Los Angeles Marijuana Clinic Blog

Recently, the DEA also began threatening the owners of buildings used for medical marijuana activities with seizure of their property. Called “a deplorable new bullying tactic”, this DEA action has occurred even where medical marijuana is legal under state law and specifically authorized by voters.
The bullying tactics are also being done on the sick and it is now even continuing and increasing. In June and July 2007, the DEA conducted extensive medical marijuana raids in several Los Angeles marijuana clinics, including raids on at least 10 Los Angeles marijuana clinics in late July. Most were aimed at Los Angeles marijuana clinics operating legally under state and local laws, and in several cases individual Los Angeles marijuana clinics patients were detained and terrorized.
DEA attacks are preventing effective local regulation of medical marijuana. Cities and counties in California are passing ordinances to ensure that medical marijuana dispensaries follow the law and serve patients properly. By treating all Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors who provide medical marijuana to the sick as common drug dealers, the DEA has become the single largest obstacle to effective regulation of these establishments. A major Los Angeles raid actually occurred at the exact moment that members of the city council were holding a press conference to discuss an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana providers. At a Coachella Valley Association of Governments meeting in January, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom O’Brien even threatened officials with prosecution for aiding and abetting a federal crime if they acted to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries. Local officials and major newspapers are outraged by the DEA’s actions.
After the July 2007 raids in Los Angeles, L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine — a Republican and former police officer with the LAPD — said, “I am greatly an enforcement action against medical marijuana facilities in the City of Los Angeles during a news conference regarding City Council support of an Interim Control Ordinance to regulate all facilities within the City. This action by the DEA is contrary to the vote of Californians who overwhelmingly voted to support medicinal marijuana use by those facing serious and life threatening illnesses. The DEA needs to focus their attention and enforcement action on the illegal drug dealers who are terrorizing communities in Los Angeles.”
Disturbed that the Drug Enforcement Administration would initiate after a series of DEA medical marijuana raids in San Francisco, the city’s health director, Dr. Mitchell Katz, wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “These actions have resulted in 4,000 persons with chronic illness left without access to critical treatment upon which they rely. Certainly in this post-September 11 environment, it seems that a DEA priority punishing organizations for distributing cannabis for medical purposes to chronically ill individuals is misplaced.”
On August 3, 2007, the Los Angeles Daily News editorialized, “In recent days, the DEA has cranked up its raids in a clear assault on the state’s medical marijuana law … But the feds should leave medical marijuana alone unless they have proof of genuine abuses. Surely, heroin, cocaine and meth pose a greater threat to society.”

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In Los Angeles, California three actions by DEA teams, point up the continuing conflict between federal and state drug laws. Some had hoped that an Obama administration would change the dynamics.
A raid by federal agents of several Los Angeles Marijuana clinics has generated outrage among advocates of the drug, some of whom had expressed hope that the federal government would halt such crackdowns once President Obama took office. At least three groups of officers with the Drug Enforcement Administration simultaneously served search warrants on Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics, said Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman.
“I can’t get into details as to the probable cause behind the warrants except for the fact that they’re dealing with marijuana, which is illegal under federal law,” said Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman.
State law, however, is a different matter. In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for seriously ill patients and reduced criminal penalties for possession. But that conflicts with federal law.

Medical marijuana advocates were hopeful when Obama, while on the campaign trail, said he supported prescriptions of Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors as long as the drug was regulated and that he didn’t plan to use Justice Department resources to circumvent state laws.
Tuesday’s raids showed that, so far, things haven’t changed.
“The local government is trying to implement Prop. 215, but while they’re doing that we’ve got the federal government intimidating property owners and raiding Los Angeles Marijuana clinics. What would be best for the people in California is if the federal government backed off and let the local government regulate this issue.” said Don Duncan, co-founder of Americans for Safe Access, which promotes safe and legal access to marijuana. The group is planning a noon rally today at the L.A. federal building.

L.A. City Council members placed a moratorium on new Los Angeles Marijuana clinics in 2007 while they weighed whether to tighten city regulation of them.”Until we get something on the books, we’re going to have more of these conflicts,” Councilman Dennis Zine said.

Federal agents make a handful of Los Angeles Marijuana clinics raids each year.

“DEA has a legal right to do what they’re doing,” said Charlie Beck, chief of detectives at the Los Angeles Police Department. “Is it controversial? Yes.”
At the heart of the controversy are places like the Beach Center Collective in Playa del Rey, where an employee said DEA officers confiscated so much property Tuesday that it would not be able to reopen.
“They took everything,” said the 32-year-old employee, who asked not to be named out of fear of prosecution.
“You name it, they took it — right down to the television. The computer, patient files, medicine, cash in the register — that’s it, we’re done.”
Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network, said it’s up to the Obama administration to resolve the dispute.
Despite the government’s reluctance however, it has been forced over the years to acknowledge that some individuals have a legitimate medical need for the drug.

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Theres a good news for moderate smokers in the latest research on marijuana and bad news for heavy smokers. Getting caught or causing an accident while stoned are still the greatest dangers, but those who smoke marijuana on a weekly or daily basis over several years risk potentially serious damage to some mental faculties and to their lungs. Adolescents who are heavy pot smokers may retard their emotional and intellectual development.
Pot creates a high by affecting strategic locations in the brain, including the hippocampus, where linear thinking takes place, at the base of the brain, which modulates the intensity of pain sensations; and the cerebellum, which coordinates movement and balance. Until now no one understood how marijuana penetrates the brain.
Fourth District Court of Appeal for the State of California issued a published opinion on the heels of a ruling this past week stating that federal law does not pre-empt the state’s medical marijuana law.
The County of San Diego filed a suit against the State of California in February (2006) which challenged the validity of the State identification card program as well as the foundation of California’s medical marijuana laws. In the final discussion, both lower and appellate courts found that the ID card program and State Law remained valid and do not violate the state constitution.

“This is a huge win for Los Angeles marijuana clinics patients and Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors, not only in California, but across the country,” said Joe Elford (Chief Counsel for ASA) who argued before the appellate court on behalf of Los Angeles marijuana clinics patients. “This ruling makes clear the ability of states to pass medical marijuana laws with an expectation that those laws will be upheld by local and state, if not federal, officials.”
Americans for Safe Access (ASA) defended the interests of Los Angeles Marijuana clinics patients in the appeal and filed briefs along with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. Both organizations successfully intervened as defendants in the lawsuit in August (2006) while the case was still being litigated in the Superior Court.
ASA intends to promote an educational operation soon that will apprise elected officials across the state of their obligation to implement state law, in particular the state ID card program, which both assists law enforcement and bestows greater protection for patients.
San Diego County was originally joined by San Bernardino and Merced Counties - but later Merced chose not to appeal - opting instead to implement the state ID card program and a Sheriff’s policy on medical marijuana patient encounters.
“More than eleven years after the passage of Proposition 215, it’s about time that we all got on the same page with regard to medical marijuana and the protections afforded by California law and to uphold the validity of the Los Angeles Marijuana clinics patients’ rights and the Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors,” Elford lamented.
“With two Appellate Court decisions clearly stating that Federal Law should not be an excuse to avoid enforcing State Law, it is now time for full implementation in California.” Obviously, the courts are getting the message loud and clear, too.

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A different kind of drugstore is on its way!! A haze of marijuana smoke hangs in the air, and in the background. Everybody singing, “You can’t always get what you want . . .” Hundreds of people sit on rummage sale couches and folding chairs, smoking high-grade marijuana. A dozen more line up at the counter, fingering the day’s sample buds and buying their bundles of pots. The pungent smoke thickens, and a sense of euphoria settles over the room. It is business as usual at the Cannabis Buyers’ Club, a flourishing illegal marijuana market rooted in civil disobedience.
But this is a club with no rational person who would aspire to join because by doing your shopping here means you are sick, dying and hungry for drugs.”These people are struggling to live, and marijuana is helping them to live and definitely they are drug dependents.” said Dennis Peron, the club’s founder and a long-time gay activist. “We lose members every week, and it breaks my heart. But I’ll always know that in their final days I gave them a little solace.”
The pharmacy is part of a growing movement aimed at helping sick people the right to use marijuana. Across the country of Los Angeles marijuana clinics with thousands of patients are with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and other illnesses defy the law daily to treat their ailments or ease their pain. In San Francisco, long known for its tolerance, authorities have chosen to ignore the law, saying that sick people who can benefit from the plant should be able to buy it.
“I have no problem whatsoever with the use of marijuana for medical purposes,” said Mayor Frank Jordan, a former police chief. “I am sensitive and compassionate to people who have legitimate needs. We should bend the law and do what’s right.”
But elsewhere, medical marijuana users often are casualties in the war on drugs. Some have paid a high price, enduring repeated police raids and seizure of their drugs or time in jail.
“We have many problems with what the government is doing to us poor people who need this stuff, We’ve got to change the laws.” said Byron Stamate, 75, who spent four months in the El Dorado County Jail a year ago for growing pot for his ailing girlfriend who is pot depended and was being admitted in Los Angeles marijuana clinics and treated by Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors.
In one survey by Harvard University researchers, more than 40% of cancer specialists and Los Angeles medical doctors were questioned and said they have advised chemotherapy patients to smoke marijuana.
But other Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors and federal health officials say there is insufficient evidence to prove that hemp is beneficial; some suggest that smoking it could be harmful, particularly for AIDS patients vulnerable to lung ailments. Because of the controversy, the government has been slow to permit studies of its effects. “They can’t approve medical use of marijuana because there isn’t enough research, but then they aren’t permitting the research,” complained Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies in North Carolina.

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Medical Marijuana, as it is commonly describe by other people, as a concept, has been a problem for Law Enforcement both State and Federal, for a number of years. First, many in Law Enforcement do not fully understand the new developments in California laws such as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, Proposition 215, and the 2003 Senate Bill 420, now codified in the California Health and Safety Code Sections 11362.7 . They have knowledge of this law, but do not know some of the specifics and therefore have an unfounded mistrust of the people and organizations that are governed by these laws. The fact that Federal law still prohibits the use or possession of marijuana for any purpose complicates this issue even more. Second, most people, including the Law Enforcement community, just refuse to accept that marijuana is legitimate medicine helping many people to manage pain, nausea, headaches, and other more severe conditions. Third, according to many police officers, some of the medical marijuana patients of Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors, caregivers and Los Angeles Marijuana clinics are walking a fine line between what is legal and what is not, definitely hiding behind this newly developed area of the law, and thereby undermining the legitimacy of others that really need marijuana for medicinal purpose.
A short time ago, one of many Los Angeles Marijuana clinics clients was arrested for possession and possession for sale of a controlled substance, namely marijuana and hashish. The case was managed to get dismissed, but only after considerable effort and time. It is interesting to note that the District Attorney who dealt with this case had very little knowledge of medical marijuana laws and was genuinely surprised to find out the specifics of the laws.
The case itself involved Earl and his girlfriend Miagurl. While they were getting gas in Simi Valley, a Ventura County Sheriff pulled into the same gas station and parked next to them. He approached Bill’s car and immediately asked him whether Bill had marijuana in the car. The smell was unmistakable. Bill said that he did, and also that he is a medical marijuana patient of Los Angeles marijuana clinics and a caregiver for other patients. Bill showed the officer his prescription and the letters from other patients designating him as their caregiver. The Sheriff searched Bill’s car and recovered approximately 2.22 oz of dried marijuana, 2.72 oz of hashish oil, 2.21 oz of hashish, and $514.00 in cash. He also found handwritten notes of names, dates, amounts purchased and money owed. The Sheriff arrested Bill for felony possession for sale. Pursuant to SB 420, a medical marijuana patient of Los Angeles marijuana clinics, may have up to 8 oz of dried or concentrated cannabis in his or her possession at any one point in time. Furthermore, if a medical doctor feels that a particular patient needs more than 8 oz, the doctor may so prescribe. In Bill’s case, he was well within the limits of the law. Why then did the sheriff arrest Bill? To answer that question we need only recall the distrust the Law Enforcement community has toward medical marijuana and patients. Many officers feel that the District Attorney’s Office is better equipped to determine whether the person arrested was in fact a medical marijuana patient and whether he was entitled to possess the cannabis.

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Los Angeles marijuana clinics operators and Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors recently released a study that shows trends in the use of marijuana by u.s. teenagers. According to the study, When it comes to smoking pot, trouble-prone boys are more likely to give up the habit if it isn’t considered cool, but trouble-prone girls will keep taking it no matter what, new research shows. The findings will give prevention researchers more insight into how teens react to the wider world’s embrace of illegal drugs, said study author Michelle Little, a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University. “At least when it comes to the most trouble-prone boys, our data would suggest that’s not such a bad idea to do a wide, broad approach that will reduce social acceptance [of drugs] among youth,” she said. Girls, meanwhile, aren’t a “lost cause,” she stressed, because prevention approaches can be designed to reach them, too.
At issue is what researchers call “deviance-prone” teens — those most likely to take major risks, avoid school and get into trouble with the law. Little and colleagues wanted to know if these teens stubbornly kept smoking pot no matter what the rest of society did, or if they were susceptible to national trends.
The researchers examined federal surveys of 44,751 white 12th-grade teens taken between 1979 and 2004. Minorities were not included because of a lack of numbers. The findings were published in the March issue of Prevention Science. Over the 26 years tracked by the study, marijuana use among teens and Los Angeles marijuana clinics patients varied greatly, according to other research. Recent pot use among 12th graders reached a peak of 51 percent in 1979, falling to 22 percent in 1992 and rising to 34 percent in 2004.
The researchers found that deviance-prone boys were less likely to smoke when teens as a whole cut down on pot use. In general, deviance-prone girls weren’t touched by such trends.
“Girls who are willing to take risks and get in trouble are just as likely to be involved in marijuana use, regardless of the prevailing prevalence.” Little said adding to the report.
The study doesn’t speculate about whether the teens that stopped smoking pot turned to other drugs. It also doesn’t examine the gender differences in how teens reacted to drug-use trends says one of Los Angeles medical marijuana doctors.
Steven Shoptaw, a licensed psychologist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a doctor at a Los Angeles marijuana clinics said the study relies on some of the best available statistics, but one weakness is that it looks at averages across the country. “Think of averaging wind speeds across the country to develop an average wind speed for the U.S.” said Shoptaw, who studies drug use. “While the U.S. average wind speed tells you something, you don’t really know what it tells you, and you certainly can’t rely on the measure to understand what is happening in specific areas of the country.”
As for the differences between boys and girls in terms of intractable pot use in the face of societal trends, he said they have little meaning, because boys are more likely to engage in socially deviant behaviors like pot smoking.

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Stores that sell marijuana are touted in Los Angeles’ alternative newspapers and on the Internet. Ads also offer Los Angeles Medical marijuana Doctors who will write a legal “recommendation” that a patient needs pot for ailments as common as headaches and depression. In online reviews, users discuss the merits of varieties with names such as “Mountain High,”"Purple Haze,” and “Gold Kush,” at prices of up to $80 for one-eighth of an ounce. The stores are accused of selling to people who don’t have health problems or doctors’ notes and of raking in huge profits. In essence, some drug dealers may have gone legit, police say. Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton says it’s time to crack down. He has asked the City Council to impose a moratorium on new pot stores and to impose restrictions on hours, location and how they operate.
In a report to the Board of Police Commissioners late last year, Bratton said “the spirit and intent of this act has been exploited and abused for both profit and recreational drug abuse by many of the Los Angeles marijuana Clinics and dispensaries.” He said crime and complaints have surrounded some of the stores, including open smoking of marijuana on nearby streets and targeting school students with store advertising fliers. In an effort to beat an anticipated crackdown, more stores have sprung up. Four dozen opened in the past few months, Vernon estimates. He says there are now 140 Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics and some are close to schools.
In Los Angeles Country there are around 200 stores, DEA special agent Sarah Pullen estimates, far more than in the San Francisco area to the north. She says all of them are breaking federal law. After the DEA raid in January, some of the targeted Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics have reopened. The raids have prompted protests.
“This is more about intimidation on the part of DEA than actually enforcing laws. Even if there are abuses, what happens if you are told you have cancer and have to start chemotherapy next week? Do you know where to find marijuana?” says Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.
Ten other states allow medical marijuana, but none is as permissive as California’s Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics, Sherer says. The intent was to provide a risk-free, no-hassle way for people with real medical needs for marijuana to grow or obtain it without fear of arrest.
In West Hollywood, one of the most liberal communities in the state, cops take a hands-off policy “unless there are people around there complaining,” says Deputy John Klaus of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s West Hollywood division.
Now pastor at Crescent Heights United Methodist Church in West Hollywood, Imler, 49, moved here from Northern California in 1995 to help organize the medical-marijuana-ballot movement. He says he used marijuana first to counter severe seizures from a head injury, and later when he developed cancer.
He organized marijuana collective that was shut down by federal agents in 2001. He was arrested and received one year probation. Cancer-free, he says he stopped using marijuana. But he worries that the state will pull back from its commitment to medical marijuana if people abuse the law.

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Marijuana may not be a life-threatening drug, but is it an addictive one?

At one hand, there is little evidence in animal models for tolerance and withdrawal, the classic determinants of addiction. For at least four decades, millions of Americans especially people who lives in Los Angeles, according to Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics, have used marijuana without clear evidence of a withdrawal syndrome. Most recreational marijuana users find that too much pot in one day makes them sluggish and bumpy. Self-proclaimed marijuana addicts, on the other hand, report that pot energizes them, calms them down when they are nervous, or otherwise allows them to function normally. They feel tired and uncomfortable without it. Heavy marijuana users claim that tolerance does build. And when they withdraw from use, they report strong cravings.

Marijuana is the odd drug out. To the early researchers, it did not look like it should be addictive. Nevertheless, for some people, it is. Recently, a group of Italian researchers and as Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors, mixture succeeded in demonstrating that THC releases dopamine along the recompense pathway, like all other drugs of abuse. Some of the mystery of cannabis had been determined by the end of the 1990s, after researchers had confirmed that marijuana definitely augmented dopamine activity in the ventral segmental area. Some of the effects of pot are produced the old-fashioned way after all–through alterations along the limbic reward pathway.

By the year 2000, more than 100,000 Americans and Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics a year were seeking treatment for marijuana dependency, by some estimates. There is good experimental evidence that chronic heavy cannabis users can develop tolerance to its subjective and cardiovascular effects, and there is suggestive evidence that some users may experience a withdrawal syndrome on the abrupt cessation of cannabis use. There is clinical and epidemiological proof that some grave cannabis users experience problems in controlling their cannabis use, and continue to use the drug despite experiencing adverse personal consequences of use. There is limited evidence in favour of a cannabis dependence syndrome analogous to the alcohol dependence syndrome. If the estimates of the community prevalence of drug dependence provided by the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study are correct, then cannabis dependence is the most common form of dependence on illicit drugs.

The syndrome is marked by irritability, restlessness, generalized anxiety, hostility, depression, difficulty sleeping, excessive sweating, loose stools, loss of appetite, and a general “blah” feeling. Many patients from Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics complain of feeling like they have a low-grade
flu, and they describe a psychological state of existential uncertainty—“inner unrest,” as one researcher calls it. The most common marijuana withdrawal symptom is low-grade anxiety according to Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors. Anxiety of this sort has a firm biochemical substrate, produced by withdrawal, craving, and detoxification from almost all drugs of abuse. It is not the kind of anxiety that can be deflected by forcibly thinking “happy thoughts,” or staying busy all the time. A peptide known as corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) is linked to this kind of anxiety.

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Epidemiological information existing last May at the International Conference of American Thoracic Society concluding the smoking of pots, even long _term, is not positively associated with increased incidence of lung-cancer and it is just the latest in a long line of government claims regarding the alleged dangers of pot.
Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors and Investigators from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California assessed the possible association between cannabis use and the risk of lung cancer in middle-aged adults (ages 18–59) living in Los Angeles and patients of Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics . Researchers conducted interviews with 611 subjects with lung cancer and 1,040 controls matched for age, gender, and neighborhood in some of the Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors files at their Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics. Data was collected on lifetime marijuana use, as well as subjects’ use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, diet, occupation, and family history of cancer. Investigators used a logistical regression model to estimate the effect of cannabis smoking on lung cancer risk, adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, education, cumulative tobacco smoking, and alcohol use.
“We did not observe a positive association of marijuana use – even heavy long-term use – with lung cancer, controlling for tobacco smoking and other potential cofounders,” investigators concluded. Moreover, their data further revealed that one subset of moderate lifetime users actually had an inverse association between cannabis use and lung cancer. Much less surprising, the NIH-funded study – the largest of its type ever conducted – did find a 20-fold increased risk in heavy tobacco smokers.
While the investigators and Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors failure to demonstrate a positive association between cannabis use and cancer may seem surprising to some, the bottom line is that scientists overseas have been studying pot’s potential anti-cancer properties for nearly a decade. Most recently, investigators at Italy’s Instuto di Chemica Biomolecolare reported in the May issue of the journal of Pharmacology and experimental therapeutics that compounds in marijuana inhibits cancer cell growth in animals and in culture on a wide range of tumor cell lines, including human breast carcinoma cells, human prostate carcinoma cells, and human colectoral carcinoma cells.
Previous studies by European researchers and Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors at their Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics have shown that cannabis’ constituents can reduce the size and halt the spread of glaucoma (brain tumor) cells in animals and humans in a dose dependent manner. Separate preclinical studies have also shown marijuana to inhibit cancer cell growth and selectively trigger malignant cell death in skin cancer cells, leukemic cells, and lung cancer cells, among other cancerous cell lines.
But none of these findings should come as a surprise to the US government, which ironically, sponsored the first experiment ever documenting pot’s anti-cancer effects in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia. The results of that study, reported in an August 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana’s primary psychoactive component “THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in different Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.”

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“Before the new millennium, many substances had been identified as addictive. Alcohol, heroin, nicotine and cocaine (once thought to be a no addictive agent) have all been studied and placed into specific categories as dangerous drugs. Although there is a robust body of evidence that cannabis can be cultivated and converted into an addictive drug crop known as marijuana, a paradigm shift has not yet occurred in the minds and hearts of Americans who are exposed to it.” The Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors said as a point in justifying the medical use of marijuana at Los Angeles Marijuana Clinics.
Studies made by the Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors revealed that more than the millenniums of existence, every form of life has relied on plants. The human animal has constantly used plants for food, clothing, shelter and their capacity to heal. It is well documented that plants with psychoactive properties have played an integral role in magic and religious rituals over many centuries.
As pointed out in the sutides of some Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors, plants are the oldest type of remedy as they have the power to provide the body and brains’ existence force with the energy that is wanted for the reinstatement and preservation of health. Over the last century, the manufacturing rebellion of conventional medicine has chemically synthesized drugs instead of directly using plant stuffs for medical purposes. In spite of the economics of synthetic drugs in the Western societies, over three-¬fourths of the world’s people still use medicine derived directly from plants. Plants contain a large number of diverse, biological chemicals. Although the role that many chemicals play in the normal ecology of certain plants remains unknown, it is believed that they confer some degree of protection from insect and animal predators. These toxic chemicals can be categorized into alkaloids amino acids, peptides and proteins, glycosides (chemical groups such as cyanide linked to sugars) and cannabinoids (found only in cannabis sativa and indica plants) that are coupled with acids, terpenes, phenolics, tannins and essential oils that are lipophilic plant metabolites.
The biological process of addiction develops over time with repeated exposure to a biochemical agent (drug) on a biological substrate (brain). Repeated drug exposure elicits adaptations and functional alteration in individual neruons that eventually alters the neural circuits that they operate in. These changes lead to the complex behaviors that characterize addictive states such as dependence, tolerance, sensitization and craving. Over the last three decades, Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Doctors have studies that show science has begun to develop an intimate knowledge of the mammalian brain and central nervous system and there is a rapid expansion of interest in human emotion. It is now known that there are billions of neurons present in the mammalian brain coupled with an even larger number of glial cells that form an incredible network responsible for thoughts, feelings and actions. In order to understand why every culture on the face of the earth has used some form of psychoactive substance over the millennia, the human brain must be examined and perceived as the primary target for all drug use.

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