Do not believe that the rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule III will change much in the cannabis sales or growing spaces. Maybe, just maybe, the IRS will decide that stores that sell both ‘recreational’ and ‘medical’ cannabis will be able to deduct their expenses for the medical side of their business. Maybe not. This is an issue that the IRS will have to decide quickly. The the reality is that there will not be any changes from the DEA or state regulations. This is a ruse to make people think that cannabis is legal. It is not.
This is a true story about racism, deceit, lies, pandering, outright falsehoods and lying to the Senate of the United States of America as well as the President. While lying to the Senate or the President is nothing new, this deceit, racism and lies have lasted about 100 years. And it’s still very much in effect. Harry Anslinger is long gone, but his horrid legacy of racism, lies and bigotry lives on. Why? Now that we know everything said about cannabis at that time was a lie, why can’t we, as a country, just move on? The answer is simple and complex at the same time.
Racism and Deceit
Anyone who can read, knows with a tiny bit of research that one man, Harry Anslinger, was responsible for the prohibition in this case a tax stamp that effectively stopped physicians from having cannabis in their bags as a remedy. Cannabis was a part of their medical kit in the early 1900s. When ‘hippies’ adopted cannabis as their drug of choice, it became mainstream even (or especially) if the adults didn’t like it. The leaders of the US were happy to magnify the use of cannabis as being very harmful and is a gateway drug to stronger ‘stuff’ like heroin. There are still writers and people who believe that it’s a ‘gateway’ drug. Anslinger’s main argument was a racial rant; “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men..” The worst part is he believed it to be true. But he gets really great with this one: “Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.” I don’t get the shadows part, but I do get the rest of it. Racism. Pure and simple. And somewhere north of stupid. Step on a shadow?
Hubris and Deceit
Anslinger wasn’t the only one with a bit of hubris in the mix of horrid things the US government has done over the decades. There was Nixon’s main aide, John Erlichman, who was recorded on tape saying; Leave marijuana for the hippies and heroin and cocaine to the n(word)s. So cannabis was used to control people. Golly, what a freakin’ concept. Many people believe in their fairy tales about cannabis and believe their ideas are correct, even when not founded in facts. The old saying; “pride goeth before the fall” is certainly at work here in the beliefs and the writing about cannabis. Former President Biden couldn’t legalize cannabis because of pride and hubris. (see more below)
Lies and Deceit
Here’s an egregious article recently published in “The Hill” a usually respected non-partisan journal. In this fairy tale, the author has made arguments that marijuana (the author can’t even call it cannabis) is losing favor. The article is too easy to pick apart, but I’ll it at anyway. First, correlation is not causation, meaning that you might be able to string two statements together, but you can’t say that one caused the other. Here’s an example from the story; “There is another important difference between the two: Nearly every civilization in history has evolved with people using some form of alcohol.” Oh yeah? Mr. Poling, I suggest you study history. Many civilizations, especially in Europe and the Middle East have had cannabis as a part of their culture. This article is so bad, has its facts so jumbled, misquoted and misdirected that it’s almost a joke. And it was from “The Hill”. I did expect a bit better fact checking. But this is only one example of specious writing about cannabis. There are so many more errors and misstatements that it boggles the mind. How could an editor let this pass?
Biden’s Deceit and Cannabis
Last but not least, former President Biden had the opportunity to move cannabis to schedule 3 or declare that it was no longer on any schedule which would give de facto legalization to the US. But he didn’t. He was one of the architects of the drug laws passed in the 1990s that doubled down on cannabis penalties. Apart from his ego, I cannot figure out why he did nothing, but there it is. He did nothing. And that puts us back to where we were almost 90 years ago. That is until President Trump moved cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. Ultimately, this is a grandstand play and won’t change the cannabis legal status.
The End Game
If you smell poo, say poo. And the prohibition is poo. To make matters worse for the truth, the anti cannabis and pro-prohibition folks (see above) are hauling out the same old saws about how cannabis is addictive, it causes harm, etc. I have this one retort; “How many people have been outright killed by alcohol overdosing?” Answer: About 2,200 to 2,400 people a year. “How many people have died from cannabis poisoning?” Answer: zero.
