Feb 299 min read

The Future Of Cannabis:

The future is never certain and that's especially true with Cannabis. If you want to

attempt to predict the future, you must learn about the past. With the laws ever changing and the level of corporate interest and "acceptance" to Cannabis at an all time high we can be certain big pharma mega corporations will want to monopolize the industry.

Just last fall, the Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that they reschedule Cannabis to Schedule III from the Schedule I which it is currently in. On December 19, 2023 Michael Miller acting chief of the DEA said they are currently reviewing the HHS recommendation.

In case you don't know how the Scheduling system works. Schedule I

drugs, substances or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted

medical use and with a high potential for abuse. Here are some common

examples of Schedule I drugs out of the 270+ that are currently listed. (2)

● Heroin

● Fentanyl

● Bath Salts

● Spice / K2

● Methaqualone (Quaaludes)

● MDMA / Ecstasy

● LSD

● Psilocybin

● Cannabis

You may be asking yourself where is Cocaine or PCP well they are listed

as a Schedule 2. Where the drug has high potential for abuse, however there are

accepted medical uses. (3) That's right in case you were unaware there are name

brands of Cocaine out there, a popular one is called Numbrino. (4) If you are

shocked now then you will be even more shocked to know that every American

has been involved in this medical Cocaine trade and didn't even know it. That's

impossible you are probably thinking. Well, if you have ever drank a Coca-Cola

or a "Coke" before then you are involved. (5)

The DEA has given one U.S. factory authority to import Coca leaves, the

starting material for cocaine. The New Jersey facility has had this authority for

over 100 years. It is currently owned by the Stepan Company who has had it

since 1959 when they acquired it from Maywood Chemical Works. They import

an undisclosed amount of Coca leaves from companies like The National

Company of The Coca, a Peruvian state-owned company. It's been reported

more than 500 tons, or 1,000,000 pounds, could be processed annually.

Stepan Company New Jersey Facility

How does Coca-Cola get around importing so much Coca leaves every

year? Because the Stepan company extracts the Cocaine from the leaves and

gives Coca-Cola a "decocainized" ingredient and sells the rest to Mallinckrodt.

Who you may have heard of before because in 2013 they made national news

for having the most expensive medicine available called Achtar, which was

$34,000 a vial or $100,000 a year. It had been sold for decades for around $40 a

vial. This caused a lawsuit and a $233,000,000 settlement paid to the

government. (6)

They also are known for being one of the largest Opioid

producers in the world although they received less attention for this than the

Purdue corporation run by the Sackler family. For their role in the Opioid

epidemic, they received a $1,700,000,000 lawsuit. That however got reduced by

$1,000,000,000 by them declaring bankruptcy. (8)

Now let's look back further into the past. Cannabis was first made illegal statewide

ironically in California of all places in 1915. By the mid 1930s Cannabis

had been regulated in every State. In 1934, 35 states joined together and

adopted the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. (9), which was a response to the

Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. Which placed a tax on companies who were

importing and selling Coca, Opium and their derivatives along with "Marihuana"

However, it did not outright ban them from being consumed, only set up

regulations and taxes for them being imported. (10)

Then in 1970 the drug war really kicked off with Nixon ushering in the Controlled

Substances Act.

There was a commission of 13 members 9 of which were picked out and

appointed by none other than President Nixon himself. This was known as the

National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse now known as The Shafer

Commission which was led by Pennsylvania Governor Raymond P. Shafer.

President Nixon personally picked Governor Schafer to lead this commission. On

March 22nd, 1972 the commission issued its report to congress.

The report rebuked claims that Cannabis was a highly addictive dangerous

substance and stated "That the criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment

of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of

use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance."

Congress didn't listen and neither did Nixon. In fact, by 1974 there was a

big movement led by extremely controversial James Eastland a Mississippi

democrat who was the leader of southern resistance to integration who has

popped up again recently due to his ties with current President Joe Biden. (12)

This led to the "Marihuana-Hashish Epidemic and It's Impact on United States

Security" hearings on May 9th, 16th, 17th, 20th, 21st and June 13, 1974. (11)

The main guy in charge of the experiments was extremely controversial

Dr. Robert Heath who was very famous at the time for being the first person to

implant Deep Brain Stimulation electrodes into Human brains. However he has

now since been disgraced for his work (If you are sensitive, I wouldn't look it up)

and is rarely mentioned in Academia.

Some of the more interesting reports from these experiments is that the claim Marihuana smoke shrank the brain size of mice. They also forced a “joint” a day 5 days a week for 6 months or 120 joints onto the monkeys in a very short period using a machine and injected intravenously THC and then claimed the THC was what caused permanent brain

damage. This was of course after they had done surgery and implanted them

with electrodes that couldn’t have possibly caused any damage themselves.

They also claim one monkey died due to THC and 2 died after due to THC.

So instead of the Government going with who they had originally set up to

review and give a statement they found someone else who was willing to speak

their language. To me this is clear by the fact none of Dr. Heath's tests have ever

been able to be replicated. (12) We have now had 54 years of a war on a plant

and the people who use it based on absolute propaganda. This was a war that

has cost the lives of more than we will ever know and changed every one of our

lives for the negative.

These 54 years the Government has kept Cannabis on Schedule I stating

there is no medical benefit whatsoever. However, the Government has funded

many studies throughout the years on Cannabis and its various Cannabinoids

and the effects it has on the human body. Interestingly enough they also hold

patents on certain cannabinoids. The patent US-6630507-B was first applied for

in 1999 and granted in 2003.(14)

This patent claims "Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant

properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This newfound property

makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of a wide variety of

oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and

autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have applications as

neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic

insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative

diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia.

Non-psychoactive cannabinoids, such as Cannabidoil, are particularly

advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with

psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present

invention."

The Department of Health and Human Services owns a patent for

Cannabinoids directly related to health. It's not even related to a rare disease not

many people will get. Instead, it will help with something almost all of us will face,

age related problems. Now after all these years of locking people up and pushing

propaganda they tell us Cannabis deserves to be a Schedule 3. Where it will be

overregulated by the FDA and the DEA while the legal industry that is estimated

to be valued at $29.6 billion nationwide will be altered to who knows what extent

and possibly completely eliminated due to regulations. While the big pharma companies come in and monopolize the industry and start pushing more patents.

There are already synthetic cannabis products out there such as Dronabinol (15) also known under the trade names Marinol and Syndros. It's synthetic delta 9 that is prescribed to HIV/AIDs patients and people experiencing Anorexia along with people undergoing Chemotherapy and other Cancer patients. Marinol first gained FDA approval in 1985 and the conditions it was prescribed for was increased in 1992.(16) Once again

an official Government agency admitting that Cannabis has medical uses.

Yet it took them 39 years to try and get the DEA to switch to Schedule 3.

In those 39 years completely unregulated Cannabis has killed 0 people

from overdose (21). Yet in those same 39 years regulated prescription drugs

killed 1,013,110 people in the United States alone. (17) Why does Cannabis

deserve to be on Schedule 3 if Alcohol and Tobacco aren't on it nor are they

regulated by the DEA? With Alcohol killing 140,000 people every year and

Tobacco being the number one preventable death in the U.S. killing over

480,000 people year after year. 1 in 5 deaths in the US are caused by

tobacco.(20)

We are determining the future everyday with the decisions we make. We

have the power to change those who are in office if they don’t want to listen to

the people they are supposed to be representing and who voted them into their

positions in the first place. It’s not a matter of if Cannabis will be legalized, it's a

matter of how Cannabis will be legalized. We need to ensure it’s done properly

and that it protects people’s rights and not the corporations to have a huge

monopoly.

Cannabis can be grown in everyone’s yard or residence providing

everyone with an abundance of medicine. However, only 18 out of 34 states with

legal cannabis have home grow rights, forcing everyone into dispensaries to be

charged extremely unfair prices or go back onto the underground market.

It's essential that we choose where we spend our dollars wisely and don’t

support businesses who aren’t supporting the culture and are actively trying to

pass laws in their favor against patient rights.

There are companies not related to Cannabis directly who are even spending millions of dollars on anti-Cannabis laws. Alcohol and Tobacco companies are among the biggest spenders out there. They simply don’t want to lose any of their profits to Cannabis.

If we the people don’t come together now all of us from patients, recreational users to businesses owners and even non consumers we will have a system where big corporations run everything.

We have seen what happens when they attempt to grow Cannabis. They do so in horrible conditions where it ends up having to get treated with nuclear radiation in Remediation machines or turned into concentrates. This was previously covered in the premiere of Channel 420 news. These big corporations aren’t making patients aware of this, nor is the government making laws against this. Instead, they make laws in favor of these kinds of practices so they can continue to scale up while offering insane prices due to their control of the market. The states with the most controlled markets have the lowest quality products and the highest prices. You can take NY state or Ohio for examples.