Mental Basement

By J

At its core, the medical marijuana movement is being held back by one thing alone, and that is ignorance. Just like the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s or even the Women’s movement in the years preceding 1920, the quest to decriminalize or legalize cannabis must overcome the preconceptions burned into the minds of Americans at very young ages. Ask the average middle-aged housewife in Wyoming, or the plumber from Barstow his or her opinion on medical marijuana (here forth referred to as MMJ), and the likelihood is that you will find a person who has a negative opinion on MMJ, but knows virtually nothing about it. Yet, if such a person were to be educated on the matter, if they would see the hypocrisy that exists in regards to our government’s treatment of MMJ, they would see that medicinal cannabis really does serve to make patients’ lives better (or in some cases, even tolerable), and most importantly, they would see that our government has stepped on our civil liberties to such an extent that any American should be concerned regardless of their opinion of marijuana. So why exactly should marijuana be decriminalized? All personal opinions aside, it is a matter of logic. When one sits down and looks at all of the facts revolving around the medicinal qualities, the economic potential, the history, and the politics of marijuana, legalization plainly makes good sense. Period. It is simply a matter of getting those facts into the brains of enough people so that the government can no longer pull the wool over the country’s collective eyes. The facts will set us free; we need only to educate the people.

From a medicinal standpoint, cannabis certainly is not the be-all and end-all that some claim it to be. It will not cure every disease known to mankind; however, it does have significantly more medicinal qualities than the average person either knows about or gives MMJ credit for. It seems as though most people out there who aren’t directly involved with the cannabis industry in any way believe that MMJ is a hoax and is being described as medicinal only so it is easier to access. This simply is not true. Cannabis has been proven to stimulate the growth of brains cells, and as a result is a particularly effective countermeasure to deleterious brain diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s. Higher cannabinoid levels have been shown to result in an increased ability to learn and accept change, and THC is a bronchodilator, meaning that it opens up the airways and facilitates easier breathing (contrary to popular belief). Being someone who used to suffer fairly regularly from asthma related issues, I can personally confirm that I have had zero problems with asthma since starting to smoke cannabis. The number one killer in hospitals in the United States today is the resistant strain of the Staff infection, which patients contract while in the hospital and the hospitals currently have no viable way of combating the problem—except for marijuana. Hospitals around the country are now going to apply a THC tincture (basically a concentrate made with alcohol) directly to the infected area, and have had very successful results. And perhaps most amazingly, there have now been human clinical trials in which direct application of THC has been shown to force certain types of tumors into remission—yes, marijuana can actually cure certain types of cancer.

The autonomic nervous system, which is controlled by the glands of the brainstem (primarily the hypothalamus), is responsible for everything our bodies do without us telling them to—breathing, digesting, etc. It is this system that keeps us alive when we are, say, unconscious. Most “recreational” drugs out there, whether it be heroin or cocaine or whatever, can directly affect your brain stem, and therefore your autonomic nervous system. You can overdose on one of these heavy drugs, lose consciousness, and your body’s normal regulatory systems can be rendered useless due to the drugs’ effects on the brainstem. However, marijuana does not affect the brainstem at all; therefore, you cannot overdose on weed. In fact, it has been calculated that one would have to smoke approximately fifteen pounds of cannabis in five minutes to result in death, and that death would be due to excessive CO2 buildup in the body, not due to anything from the cannabis itself. For clarification, fifteen pounds would be roughly equivalent to 3,360 joints at 1 gram apiece. Yet for some reason or another, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug by the federal government. In terms of drug classification, Schedule I is considered to be the most dangerous of drugs with the least potential for medicinal use. Other drugs classified as Schedule I include heroine, LSD, and GHB (the date-rape drug). Schedule II drugs include cocaine, methamphetamine, morphine, PCP, and oxycontin, and Schedule III contains Marinol, which is a prescription form of THC that does not contain the other cannabinoids primarily responsible for marijuana’s medicinal effects. How any of this makes any sort of sense is beyond me. In fact (and if this is not proof enough, I do not know what is), the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES holds the patent on the medical use of cannabinoids, which are the active ingredients in marijuana that provide the plant’s medicinal effects (THC is one of many cannabinoids). This is a way for the Feds to hedge their bet; on one hand they are doing everything in their power to keep legalization of marijuana from being realized, but on the other hand they know it will be legalized at some point and they want to be able to cash in when it is.
Ratified December 15, 1791, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In essence, this means that unless the Constitution specifically and explicitly sets rules for a certain subject matter, each individual state has the right to determine its own laws for said subject matter. This amendment was put into affect a mere three years after the official ratification of our current Constitution, and was done so because the founding individuals of this nation quickly realized that, left unchecked, the Federal government of the United States could become far too powerful and far-reaching. On November 5, 1996, Proposition 215 passed with a 55.6% voter approval. Prop 215 was a statewide voter initiative written by Denis Peron, which gave Californians the right to visit a doctor and, if the doctor so chose, be recommended for the use medical marijuana to help with any one of a number of ailments. Prop 215 is a legitimate law voted in by the people, and unfortunately for the Federal government, the Constitution does not explicitly deny the use of cannabis (see the first sentence of this paragraph). In fact, our founding fathers were anything but opposed to marijuana; George Washington once stated “Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere,” and Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.”

However, marijuana is still illegal on a federal level, and the Federal Government has refused to recognize the California state law, regardless of what the Constitution may say. Under the Bush administration primarily, the DEA has been breathing down the necks of every collective operator in California. Keep in mind, these collectives run just like any other business; they have to apply for business licenses and pay taxes as though they were a furniture store. Yet the DEA still finds it necessary to randomly shut down collectives without any rhyme or reason, including eleven collectives on January 26, 2007. They gave no forewarning; they showed up in bulletproof vests with masks on their faces and broke down the front doors of these eleven collectives. In some instances, all of the glass cases, shelves, televisions etc were destroyed by the DEA. In all cases, all medication, money, patient records, and computers were confiscated, never to be seen again.

There has been a recurring trend in these raids in which DEA officers play up the idea that some serious criminal activity is taking place inside collectives. Twenty to thirty officers show up in all black with shotguns, and they generally find two or three people working in the collective and perhaps a few patients (God forbid the old woman on chemo get some weed to help with her nausea). The DEA wants to make a point for the cameras that marijuana is bad and that bad people are involved in the industry, and that simply is not the case. This same type of DEA behavior took place when Tommy Chong was arrested for his glass blowing company (which, I should note, is not illegal); however, the DEA found it necessary in this case to bring in two helicopters and a SWAT team to his home at 6AM. They ended up finding Mr. Chong and his wife in bed (as most people would be at 6AM), who of course went peacefully. The raids on Tommy Chong’s house and business cost the DEA over twenty million dollars. Luckily for us, the Bush administration had their priorities in order and decided that using twenty million dollars of taxpayer money to go after TOMMY CHONG was a good idea considering that the national deficit is in the trillions of dollars. In the transcripts of his case, it can be found that Tommy Chong was sentenced to jail primarily because his career “glorified the use of marijuana,” and federal prosecutor Mary Beth Buchanan specifically cited Cheech and Chong’s 1978 film “Up in Smoke” as evidence against him. Tommy Chong went to federal prison for nine months. DEA: 1, First Amendment: 0.

All this being said, not all is lost. With a new administration comes new hope, and President Obama is certainly the marijuana activist’s best friend in the White House since Jimmy Carter. Obama has outright stated that he is opposed to the DEA actions of the past few years, and was actually quoted as saying “[He] would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It is not a good use of our resources.” There is a palpable buzz in the marijuana community today, a great hope for change the likes of which has not been seen for decades. It is important to note that the collectives that generally end up getting raided are those that do everything by the books and begin to grow and organize. The DEA does not want the collectives to start gaining any political clout (which they have anyway), so instead of going after the underground collectives that don’t do everything the way the laws say they should, they go after the well established, legitimate collectives. If DEA raids were to stop, the level of organization and political power within the marijuana industry would skyrocket, which would only act to move local and state legislature to pass more cannabis-friendly laws.

For the most part, I have made an effort to keep this essay within the scope of a medicinal argument. However, the potential economic benefits of hemp cannot be ignored in an argument about legalization. First, it should be noted that currently marijuana is the largest cash crop in the United States; larger than corn, flour, cotton, what have you. In fact, marijuana is estimated to be a larger cash crop than all others combined, and if it was legalized and taxed it would result in billions of dollars of tax revenue annually, the majority of which would be coming to California, since the state produces roughly one third of all of the marijuana for the entire nation (sales tax on medical marijuana alone would still result in approximately $100,000,000 annual revenue). Hemp is a legitimate and long-term cure to many of our economic and even environmental woes. There is a reason weed is called weed…and that is because it’s a weed. Hemp is especially easy to grow and is very hearty, and can be used to create strong, longer-lasting paper, softer clothing, rope, cosmetics, building materials, fuel, and even foods. Hemp seeds contain fiber, protein, and essential fatty acids, and has superior range of nutritional benefits to even that of the soy bean. Hemp can be grown in a wide variety of climates and can easily be grown in mass, meaning that it is a particularly useful source of ethanol based fuels (which currently power many of the cars in South America, but are usually produced with corn or sugar). In essence, we could basically end our dependency on fossil fuels, stop chopping down the world’s forests, and using petroleum based skin products, as well as much more, by widely adopting hemp as the country’s major cash crop. Do I think this will happen any time in the near future? Certainly not. Would it make sense? Absolutely.

The way this movement has been and will continue to make headway is through education. It is through papers like this and through organizations like Oaksterdam University. Whether you believe in medical marijuana, total marijuana legalization for everyone, or neither of the two, once educated on the facts regarding cannabis and the government’s treatment of the subject, I fail to see how you cannot be outraged. If you have any sense of patriotism and any desire to live in a country in which your government is held accountable for its actions, then you must see the wrongs being done. And with a new president in office, we can now begin to reverse the corruption and lack of accountability of the past eight years. I started this paper and I will end it with the same sentiment: currently there are between twenty and fifty million Americans who smoke marijuana. In the not too distant future, the rest of the nation will begin to understand the truths about marijuana, and they will do so because of people that strive to teach them. The facts will one day set us free, of that I am sure; we need only to educate the people.

Following is a list of my favorite marijuana-related quotes:

“The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.”
- Albert Einstein quote on Hemp

“When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn’t that exactly what’s been happening with drugs?”
- Milton Friedman quote on Marijuana

“It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics . . . dope and all that crap. It’s a thousand times better than whiskey - it’s an assistant - a friend.”
- Louis Armstrong quote on Marijuana

“That is not a drug. It’s a leaf,”
- Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Forty million Americans smoked marijuana; the only ones who didn’t like it were Judge Ginsberg, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.”
- Jay Leno

“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”
- Carl Sagan

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marihuana in private for personal use… Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marihuana.”
- Jimmy Carter, U.S. President

“I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening - or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, mid-evening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-mid-afternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . . …But never at dusk.”
- Steve Martin

AND FINALLY

“When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point.”
- Barack Obama, U.S. President