The mainstream press is turning to embrace medical marijuana, which is now acknowledging that it is more effective and certainly safer than many pharmaceutical drugs.

Could the active ingredient in marijuana, responsible for its characteristic “high,” help turn the tide against the accelerating Alzheimer’s epidemic? A remarkable study published in the journal Molecular Pharmacology in 2006, found that this long vilified plant may contain a compound with not one, but two therapeutic properties ideal for addressing both the surface symptom (memory problems) and root cause (brain plaque) of Alzheimer’s disease.

In a day and age where possession of an herb like cannabis – which grows freely on this Earth — is an offense sometimes punishable by incarceration, it is important for us to reflect on how we arrived at this dark point in time. Herbs, after all, were put there by God. If you prefer the word Nature, the point is the same, and it was put best by Bob Marley when he said: “you can’t tell God it [cannabis] is illegal.”