Tag: cannabis

The DC Swamp Creatures Still Pushing the Failed, Authoritarian War on Cannabis

The Drug War is an ineffectual waste of resources. No appreciable decline in illicit drug use has occurred since it began, despite the trillions of dollars spent:

“Prohibition is not only ineffective but counterproductive, at achieving the goals of policymakers both domestically and abroad. Given the insights from economics and the available data… the domestic War on Drugs has contributed to an increase in drug overdoses and fostered and sustained the creation of powerful drug cartels.”

The evidence of the DEA’s, ATF’s, and respective state agencies’ total incompetence, and even corruption, in doing their jobs is legion. The CIA facilitates the importation of cocaine into the US with impunity.

Given its failure, if the Drug War were a private-sector endeavor, investors would have pulled the plug years ago. Instead, since this utterly useless bureaucratic machinery sucks at the teat of the taxpayer, its purveyors are allowed to subsidize their careers fighting windmills.

Rather than acknowledging that their total lack of any meaningful progress in reducing the flow of drugs into the US or deescalating usage rates, these agencies routinely use their abject failure to justify ever-larger budgets. If they just got a few billion more dollars each year, the logic goes, the Drug War could be won in a jiffy.

Total nonsense.

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Visualizing The History Of Cannabis Prohibition In The US

The legal status of cannabis in the U.S. isn’t always clear. At the federal level, it is an illegal Schedule I drug. However, individual states have the ability to determine their own laws around cannabis sales and usage.

But, as Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop details below, cannabis was not always illegal at the top level. It was only in the last 100 years that cannabis faced a prohibition similar to the alcohol prohibition of the early 1920s.

In this infographic from Tenacious Labs, we explore the fascinating history of cannabis prohibition in the U.S. dating all the way back to the 1900s.

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As Overdose Deaths Skyrocket, Study Finds 93% of Pain Patients Quit Opioids When Given Cannabis

Despite the state spending thousands of dollars a second – ticketing, kidnapping, caging, and killing evil drug users, the rate of lethal drug overdoses in the last 15 years has skyrocketed at near-exponential rates.

According to the most recent data on overdose deaths, despite the states immoral war on drugs, 2020 went down as the deadliest year in history for overdoses.

In fact, according to data from the federal government: More Americans died from drug overdose in a 12-month period than at any other point in history.

Drug overdoses were linked to more than 81,000 people’s deaths between June 2019 and May 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, jumping 18 percent compared to the previous 12-month period. Such deaths rose 20 percent or more in 25 states and the District of Columbia, the report said.

Across the board, drug use and deaths associated with drug use have increased at alarming rates. No amount of AR-15s, SWAT police, MRAPs, or any other military gear has had a hand in lowering these statistics. In fact, the increase in overdose deaths nearly perfectly coincides with the increase in militarization in the last decade and a half.

One drug, or rather plant, which is still viciously sought after in the state’s immoral war on drugs could be the key to slowing this epidemic. Cannabis.

However, in spite of some form of cannabis being legal in some fashion in well over half the country, the government still violently and with extreme prejudice continues to seek out those who dare possess it.

This violent prohibition continues despite research like the data published in the Journal of Addictive Diseases that shows this plant’s power to mitigate the opioid crisis.

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SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THE ANCIENT BIRTHPLACE OF MARIJUANA

For thousands of years, humans have lit up around the world, enjoying the high that comes from cannabis.

But the controversial politics surrounding the drug has made it difficult for scientists to figure out its genetic origins. Where did cannabis come from and how did it evolve into the potent green that brings us pleasure?

Scientists finally have an answer to that question — and the evolution of modern-day cannabis and how it diverged from its very close relative hemp is even wilder than you might think.

New research published Friday in the journal Science Advances used genetics to trace the ancient birthplace of Cannabis sativa, from which we harvest pot today.

The cultivation of marijuana has much longer roots than we previously understood, according to the study — including evidence that our cultivation of pot may have led to the extinction of pure, wild, ancient strains of cannabis.

Cannabis “is one of the first cultivated crop species,” Luca Fumagalli, a co-author on the study from the University of Lausanne’s Laboratory for Conservation Biology, tells Inverse.

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FDA Takes Only Months to Approve Pfizer Jab Yet Cannabis Remains Schedule 1 Despite Centuries of Data

Since Dec. 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under the Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization in individuals 16 years of age and older, and the authorization was expanded to include those 12 through 15 years of age on May 10, 2021. On August 23, 2021, it was granted full approval by the FDA.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine now becomes the fastest created, deployed and subsequently approved vaccination in history. Previously, the fastest vaccine to go from development to deployment was the mumps vaccine in the 1960s, which took about four years.

The swift approval of the vaccine illustrates just how fast the government can react if it wants to do so. On the contrary, however, there have been hundreds if not thousands of studies on the benefits of cannabis to safely treat multiple ailments and diseases, spanning the course of centuries, yet the FDA has failed to approve its use for anything.

To be clear, the FDA has approved patentable pharmaceutical synthetic compounds such as dronabinol. The pharmaceutical patented drugs Marinol and Syndros both use dronabinol which is nothing more than a chemical synthetic equivalent to delta-9- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — but the plant-based version you can grow in your own home remains off the list.

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Stoned Driving Is Far Safer Than Operating a Vehicle on Prescription Drugs, Study Says

Driving while stoned is far safer than driving under the influence of prescription medications or other legal drugs, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy.

A team of Australian researchers set out to test the validity of zero tolerance THC driving laws by studying how often Australians involved in traffic accidents tested positive for cannabis, opioids, or other drugs. An analysis of accident data revealed that the risks of driving under the influence of cannabis are considerably lower than for many legal prescription drugs.

Study author Iain McGregor, professor at The Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics at the University of Sydney, told the Australian Associated Press that the risk of driving under the influence of cannabis is “considerably less than with many medications such as antidepressants, opioids and benzodiazepines.”

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Here Are The Full Details Of The New Federal Marijuana Legalization Bill From Chuck Schumer And Senate Colleagues

The first draft of a long-anticipated Senate bill to federally legalize marijuana has been released—and its sponsors are asking for public input to further improve the legislation before it is formally introduced.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) are unveiling the draft at a press conference on Wednesday. It’s an extensive bill, titled the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, that weighs in at 163 pages.

The main features of the legislation largely align with what advocates and stakeholders expected. It would federally deschedule cannabis, expunge prior convictions, allow people to petition for resentencing, maintain the authority of states to set their own marijuana policies and remove collateral consequences like immigration-related penalties for people who’ve been criminalized over the plant.

“Cannabis prohibition, a key pillar of the failed war on drugs, has caused substantial harm to our communities and small businesses, and especially for communities of color,” Wyden said. “It’s as simple as this: Senators Booker, Schumer and I want to bring common sense to the federal government, end prohibition and restore the lives of those hurt most and set them up for opportunity.”

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New Study Puts the Nail in the Coffin of the Myth that ‘Marijuana is a Gateway Drug’

Politicians defending the criminalization of recreational marijuana use have long riled up voters with dire warnings that the substance acts as a “gateway drug.” They insist that even if deaths directly caused by marijuana usage are virtually nonexistent, pot will eventually lead many users to more dangerous drugs.

President Biden himself has long made this claim, stating in 2010 that “I still believe [marijuana] is a gateway drug.” Only in 2019, while campaigning for president, did Biden begin to walk back this position. Yet he still does not fully support federal marijuana legalization. And the “gateway” position is still held by many other politicians clinging to their opposition to a widely popular legalization movement. For example, Republican Congressman Andy Harris recently referred to marijuana as “a known gateway drug to opioid addiction” while arguing against legalization.

However, a new study suggests that the notion that marijuana is a “gateway drug” is little more than political fiction.

Economists examined the impact that recreational marijuana laws passed in 18 states and the District of Columbia have had on metrics key to the “gateway” narrative. The analysis is the first to “comprehensively examine the broader impacts of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on a wide set of outcomes related to hard drug use, including illicit nonmarijuana related consumption, drug-related arrests, arrests for property and violent offenses, mortality due to drug-related overdoses, suicides, and admissions for drug addiction-related treatment.”

Across four different nationwide databases, the researchers “find little consistent evidence” that recreational marijuana laws have gateway effects to hard drugs. The study finds “little compelling evidence to suggest” that marijuana legalization leads to more increases in drug use, arrests for hard drug offenses, drug overdoses, or admissions for drug addiction treatment.

They say there is even “suggestive evidence that legalizing recreational marijuana reduces heroin- and other opioid-related mortality.” Ultimately, the authors conclude that critics’ fear of marijuana’s supposed “gateway” effect appears “unfounded.”

Unfounded, indeed. But don’t expect critics to change their tune.

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Republican Lawmakers Want Biden to Reclassify Cannabis

Republican lawmakers are asking President Joe Biden to keep his promise and reschedule cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act. 

Yes, you read the lede right. Republicans are asking Biden, a Democrat, to reschedule weed once and for all. 

Representatives Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Don Young (R-AK) both serve as co-chairs of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. They recently sent a letter to Biden asking for rescheduling and claiming the issue is “a matter of public health.”

Despite all the work that has been happening at the state level to legalize medical and recreational cannabis, it is still classified federally as a Schedule I drug in the U.S., as most cannabis enthusiasts well know. This puts it in the same category with drugs like heroin that are known to be much more harmful. The classification means that cannabis has no medical value and a high potential for abuse in the country’s eyes. 

“As a Schedule I substance, cannabis is not accepted for medical use on the federal level, which has caused significant research restrictions and continues to thwart the treatment of a wide range of patients, including those suffering from cancer as well as veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and people living with Multiple Sclerosis and seizure disorders,” the letter explains regarding the status of cannabis. 

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