Wow, I had no idea...

Medical marijuana? Fact or fiction?
There is a veritable cornucopia of things that this new/old medicine treats. A number of which I, myself, could have. And a few that I never even though about.

From Acquired hypothyroidism to Cachexia (0ne of my favorite words, even if it is a horrible thing) to Writers' Cramp (not kidding).

Now I don't think that Mary Jane is the end all be all "panacea" for whatever ails you. But I do think that it has a great many applications, and even a few I never thought about. The real truth is that this stuff works and works and works. It is versatile, easy to grow, and NOT A DANGER.

Let's look at this objectively for a moment...

Marijuana is not just a drug. It is first of all a very attractive plant, aesthetically and otherwise. It is also a great source of protein (from the seeds), you can get more from weed seeds than you can from the oh-so-popular (and legal) soy bean. The stems are good for fiber, which is used for all sorts of things like paper, rope and a whole lot more. I can't think of a more useful plant. For instance, we grow soy beans just for the beans and the fact that it is a nitrogen fixer that allows us to plant corn which is used for livestock feed and ethanol. Pretty boring.
The cannabis plant however seems to have a million uses and probably ones we haven't even thought of yet.

So why is it not legal?

Glad you asked.

See back in the thirty's or something like that several things happened. First of all the government(and a lot of back-assward fucktards that ran it) back then were trying to persecute brown and black folks (not that whitey didn't smoke the reefer but the ones that did were outcast, beat generation losers, of course.) Also a company by the name of DuPont (evil fuckers) had just invented nylon, or rayon, or some such fake-ass chemical process using bullshit. And so wanted natural fiber to go away. And since they were such good friends with govt it was decided that two problems could be solved at once. So they made grass semi-illegal. Actually, one could buy a "tax stamp" which was a little tricky. See, in order to get the stamp you had to have the pot there to prove you needed a stamp BUT until you had the stamp it was illegal to have, transport or sell said pot. Any logical person can see the catch 22 there. If you don't then I can't help you. At any rate, some ways down the line somebody pointed out how unconstitutional that was and things changed. So in comes the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug along with the likes of opium(heroine), cocaine and MDMA(Ecstasy).

Much like prohibition in the 20s this scheme is doomed to fail for a number of reasons. Firstly, pot is not known to be addictive and has produced no known fatalities. Secondly, it grows naturally all over the world. And thirdly, it seems to me that dope is fairly equivalent to alcohol (aside from it's illegal stature, and non-habit forming nature). Given those points it pretty much baffles me why weed is still not fully legal, let alone approved for medical use (in most states).

I think the problem lies within the concept of what is known as the "Prison-industrial complex." Basically, there is too much money tied up in the idea of keeping people down and out. See, if we keep a large portion of the population locked up (more than any other country on the planet in fact) then we can artificially create a portion of the population that WILL work for peanuts and therefore drive down wages across the board. TWA got this concept years ago. So what if normal people threw a hissy-fit about giving their personal info to a bunch of convicts. The issue is a lot more complicated than how it is presented here but all I am doing is pointing out a few key factors.

In conclusion I have a viable solution for a lot of problems in the US. Simply decriminalize the weed. And what would we get for this simple little change of policy? A lot, and here is a list of only a few that I can think of off the top of my head.

• Less people clogging up our justice system, less prisoners, less waste of the courts time and less people being sent off to what is basically a college of criminality (that's a topic for another post.)
• A lot of revenue derived from taxation on a substance lots of people want and are completely willing to pay for despite it's illegal status.
• Less money going to drug dealers and cartels that fund all sorts of bad shit like terrorism for one hyperbolic example.
• A safer alternative to alcohol and all the problems associated with the booze.
• Very useful products that will help move us forward in the "green" revolution.
• And likely a happier more mellow populous. You authoritarians out there should like that one.

In any case, I don't really see the government going for this plan because it is run by typically hide-bound, reactionaries that don't want to think objectively about this issue or at the very least would see this step as being "soft" on crime. But I do think that as time goes on and more people come to see that the depiction of pot made in Reefer Madness is complete hog-wash then we will get sensible and well needed change. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later but I for one am not holding my breath. No pun intended.