Another Anti-Science Antic

“The Marijuana Manifesto – How Lies, Corruption and Propaganda Kept Cannabis Illegal,” by Jesse Ventura and Jen Hobbs, 2016

The prohibition of marijuana and the story of modern U.S. capitalism are inextricably intertwined.  Ventura, former Independent Governor of Minnesota, has co-written a detailed book dragging up every scandal involving the corrupt Drug Enforcement Agency, the long and hidden history of hemp in the U.S., the roots of prohibition and the consequences of the vicious War on Drugs.  If you want to know how a ridiculous and savage policy sausage is made in the U.S., read this book.

POLITICS and ECONOMICS

It is pretty clear that the motivations to outlaw marijuana were and still are both economic and political.  Ventura shows how the initial prohibitions against hemp and weed in the 20^th Century started because newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst, an owner of a large logging company, wanted to use trees for paper instead of hemp.  His ally Andrew Mellon of Dupont wanted to make plastic from oil, not hemp and paper from trees too.  They joined together with a government bureaucrat named Henry Anslinger to demonize weed, ultimately convincing the government to ban cannabis in both its forms – all without facts.  Anslinger testified that marijuana made black people, Mexicans and Chinese murderers and rapists, while asserting jazz created addicts.  Hearst’s papers pushed this hysteria like an older version of Fox News.  This racism was an essential psychological method to enable marijuana prohibition, but in the economic interest of certain capital sectors.

In a way, this was another anti-science crusade like climate denialism or opposition to evolution. Until 2019 the Federal government couldn’t tell the difference between the male plant producing CBD and hemp and the female plant producing THC-laden buds, treating them the same.

Nixon declared the “War on Drugs” in 1972, making marijuana in any form a ‘Schedule 1’ drug like heroin.  Ventura shows every president since has enforced this drug war – especially Reagan, Clinton, the Bushes and Obama.  John Ehrlichmann said in 1994 that Nixon’s real motivation was not drugs, it was to punish the counter-culture and hobble civil-rights and anti-war activists by using drug busts to break up organizations.

So what financial forces support criminalization of drugs, including weed in all its forms? It is a rather large group.  It is Big Pharma, which wants to privatize CBD and THC’s multiple health benefits under expensive and long-lasting patent protection.  It is corporations like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, major phone companies, Starbucks, Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret and McDonalds who use slave-like prison labor and get tax breaks for each prisoner ‘hired.’  50% of prisoners are in prison for non-violent drug offenses, so they would lose part of their labor force. There is the private prison industry, which needs a guaranteed 90% flow of prisoners, and if they don’t get it, governments have to pay them.  It is Big Cotton, which wanted to prevent the industrial use of hemp because it has many advantages over cotton, including environmental.  It is Big Liquor, which does not want competition, as states that legalize weed see a decline in alcohol consumption. 

France the world's largest producer of hemp - U.S. the largest importer!!

GOVERNMENT COLLABORATION

It is government entities like the DEA, police departments and others who now financially benefit from the Drug War. Incidentally the U.S. government owns patent #507 on CBD, which it is selling to certain pharmaceutical companies.  So they have hypocritically patented a useful component of weed that is otherwise illegal!  Backing them are politicians, mostly Republicans but also corporate Democrats who support all these corporations.  In 2016 Hillary Clinton opposed the legalization of weed and even made the stupid statement that weed ‘needed more study.’  This is a standard line in the last 50 years to stop legalization. As Ventura notes, there have been hundreds of studies done, especially in Israel.  Marijuana is actually a very known quantity.  Historically in the late 1600’s, hemp was REQUIRED to be grown in the U.S. by farmers due to its multiple uses - or they faced large penalties.  In the 1930s New York had hundreds of hashish clubs until the government shut them down.  The U.S. government encouraged hemp growing through WWII and then the policy changed.

MEDICAL & INDUSTRIAL BENEFITS

You may ask, what is the big deal with legalizing marijuana anyway?  It’s just a bunch of ‘hippies’ getting high.  Actually the hippies are right but it goes far beyond that.  As the British Lancet noted, marijuana should not be a ‘Schedule 1’ drug.  It should not even be listed as a hazardous substance, similar to caffeine.  Alcohol is far more dangerous, as are heroin and especially meth.  As to its medical benefits, the Chinese were using it as a medicine in 2737 BC.   The reason it is so useful is that it interacts with the endocannabinoid system within the human body that affects almost every part of human functioning.  According to the various states that have legalized medical marijuana, CBD and/or THC help with:  Pain, epilepsy, PTSD, Parkinson’s, opioid and tobacco addiction, other seizures, sleep deprivation, appetite loss, cancer tumors, alcoholism, anxiety, inflammation, multiple sclerosis, the side effects of chemotherapy,  osteoporosis, glaucoma, urinary tract infections, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc., etc.  All with hardly any side-effects.

Hemp was legalized in the 2019 Farm Bill finally, which is why you see CBD shops now springing up everywhere.  The various parts of hemp can be used for:  fabrics, rope, natural plastic, food and fuel oils, protein nutrition, soil remediation for all kinds of pollutants including radioactive ones, animal feed, cosmetics, cleaning products, paper, insulation, an ingredient mixed with concrete and plaster, as a natural fertilizer and herbicide and an absorber of more carbon than trees.  Yet the disparity between federal and state laws does not allow legal cannabis growers and retailers to use the banking system or get a bank loan, so everything has to be done in cash, including paying taxes to the IRS!   By the way, taxes are levied on gross profits, not net, unlike other businesses, so they are even overtaxed.  The DEA has raided legal marijuana dispensaries in states like California.  Ventura cites horror stories from Oklahoma, Florida and Kansas about the idiotic federal prohibition and its relation to various retrograde state laws.

After reading the facts in this book you will understand how cannabis is actually a miracle plant.  It is not just the ‘high’ – which has never resulted in an overdose and is not physically addictive.  If you want to know how capital functions when political clout by private capital operates, then this battle over marijuana is illuminating.  The money is now sliding towards the cannabis industry, which is probably why it is finally being legalized.  Because after all under capital it is money, not science, that dominates.

Other prior reviews related to this issue, use blog search box upper left:  “The New Jim  Crow,” “Drug War Capitalism,” “Budding Prospects,” “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” “Let Us Now Praise The Dead,” “The Truth About the Drug Companies,” “American Made,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Lost Connections,” “The Outlaws.”

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent and inexpensive used/cutout section.

Red Frog

January 14, 2020