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Seeing through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth about Marijuana Hardcover – April 20, 2023
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Depending on which doctor you speak with, or which websites you read, cannabis could be an appealing, low-risk medicine – even an aid to wellness – or an insidiously addictive drug rotting the brains of our youth. This dissonance confuses young people, distressed patients, and paralyzes politicians, all while inviting dubious sources of information and resulting in uninformed choices, enhanced polarization, and a fragmented national policy.
Seeing Through the Smoke is an unflinching examination at the grossly misunderstood drug that uses data-driven medical science and a critical historical perspective to reveal the truth behind cannabis. In this balanced and measured investigation, Cannabis specialist and Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School Dr. Peter Grinspoon untangles the reality behind cannabis, revealing how we ended up with radically divergent understandings of the drug and pointing a way toward a middle ground that we can all share.
Moving through an illuminating tour of the social history and the medical science behind cannabis, Grinspoon unpacks the layers of disinformation left by a sordid history of government propaganda, racial suppression, and indifference from the medical community to answer questions like:
- Is cannabis addictive?
- What are its best-established medical uses?
- Can cannabis help cure cancer?
- How does cannabis affect memory?
- How dangerous is cannabis for teens?
- Is cannabis a safer treatment for ADHD and PTSD?
- What exactly is CBD and how is it different from marijuana?
- What are the most concerning side effects?
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.
- Print length442 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrometheus
- Publication dateApril 20, 2023
- Dimensions6.32 x 1.19 x 9.21 inches
- ISBN-101633888460
- ISBN-13978-1633888463
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Seeing through the Smoke is packed with accessible, engaging, and useful information delivered with the heart of a humanitarian and the commonsense of a sensible scientist. Dr. Grinspoon has done us a huge public service. Read his book!" —Carl Hart, Columbia University Professor and author of Drug Use for Grown-ups
“As marijuana goes mainstream, many lingering doubts, contradictions, lies, and half-truths remain entrenched in the public debate. Peter Grinspoon has written a delightfully readable, informative, and timely book that shines a clear light through this maze of misunderstandings. Following in the family tradition - Grinspoon's father Lester wrote two seminal books on marijuana - Seeing Through the Smoke can help heal the scars left by the government’s failed war on cannabis.” – Rick Doblin, PhD, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
“Peter Grinspoon is an ex-addict, marijuana enthusiast, and cannabis prescribing physician with a professional and moral obligation to know and tell the truth about cannabis’ relationship to driving, pregnancy, psychosis, autism, addiction, sleep, cancer, and much more. Never before have I read such an engaging and accessible review of the evidence.” – Ethan Nadelmann, founder and former executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance
“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
“When I was a child, I saw my great uncle, a physician, helping my cousin to clean and prepare his medicine – pot– so he could tolerate his chemotherapy treatments. Seeing through the Smoke clearly lays out the case for cannabis as a medicine while thoughtfully and calmly outlining its risks. Not only should everyone read this book, but they should share it with their loved ones, too.” – Julie Holland, MD, author of Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, From Soul to Psychedelics
“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
“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
“In this lively, witty, and deeply personal book, Grinspoon takes readers on a fascinating tour of everything you ever wanted to know about the benefits of cannabis—especially what it can do to ameliorate suffering and enhance human potential—while always remaining grounded in the scientific evidence. I can’t recommend it highly enough.” – Jay Wexler, professor of law specializing in marijuana law, Boston University
“Dr. Peter Grinspoon breaks down the myths and misconceptions surrounding cannabis as only a true expert can. Drawing on his years of experience as a clinician and instructor, Dr. Grinspoon offers an informed and compassionate look at the science and medicine. With a wealth of evidence-based information, he provides an honest and authoritative guide to understanding the plant and its uses, making this book essential reading for anyone interested in the most up-to-date and reliable information about cannabis.” —Shaleen Title, Founder and Director, Parabola Center for Law and Policy
About the Author
Peter Grinspoon, M.D. is a primary care physician and cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is a certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a board member of the advocacy group Doctors for Cannabis Regulation, and has been providing medical cannabis care for patients for two decades.
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.
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.
He is the author of the groundbreaking memoir Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction, was the expert witness in the successful citizens’ 2019 lawsuit against the Massachusetts “Vape Ban” and a special consultant on addiction issues to Jagged Little Pill’’s pre-Broadway run at the American Repertory Theater.
Product details
- Publisher : Prometheus (April 20, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 442 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1633888460
- ISBN-13 : 978-1633888463
- Item Weight : 1.58 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.32 x 1.19 x 9.21 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Pain Medicine Pharmacology
- #71 in Healing
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True to the adage that an apple does not fall far from its tree, Peter continued his father’s research into “the family herb” and his advocacy for its acceptances both by their own medical profession and by our own civil society. Having passed on the torch lighter to his son, the recently deceased dad would have been heartened to know that his family’s legacy continues.
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.
With wit and charm, he lightens the mood with colloquialisms and vernacular expressions. For instances: “OK, not really!” (page 56); “a big nothingburger” (page 148); “You can’t make this up!” (page 283); “If you ask me,” (page 290); “Egg, meet chicken.” (page 294); “Just kidding.” (page 303); and like on a social media video, “Wait for it!” (page 328).
Equally endearing are the one-word sentences sprinkled throughout: “Snore.” (page 75); “Bleh.” (page 144); “Easy.” (page 246); and my favorite, “Yuck.” (page 311). Humor, albeit sometimes sardonic or sarcastic, abounds in passages too long to quote here. And there’s winsome self-parody and social satire. One paragraph was prefaced as a “Mini Ted Talk” (page 42), and another as “mini-pontification” (page 141). Acknowledging his laziness to research a definition, he quipped, “Thank you, Wikipedia” (page186).
Some of the book is akin to a lively debate staged between two opposing teams, namely the “Reefer Pessimism” portrayed in Chapter 2 versus the “Cannatopianism” depicted in Chapter 3. The author objectively summarizes both sides of the many contentious issues surrounding cannabis. While not shunning from controversy, he sometimes even reconciles the otherwise conflicting evidence. In the final chapter, Chapter 22, he issues a rallying cry for the pundits on both sides of that debate to remove their “cognitive filters” (page 361).
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 and 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.
Chapter 9 asks in its title the question, “People Get Addicted to Weed?” While it documents that addiction is real and does occur among some potheads, it provides ample evidence debunking the myth of the high rates publicized by government officials and addiction authorities. Some statistics claim that a whopping 30-percent of users become addicted. Grinspoon shows how the research is manipulated and the numbers are fudged. Makes me exhale a sigh of relief.
Chapter 21, as if channeling Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” could be subtitled, “Ode to Pot.” It begins with several questions, among them, “Why do people use cannabis?” and “What is its appeal?” Grinspoon eloquently and astutely answers his probing questions by exploring the “false dichotomy” between medicinal and recreational use. As though to placate those impatient among us who crave short answers, the chapter concludes: “Is cannabis a shortcut? That’s complicated. Is it harmless? No. Does it work for people? A resounding yes!”
Chapter 22, the final chapter, is the crowning highpoint of the book. In case you die tomorrow, you might want to first read this chapter today. The author calls upon science to free itself of government politics and corporate interests. He implores politicians, doctors, medical researchers, and the news media that reports the research, all to “forgo all the myths and superstitions of the past … manufactured with an agenda.” (pages 340 and 341).
Chapter 14, “The Endocannabinoid System: Our Brain on Drugs,” warrants reading by all potheads who have ever wondered what’s going on inside their potted heads. This chapter within its sharply focused eleven pages explains the ECS better than did an entire book and the many articles that I have read on the subject. Unfortunately, other chapters are not as succinct. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Like most of us, especially those of us who sit on our duffs reading books, this book could lose some weight.
Confession. I did not read one-quarter of the book. Its scope is too encyclopedic and some discussions too detailed for even this omnivorous reader to consume in its entirety. I did read the chapters whose subjects interested me. Those on topics outside the orbit of my small world I omitted, just as I would not read from cover-to-cover any single volume of a thirty-volume encyclopedia. Hence, I skipped the chapters on use during pregnancy (I’m male), on use by teenagers (I’m already old), and on any link with psychosis (I’m already all messed up). Likewise, I dropped from my reading syllabus the chapters on using medical marijuana to treat for insomnia (I’m a sound sleeper), for autism (I’m childless), and for symptoms from cancer and for side effects from chemo (I’m planning on dying, just not of cancer).
Among the three-quarters that I did read, the author’s exhaustive analyses sometimes exhausted me. The book is grouped into four parts. Grinspoon shines in Parts One and Four, where he engages the reader in a friendly conversation as he recounts both past history and current research. In Parts Two and Three, however, momentum slackens when Grinspoon meticulously picks apart and pokes holes into long excerpts from scientific studies. Readers should tread lightly upon those overquoted studies. For our convenience, the excerpts are indented and their font size reduced, so easy to spot. And to skip.
Barbers cannot give themselves haircuts. For superfluous text and overweight chapters, I lay blame on the publisher, not on the author. Akin to an uncut and unpolished diamond, this very good book could be transformed into a very great book with some judicious deletions. Too late now for this 440-page hardbound tome, but not too late for a revised and leaner paperback edition that could appeal to the wider audience that it deserves. Until then, this sprawling big fat book is still worth reading. I just wish there were less of it to read. And if you persevered this far, you probably wish my review, too, were shorter.
I have spent the better part of 7 years in researching this subject since losing a son to epilepsy and I can safely say that I have never found a more comprehensive collection of facts that properly displays both sides of the story where cannabis is concerned, until now. The fact that there are both benefits as well as possible downfalls to cannabis use is true, no matter how much you want either to be false.
Dr Grinspoon spells out the facts and backs them up. He does it in a way that anyone can comprehend the realities behind the information given. He gives you insight from both personal experiences as well as through his own medical practices.
If you want to know the reality behind cannabis as a medicine, then this is the book for you!
Peter is very personal, amazingly insightful, and writes with full passion based on his life's calling. The cannabis plant is medicine just like any other botanical. Peter provides an abundance of supporting evidence to that end.
I highly recommend that everyone read this book!”
Genester Wilson-King MD