The fight against cannabis in the United States has a sinister subplot (hemp was a less expensive alternative that threatened newspaper mogul William Randolph Heart’s cotton newsprint empire). Politics were also in play when the Nixon justice department noted that harsh treatment toward cannabis offenders were a potent tool against Nixon’s college students leaders and minority groups Nixon considered his political enemies. Nixon buried the Shafer Report he commissioned that had concluded cannabis should not be criminalized. Nixon pushed to classify cannabis as a Schedule 1 narcotic under the 1970’s CSA based on the premise that cannabis consumption was an entry point to the use of harder drugs.
Today, that logic has been turned on its head. First, there’s the hypocrisy of allowing the sale of alcohol and tobacco (products that have caused incalculable harm). Second, returning veterans and others suffering from a range of problems and addictions are finding effective relief from cannabis that powerful prescribed medication does not provide.