Times and Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics .