Activist and Medical Cannabis User Criticizes Entity's Note Against PL 399: "Baseless Statements"

Charles Vilela

Filipe Suzin is 30 years old. He has been using medical Cannabis since he was 19 to alleviate the side effects of his leukemia treatment. His father, Ivo, 60 years old, has also been using the plant for a year to alleviate Alzheimer's complications. Together, son and father have over a decade of practical experience with the benefits of medical marijuana to cope with the diseases they suffer from and the heavy side effects of the prescribed drugs they use. Filipe fights for his and his father's health. He wants the right to live with better quality of life to be recognized. In this case, his own quality of life and that of his father.

Last week, the publication of a note by the Brazilian Association of Alcohol and other Drugs Studies (Abead) caused outrage in Filipe. "The note has several baseless statements," he argues. "As a patient, I do not agree with the association's stance. They are using their representativeness and power of speech to hinder our cause as patients and people who are socially pressured because of this."

In the statement, the entity states that "medicinal products derived from Cannabis, with the results currently available in research, still lack scientific evidence for their formal therapeutic indication." The text goes on to state that "even cannabidiol, whose clinical potential has been discussed, has restricted indications with proven efficacy, requiring the conduct of new studies using appropriate methodologies."

Filipe wrote an extensive response to Abead and posted it on Instagram. The profile @curandoivo has existed since April 2019 and already has nearly 40,000 followers. It presents itself as "just a family sharing their marijuana treatments."

He questions various points raised by the private law entity. "Is it really true that all the judges who have analyzed and approved almost a hundred habeas corpus for self-cultivation in the country need to tear up their diplomas and reconsider the role of providing justice to Brazilian citizens? What about all the doctors and scientists studying the subject?" he asked.

"Should all the mothers who have knocked on the door of justice, or those who will seek the same benefit for their children, children who suffer from severe daily epilepsy crises - since all the drugs they have tried have not had the same effect as MARIJUANA - should they have their freedom threatened, risking rotting in jail for this?" he continues.

Filipe recounts that the difficulties he faced with the side effects of chemotherapy led him to research the subject. In 2013, he began to understand the topic more and decided to talk to his mother. "I started to grow, but soon I had difficulties and interrupted the cultivation and treatment," he says. However, in 2019, he resumed treatment using Cannabis through an association in Goiânia, the city where he lives. "That's when it really started (my fight). Before that, I wasn't involved, had nothing to do with medical marijuana," he says.

It was after the video with his father's story went viral on the internet on April 23, 2019, that he joined the cause. The video has almost 26,000 views and over three thousand comments. Since then, he has been publicly taking a more assertive stance to "understand why this issue is so difficult in this country." Filipe already has part of the answer: "Precisely because of false accusations like the entity made."

The note reproduced by Sechat below was originally published on the Instagram profile @curandoivo on 8/21/20.

"REPUDIATION NOTE CURANDO IVO IN RESPONSE TO THE NOTE FROM 'ABEAD - Brazilian Association of Alcohol and other Drugs Studies'

Through this letter, I come to express my indignation regarding the note published by 'ABEAD - Brazilian Association of Alcohol and other Drugs Studies' regarding PL399/15, which "amends art. 2 of Law no. 11,343, of August 23, 2006, to enable the commercialization of medicines containing extracts, substrates, or parts of the Cannabis sativa plant in their formulation."

As a patient with judicial authorization to cultivate and produce MARIJUANA medications both for my Leukemia treatment and for my father's Alzheimer's treatment, I have been studying the subject for a long time and know in PRACTICE all the benefits of MARIJUANA for our HEALTH and QUALITY OF LIFE. I can assert with authority that this note is completely mistaken and misleads the entire population and its associates, also fatally harming stories like that of 'CURANDO IVO.'

My father has only not been bedridden, a common phase in the final stage of Alzheimer's, because he has been treated SOLELY AND EXCLUSIVELY for over a year with FULLSPECTRUM MARIJUANA OIL, that is, made from the extraction of flowers predominantly high in THC, as well as all the other cannabinoids of the plant. The treatment, which has the support of all the scientific methodology created by man, is done with the supervision of the prescribing doctor, nutritionist, and the improvement of all disease symptoms has been and is widely recorded and disseminated in videos and testimonials on my social media profiles.

My Leukemia treatment, diagnosed over 10 years ago, is done with daily chemotherapy, with the most varied reactions, which complicate and shake my whole body, from which I must not and cannot give up. Without the MARIJUANA treatment I use via INHALATION (vaporized or smoked) and also with FULLSPECTRUM OIL, which relieves all these adverse effects and provides me with quality of life, I would have given up years ago and consequently perished! Remembering that my authorization includes SMOKING!

Both of us PROVE the benefits of the plant and results for our health in practice and in JUSTICE, so, is it really as dangerous as they say?

Is it really true that all the judges who have analyzed and approved almost a hundred habeas corpus for self-cultivation in the country need to tear up their diplomas and reconsider the role of providing justice to Brazilian citizens?

What about all the doctors and scientists studying the subject?

Should all the mothers who have knocked on the door of justice, or those who will seek the same benefit for their children, children who suffer from severe daily epilepsy crises - since all the drugs they have tried have not had the same effect as MARIJUANA - should they have their freedom threatened, risking rotting in jail for this?

Many mothers (mostly black and poor) have been or will be imprisoned due to our unjust laws and absurd ideas as exposed in this letter.

The note stated that cannabidiol (CBD), which is just ONE of the various therapeutic compounds we have in the plant, has debatable clinical potential and restricted proven efficacy. Such an assertion, that there are no relevant studies on CANNABIS sativa/ MARIJUANA, is to ignore the evolution of the species, to pretend that globally recognized sites by the scientific community like "PUDMED" with over 23,000 scientific publications related to MARIJUANA, simply do not exist.

Science exists, the science that explains the relationship of the ENDOCANNABINOID system that all humans, animals, all living beings on this planet possess, with MARIJUANA also EXISTS!

How do they explain then all the countries that value and encourage scientific research and have already legalized MARIJUANA?

Countries, mostly first world, where you can buy MARIJUANA-based SUPPLEMENTS in the supermarket, where children have access to CBD LOLLIPOPS, where you can ask for an additional CBD topping on your PIZZA, as is the case in several states in the United States and Canada.

Unfortunately, ABEAD talks big about "substances that can produce neurobiological changes needing very well-regulated and controlled regulation," but does not show excessive concern about MARIJUANA, which is a PLANT, with proven IN NATURAL and PHYTOTHERAPEUTIC potential, while so many other legalized and SOCIALLY ACCEPTED drugs, with use encouraged by million-dollar advertising campaigns, kill millions every day in the country and worldwide.

A major concern should be the rampant abuse of alcohol, the leading cause of traffic deaths, a FACT PROVEN by countless research studies, yet ABEAD hypocritically tries to shift the focus and relates MARIJUANA use to these antagonistic facts, as well as to the increase in domestic violence.

Doesn't the association also worry about cigarettes, which burden the state and kill millions a year, or is just a shocking image on the pack of this deadly but socially accepted drug enough?

How is the control over minors' access to all these deadly and legalized drugs easily found on any corner? How many billions in public health are spent because of alcohol and cigarettes and do not generate this extremist outrage in you?

Why such insistence on persecuting a PLANT, with SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS?

I would like to know what research sources, in which articles ABEAD based its assertion that the legalization of MARIJUANA in some countries is directly related to the increase in traffic accidents and high consumption among adolescents.

ABEAD claims that MARIJUANA causes depression, but numerous SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH STUDIES prove the opposite. Every new day, cases in our country increase, patients who have the necessary scientific support and thus obtain JUDICIAL AUTHORIZATION to cultivate MARIJUANA! So, do you also base your data on these for the treatment of DEPRESSION, ANXIETY?

It is also very contradictory for the association to mention the increase in violence by drug trafficking groups, considering that such groups only exist because of the criminalization that the association helps to perpetuate, along with social and racial prejudice, roots of the prohibition initiated in Brazil in the 18th century and spread like a deadly virus worldwide in 1930 by the USA.

Even more questionable is that among all these substances that the association claims to "research and understand," MARIJUANA is the only one that has phytocannabinoids in its composition like THC, CBD, which are molecules similar to those we naturally produce in our body (endogenous cannabinoids) and once again, with their therapeutic effects widely proven.

CANNABIS sativa/MARIJUANA has been used by humans for over 10,000 years, described in detail in Chinese pharmacology since the Shen-Nung Empire (2700 BC) and in various other ancient cultures around the world, used as medicine, but also in fiber production, oils, food, sacred rituals, social use.

Today, in addition to the undeniable medicinal potential, we also have a range of SUSTAINABLE BY-PRODUCTS of MARIJUANA in construction, textile, food, cosmetic industries, biodegradable plastic production, biofuel, soil decontamination, among many other potentials from a very long list, just do a quick search.

Therefore, instead of keeping the population ignorant about its real benefits, as an association, they should better inform themselves from reliable sources about FACTS related to MARIJUANA as well as in their dissemination to finally understand that LEGALIZATION or DECRIMINALIZATION is the first step to end once and for all the injustice, prejudice, demonization of a PLANT with various potentials that you deny.

A PLANT that offers so many benefits to humans, animals, and the environment. That promotes advances in science, medicine, and enables us to make social reparations with so many fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters who are unjustly incarcerated for seeking health and well-being for themselves.

We, citizens, expect more seriousness from associations like ABEAD!

An association that claims to "promote ethics and high scientific standards in disseminating information in the area and in the clinical practice of associated professionals" should not provide a disservice of this level, neither to the population nor to its associates!