Smoke a Fucking Joint
Why ever are we allowing the feds to control our access to powerful plant medicines? What is the ninth amendment for, if not to secure bodily autonomy for all?
The ninth amendment states that the rights written into the Constitution shall not deny or disparage other rights retained by the people. But there is also very little legal precedent for what the ninth amendment actually, functionally, secures for the people.
Since our bodies are the first and, arguably, only personal property wholly within an individual’s control, the ninth amendment should solidify personal property rights and bodily autonomy. As such, an individual* should be free to choose what goes on, in, and around their bodies, how or whether they use their bodies, and where their bodies go in space-time.
But if the government can control which plant medicines we can grow, harvest, share, sell, or consume, is the ninth amendment working?
Do we really have individual rights to practice healthy lifestyles as we choose? Do we really have bodily autonomy?
No.
The evening of April 30, 2024 I received an email from Marijuana Moment - a cannabis-focused news rag I’ve been consuming for some time - with an alert: The DEA has agreed to reschedule cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III.
Okay . . .
Moving cannabis from Schedule I to III may seem like a win for the people, but it’s not. Sure, the feds are now acknowledging that cannabis has some serious medicinal potential - something consumers have known for decades.
This is a good thing.
In a vacuum.
Outside the political vacuum, though, there are some serious problems with this move.
Schedule III controlled substances are still controlled.
Access to Schedule III substances is restricted to certain use-case scenarios, which means you need a prescription. And to get a prescription, you need a gatekeeper.
To access Schedule III substances, you have to spend your hard-earned dollars in a clinic appealing to a health care provider.
For a fucking plant.
A plant that naturally grows outside, no less. A plant that you could reasonably grow alongside your tomatoes and cucumbers.
And if the health care provider has any sort of bias against cannabis as an effective treatment, or against the patient asking for such treatment, well . . .
Have you heard of implicit bias in health care?
Because doctors aren’t infallible. They aren’t some bastion of temperance, and they can be bought.
Cannabis is not addictive.
The powers that be like to claim cannabis has serious abuse potential, which may lead to physical or psychological dependence. Abuse potential, however, is a fucking rubbish argument, and it has been a rubbish argument since the “Devil’s Lettuce” propaganda-driven panic that got cannabis prohibited in the first place.
Because largely, pot is not addictive.
A study from the 90s confirmed that pot may be addictive for about 9% of users (mostly young folks without fully formed pre-frontal cortexes, by the way). And the 9% is likely heavily inflated because the study did not account for behavior changes brought on by criminalization of the plant due to prohibition. You know, that all-important taboo that drives kids to rebel against their parents and authority figures of many kinds?
And here are two other important numbers to mull over:
Alcohol dependence potential sits at roughly 14% of users.
Tobacco dependence potential sits at about 24%.
Neither alcohol nor tobacco is considered a controlled substance, despite being far more addictive than cannabis with far fewer medical benefits. A quick perusal of content published in Marijuana Moment backs up the real medicinal potential of cannabis instead, and these articles are just about the benefits of cannabis related to other substances:
Of course, these aren’t the only medical benefits of cannabis, but since a list of benefits could be an article in and of itself, I’ll let it lie.
Changing to Schedule III doesn’t legalize cannabis.
Even politicians, some of my least favorite people on the entire planet, have stated that changing the schedule for cannabis is mostly lip service, and state markets would still be in violation of federal law. Not to mention the banking nightmare many cannabis business are facing, requiring them to keep oodles of stealable cash on hand to pay their employees. Employees who fear being robbed every time they walk out of work with their paychecks.
Again, cannabis is a fucking plant.
A plant that grows outside in the sun.
A plant that can grow wild and attracts pollinators and feeds wildlife and has been used medicinally for thousands of years — from 5,000 years ago in Romania to evidence of medicinal use in 400 AD.
Suspiciously, the feds aren’t trying to control access to mullein leaf, another “weed” that grows in our yards and one I smoke for chest congestion. Their audacity to attempt to control access to cannabis makes zero functional sense. Except when considering the school-labor-prison pipeline, but again, that’s another article.
Decriminalization is the only path forward.
Rescheduling cannabis is the wrong thing to do.
Legalizing cannabis would also be the wrong thing to do.
Instead, the feds should be pressured — as if from a firehose — to decriminalize cannabis altogether such that there are no federal regulations whatsoever for the plant.
None.
Nada.
Zilch.
The ninth amendment should be invoked, in my humble opinion, because cannabis is not a pharmaceutical. It’s a natural, unadulterated plant.
And it is our natural right as human beings on planet Earth to stand in our autonomy and use all the resources available to us to be and stay well.
Do you have a strong opinion about cannabis prohibition, rescheduling, legalization, or decriminalization? Drop your thoughts below, and let’s talk.
<3 Fal
P.S. Can you identify the mood I was in while writing this article? Hint: it wasn’t joy.
FOOTNOTES
*"Individual" here means an adult who can practice informed consent. There are obviously limits for children, though I believe those limits should be enforced by parents, families, and other caregivers, not government agents.
**THC can’t cause anxiety because anxiety is a learned set of behaviors. There is research on this to back up my claims here, here, and here, to start you off. I posit that what THC may do is highlight the anxiety a consumer refuses to address. That’s a “you” problem requiring lifestyle change and behavior modification, not a national issue requiring intense regulation.
Excellent read.
Bravo!