June 24, 2016
The war on cannabis that began in the 1930s seems to be coming to
an end. Research shows that this natural plant, rather than posing a
deadly danger to health, has a wide range of therapeutic benefits. But
skeptics question the sudden push for legalization, which is largely
funded by wealthy investors linked to Big Ag and Big Pharma.
In April, Pennsylvania became the 24
th state to legalize
medical cannabis, a form of the plant popularly known as marijuana. That
makes nearly half of US states. A major barrier to broader legalization
has been the federal law under which all cannabis – even the very
useful form known as industrial hemp – is classed as a Schedule I
controlled substance that cannot legally be grown in the US. But that
classification could change soon. In a letter sent to federal lawmakers
in April, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said
it plans to release a decision on rescheduling marijuana in the first half of 2016.
The presidential candidates are generally in favor of relaxing the law. In November 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders
introduced a bill
that would repeal all federal penalties for possessing and growing the
plant, allowing states to establish their own marijuana laws. Hillary
Clinton would not go that far but would
drop cannabis from a Schedule I drug
(a deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for
abuse) to Schedule II (a deadly dangerous drug with medical use and high
potential for abuse). Republican candidate
Donald Trump says we are losing badly in the war on drugs, and that to win that war all drugs need to be legalized.
But it is Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein who has been called “
weed’s biggest fan.” Speaking from the perspective of a physician and public health advocate,
Stein notes
that hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from chronic pain and
cancers are benefiting from the availability of medical marijuana under
state laws. State economies are benefiting as well. She cites Colorado,
where retail marijuana stores first opened in January 2014. Since then,
Colorado’s crime rates and traffic fatalities have dropped; and tax
revenue, economic output from retail marijuana sales, and jobs have
increased.
Among other arguments for changing federal law is that the marijuana business currently
lacks access to banking facilities.
Most banks, fearful of FDIC sanctions, won’t work with the $6.7 billion
marijuana industry, leaving 70% of cannabis companies without bank
accounts. That means billions of dollars are sitting around in cash,
encouraging tax evasion and inviting theft, to which an estimated 10% of
profits are lost. But that problem too could be remedied soon. On June
16, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an
amendment to prevent the Treasury Department from punishing banks that open accounts for state-legal marijuana businesses.
Boosting trade in the new marijuana market is not a good reason for
decriminalizing it, of course, if it actually poses a grave danger to
health. But there have been
no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US. Not that the herb can’t have problematic effects, but the hazards pale compared to alcohol (
30,000 deaths annually) and to patented pharmaceuticals, which are now the
leading cause of death from drug overdose. Prescription drugs
taken as directed are estimated to
kill 100,000 Americans per year.
Behind the War on Weed: Taking Down the World’s Largest Agricultural Crop
The greatest threat to health posed by marijuana seems to come from its criminalization. Today
over 50 percent of inmates in federal prison are there for drug offenses, and
marijuana tops the list.
Cannabis cannot legally be grown in the US even as hemp, a form with
very low psychoactivity. Why not? The answer seems to have more to do
with economic competition and racism than with health.
Cannabis is actually one of the oldest domesticated crops, having
been grown for industrial and medicinal purposes for millennia. Until
1883,
hemp was also one of the largest agricultural crops
(some say the largest). It was the material from which most fabric,
soap, fuel, paper and fiber were made. Before 1937, it was also
a component of at least 2,000 medicines.
In early America, it was considered a farmer’s patriotic duty to grow hemp.
Cannabis was legal tender
in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s. Americans
could even pay their taxes with it. Benjamin Franklin’s paper mill used
cannabis. Hemp crops produce nearly four times as much raw fiber as
equivalent tree plantations; and hemp paper is finer, stronger and lasts
longer than wood-based paper. Hemp was also an essential resource for
any country with a shipping industry, since it was the material from
which sails and rope were made.
Today hemp is legally grown for industrial use in hundreds of countries outside the US. A
1938 article in Popular Mechanics
claimed it was a billion-dollar crop (the equivalent of about $16
billion today), useful in 25,000 products ranging from dynamite to
cellophane. New uses continue to be found.
Claims include
eliminating smog from fuels, creating a cleaner energy source that can
replace nuclear power, removing radioactive water from the soil,
eliminating deforestation, and providing a very nutritious food source
for humans and animals.
To powerful competitors, the plant’s myriad uses seem to have been the problem.
Cannabis competed
with the lumber industry, the oil industry, the cotton industry, the
petrochemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. In the 1930s,
the plant in all its forms came under attack.
Its demonization accompanied the demonization of Mexican immigrants,
who were then flooding over the border and were widely perceived to be a
threat. Pot smoking was part of their indigenous culture. Harry
Anslinger, called “the father of the war on weed,” was the first
commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a predecessor to the
Drug Enforcement Administration. He fully embraced racism as a tool for
demonizing marijuana. He
made such comments as
“marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes,
entertainers and any others,” and “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as
good as white men.” In 1937, sensational racist claims like these
caused recreational marijuana to be banned; and industrial hemp was
banned with it.
Classification as a Schedule I controlled substance came in the
1970s, with President Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs. The Shafer
Commission, tasked with giving a final report,
recommended against the classification; but Nixon ignored the commission.
According to an April 2016 article
in Harper’s Magazine, the War on Drugs had political motives. Top Nixon
aide John Ehrlichman is quoted as saying in a 1994 interview:
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House
after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. . . . We
knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black,
but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and
blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could
disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their
homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we
did.
Competitor or Attractive New Market for the Pharmaceutical Industry?
The
documented medical use
of cannabis goes back two thousand years, but the Schedule I ban has
seriously hampered medical research. Despite that obstacle, cannabis has
now been shown to have
significant therapeutic value
for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s
disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety,
muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis
pain.
New research has also revealed the mechanism for these wide-ranging
effects. It seems the active pharmacological components of the plant
mimic chemicals produced naturally by the body called endocannabinoids.
These chemicals are responsible for keeping critical biological
functions in balance, including sleep, appetite, the immune system, and
pain. When stress throws those functions off,
the endocannabinoids move in to restore balance.
Inflammation is a
common trigger of the disease process in a broad range of degenerative ailments. Stress triggers inflammation, and
cannabis relieves both inflammation and stress.
THC, the primary psychoactive component of the plant, has been found to
have twenty times the anti-inflammatory power of aspirin and twice that
of hydrocortisone.
CBD, the most-studied non-psychoactive component, also comes with an
impressive list of therapeutic uses, including against cancer and
as a super-antibiotic.
CBD has been shown to kill “superbugs” that are resistant to currently
available drugs. This is a major medical breakthrough, since for some
serious diseases antibiotics have reached the end of their usefulness.
Behind the Push for Legalization
The pharmaceutical industry has both much to gain and much to lose
from legalization of the cannabis plant in its various natural forms.
Patented pharmaceuticals have succeeded in
monopolizing the drug market globally.
What that industry does not want is to be competing with a natural
plant that anyone can grow in his backyard, which actually works better
than very expensive pharmaceuticals without side effects.
Letitia Pepper, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is a case in
point. A vocal advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana for
personal use, she says she has saved her insurance company $600,000 in
the last nine years, using medical marijuana in place of a wide variety
of prescription drugs to treat her otherwise crippling disease. That is
$600,000 the pharmaceutical industry has not made, on just one patient.
There are 400,000 MS sufferers in the US, and 20 million people who have
been diagnosed with cancer sometime in their lives. Cancer chemotherapy
is the biggest of big business, which would be directly threatened by a
cheap natural plant-based alternative.
The threat to big industry profits could explain why cannabis has
been kept off the market for so long. More suspicious to Pepper and
other observers is the sudden push to legalize it. They question whether
Big Pharma would allow the competition, unless it had an ace up its
sleeve. Although the movement for marijuana legalization is a
decades-old grassroots effort,
the big money behind the recent push
has come from a few very wealthy individuals with links to Monsanto,
the world’s largest seed company and producer of genetically modified
seeds. In May of this year, Bayer AG, the giant German chemical and
pharmaceutical company, made
a bid to buy Monsanto. Both companies are said to be
working on a cannabis-based extract.
Natural health writer
Mike Adams warns:
[W]ith the cannabis industry predicted to generate over
$13 billion by 2020, becoming one of the largest agricultural markets
in the nation, there should be little doubt that companies like Monsanto
are simply waiting for Uncle Sam to remove the herb from its current Schedule I classification before getting into the business.
. . . [O]ther major American commodities, like corn and soybeans, are
on average between 88 and 91 percent genetically modified. Therefore,
once the cannabis industry goes national, and that is most certainly
primed to happen, there will be no stopping the inevitability of
cannabis becoming a prostituted product of mad science and shady
corporate monopoly tactics.
With the health benefits of cannabis now well established, the
battlefield has shifted from its decriminalization to who can grow it,
sell it, and prescribe it. Under existing California law, patients like
Pepper are able to grow and use the plant essentially for free. New
bills purporting to legalize marijuana for recreational use impose
regulations that opponents say would squeeze home growers and small
farmers out of the market, would heighten criminal sanctions for
violations, and could wind up replacing the natural cannabis plant with
patented, genetically modified (GMO) plants that must be purchased year
after year. These new bills and the Monsanto/Bayer connection will be
the subject of a follow-up article. Stay tuned.
Ellen Brown is an attorney, Founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. She can be heard biweekly on “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.
