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Ecstasy Was Just Labeled a ‘Breakthrough Therapy’ for PTSD by the FDA

An illegal “party” drug known as Ecstasy has just been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Science Alert reports. The drug is already in clinical trials that will begin recruiting in 2018. A neuropsychotherapist at Imperial College London said, “It’s been obvious for 40 years that these drugs are medicines.”

While we wait to see just exactly how helpful the clinical trials prove Ecstasy to be, it only makes sense to go the next step and consider medical cannabis for the vastly underutilized therapeutic treatment that it is. As it is, cannabidiol (CBD) has been reclassified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance despite having no psychoactive component, meaning it cannot render you “high” and therefore has little potential for abuse — exactly the opposite of what’s happened with Ecstasy.

There are cannabinoid receptors in your brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, immune system and more, and both the therapeutic and psychoactive properties of marijuana occur when a cannabinoid activates a cannabinoid receptor. Time and again, medical cannabis has been shown to be effective for a myriad of health conditions, from seizures to pain relief to even reversing the aging process in the brain — yet, all we hear is crickets from the FDA when it comes to medical marijuana.

The reality is that prescription drugs have far greater potential to turn you into a "junkie." Legal drug addiction is also taking lives in record numbers. There's absolutely no doubt that cannabis is safer than most prescription drugs — especially opioids. As noted by Dr. Margaret Gedde, an award-winning Stanford-trained pathologist and founder of Gedde Whole Health, there's enough scientific data to compare the side effects of cannabis against the known toxicities of many drugs currently in use. The only question is why is the FDA silent on this, while it approves Ecstasy?