Drug WarRant

The holy grail of industries catering to marijuana drug enforcement is to create a workable marijuana breathalyzer so THC detection is as simple as detecting alcohol use. There are problems with the venture.

Alcohol and cannabis are two distinctly different substances. Alcohol can be very quickly detected as an evaporated gas using a cheap device, while THC is detectable only within tiny liquid droplets expelled from the throat and lungs. Detecting the small sample sizes requires highly accurate technologies that collect breath samples in containers which then need to be shipped to the company’s lab for analysis.

The next obstacle is to correlate THC levels with levels of impairment. Unfortunately for the instrumentation manufacturer and the company’s investors, levels of use never actually correlate with impairment. In theory a novice marijuana smoker might demonstrate a limited impairment while they get acquainted with all the friendly cannabinoids. A more experienced consumer can adjust their mood and behavior to meet certain requirements such that they appear to show no impairment at all. There are no set safety standards or limits for marijuana impairment as there are for excess alcohol consumption. Unlike many people who consume too much alcohol, cannabis consumers can still walk a straight line.

Deployability of a marijuana breathalyzer remains a problem for its marketability. In the case of a breathalyzer developed and funded for $481,103 by a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the University of Colorado Boulder developed a device in which two breath tests are required about an hour apart to distinguish recent cannabis use from past use. In a real life situation the technology is not practical. A police stop using the device would require detaining a suspect for an hour or more just to obtain two points on a graph that don’t actually signify impairment but rather offer only a timeline for THC consumption. The window of opportunity is limited. THC’s effects can peak within minutes of smoking or vapor inhalation or up to two hours after consuming an edible.

Under development is an ambitious approach to detecting marijuana use that acknowledges THC levels don’t correlate with physical or motor impairment. Researchers hope to create a device to read a person’s mind, one that employs virtual reality-based eye movement sensors that recognize certain physical processes which reveal the presence of THC.

Lurking in the background is a new technology that threatens to derail the entire alcohol and marijuana breathalyzer industry. Tesla robotaxis are being rolled out in Austin, Texas, and self-driving or driver-assist technologies should be available in a few years on many other types of EVs. Cops who find themselves fanatically compelled to bust every last remaining pot smoking hippie on earth will be forced to stop people while the vehicle is doing the speed limit and only if the drug suspects happen to be smoking onboard or have already used weed. Inside their AI controlled vehicle will be activated charcoal air filters that remove odors arising from marijuana smoke and wildfires. New and unique legal situations will come into play. Given these circumstances will the officer arrest the passengers or will the officer arrest the AI automobile that has evidence of prior marijuana use trapped in its air filters? How expensive and time consuming are lab analyses of charcoal filters? What about citizens authorized to use marijuana medicinally? And what about the $400 air filter in their Tesla, will it be free to go?

The drug war is like all other wars. When wars end people and corporations lose opportunities to profit. It therefore makes sense to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the drug enforcement industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist for as long as marijuana is illegal.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for ‘after this, therefore because of this’. The phrase refers to a common logical fallacy. An example would be ‘the rooster crows before sunrise, therefore the rooster causes the sun to rise’. Or autism follows after a measles vaccination, or a bioweapon attack on a Texas Mennonite community, therefore measles vaccines or some vastly evil and imaginary conspiracy results in autism.

A popular prohibitionist fallacy says that smoking a joint can cause someone to commit a violent act even if the violence occurs a year or more later. Despite the long history and familiarity of the post hoc fallacy, or perhaps because of it, the fallacy can also show up when news media outlets comment on cannabis.

Recently a science publication fell into post hoc fallacy territory when it revealed data linking persistent marijuana use to a higher percentage of dementia problems in medical patients five years after they had gone to an emergency ward for experiencing a bad episode using marijuana. The magic word here is “linking” because it’s possible to link anything to anything when using fallacies. The study emphasized the scope of its survey, six-million patients, although it only netted roughly16,000 examples. It is possible these patients had onset dementia without realizing it and that their adverse marijuana experience somehow highlighted it. This likelihood was not mentioned. Instead, researchers concluded with a call for more research funding for additional studies.

A CNN staff writer wasn’t satisfied with waiting for additional studies. Buried partway into an article entitled Marijuana hospital visits linked to dementia diagnosis within 5 years, study finds, the writer admits that marijuana’s link to dementia lacks a clear-cut connection, while the glaring headline and other content insinuates otherwise and keeps the question open. As presented the headline provides prohibitionists with anti-marijuana propaganda to use against legalization, at least temporarily. Big lies and deceptions have a time limit.

When dealing with topics like dementia it’s important to know who has it and who doesn’t. Just because some journalists appear to be demented nearly every time they report on marijuana doesn’t mean they are actually suffering from dementia. Other possibilities exist. A person might be suffering from mental deficiencies in Aristotle’s Rhetoric or even Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. When lacking any training in formal logic or science the media will naturally gravitate toward explanations espoused by charlatans and crystal ball gazers.

Remedies exist. Corporate news outlets and the public would benefit greatly from hiring more science-oriented reporters and personnel. The pay scale for science journalists may require a new standard. Journalism typically doesn’t attract science professionals when they can earn three times as much or more doing tech instead. To further assure truth and objectivity in cannabis reporting the news networks should be wary of allowing anyone to report on marijuana who hasn’t first tried it. Prohibitionists will need to be prohibited.

The words toxic and intoxicated were derived from the Greek word toxon, which refers to a bow and arrow that featured arrowheads dipped in poison. The poison was sufficient in most cases to kill a soldier on the battlefield, even if the arrow missed a vital organ. An infected wound by itself could be lethal. Only 45 percent of people given medical treatments survived severe infections brought on by wounds or surgical procedures like amputations. It was a time when the average lifespan was 26 years. Just four-percent of the population made it past age fifty. A thorough knowledge and ability to identify medicines and poisons was critical to survival.

Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, and other medical practitioners were skilled enough to know that a substance that could kill a person could also treat them for pain or cure an illness. It was just a matter of dosage and balancing different medical objectives. Examples included opium and hemlock. Hemlock, the poison used in 399 BCE by anti-intellectuals to execute the anti-authoritarian philosopher Socrates, the alleged corruptor of little Greek children’s respect for authority, fell into this category. Hemlock’s active neurotoxin, coniine, is a sedative and anti-spasmodic. It can also treat arthritis and joint pain. However, its effective dose is so close to its lethal dose that it isn’t practical for medical use.

Absent from the pharmacopeia of dangerously toxic substances was cannabis. Dipping an arrowhead into hash oil didn’t do anything in terms of harming the enemy. Hashish didn’t kill anyone who consumed it, including Socrates or the physicians Galen or Hippocrates. It’s even possible it could benefit a wounded recipient. Modern research indicates THC and CBD possess anti-microbial activities that can affect bacterial membranes and interfere with virulent infections. Lacking any harmful side effects, the early Greeks and Romans never considered hashish or marijuana to be a toxin or toxic, something that interferes with the reproduction of human cells.

Marijuana’s nontoxicity challenges the belief that the herb fits the category defined as intoxicating in the same sense as alcohol, opioids, or Cupid’s arrow. Religious groups such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Mormonism, Christian Science, and the Baháʼí Faith base their rejections of cannabis on presumptions that it intoxicates. If cannabis fails in the literal sense of the word to be lethal in large enough dosages, then how does it intoxicate?

Users know marijuana’s effects are different from anything else listed in Schedule I or Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). It clearly deserves its own unique classification, as well as unique subcategories for its useful components. The CSA itself could use a complete makeover. Its five categories are too few to cover the full spectrum of different drug effects it encompasses. Potentially fatal chemical compounds end up being misclassified together along with non-toxic substances.

The confusion comes as no surprise. The CSA was signed into law on October 27, 1970, by President Richard M. Nixon, making it the fruit of a poisonous tree that resulted in a new type of drug war and added to the systemic social inequalities among different races and cultures.

Other substances miscataloged in Schedule I due to politics or hysteria include psychedelics like psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine, DMT, mescaline, and LSD. These compounds are often rejected because they are seen as challenging the boundaries of mind-body duality. Certain religious groups still maintain that matter possesses two distinct forms, living and non-living, and that the distinction is absolute. In theology it’s called vitalism. Vitalism asserts that an inert or non-living substance cannot affect the mind, the soul, or the élan vital without an intermediary spiritual force being present. The spiritual force is always presumed to be satanic. Thus, these substances are still viewed by some as demonic, as poisonous to the soul.

The vitalist theological controversy was resolved in 1828 when a talented and famous young German chemist named Dr. Friedrich Wöhler discovered how to make urea, the organic chemical found in urine, a “living chemical,” using only non-living chemicals. His discovery meant living and non-living chemicals were essentially the same thing, that both are chemicals. Wöhler is considered to be the father of organic or carbon-based chemistry. Vitalism has since been discarded as a pseudoscience.

If anything can be said to be toxic, it’s the drug war. Since 1970, the drug war’s failure to stem addictions and drug-related accidents has resulted in estimates of 1.1 million deaths from overdoses. Drug cartels and drug enforcement activities have added to the mortality. In fifty years, the U.S. has spent at least $1 trillion dollars on enforcement, much of it related to incarceration costs. The global cocaine supply has since increased by 400-percent. Marijuana is well on its way to becoming a staple commodity in free countries throughout the world. The intoxicating lure of drug enforcement funding still attracts thousands of grifters addicted to the drug war in ways that seek to capitalize on it or weaponize it in some political or tribal fashion. In terms of actual toxicity, America’s drug war needs to be put on the CSA’s Schedule I because it fits the three primary Schedule I criteria: It possesses a greater potential for abuse than drugs, it has no accepted medical use, and it is unsafe.

Marijuana use is considered taboo by the Catholic Church. With this the Catholic pope holds a decisive power to influence marijuana laws and legalization efforts throughout the world. Pope Francis and his predecessors have employed this power since December 5, 1484, when Pope Innocent VIII (1432 – 1492) declared marijuana to be an unholy sacrament in a papal bull called the Summis desiderantes, meaning “desiring with supreme ardor.”

Unlike wine, cannabis in 1484 was regarded as a sacrament of a satanic mass because it was tied to witches who among other things were condemned by the Church for employing medicinal and hallucinogenic herbs—thought affecting chemicals—for healing purposes. Alleged witches were also being scapegoated for an extreme European and North American weather event known as The Little Ice Age that caused crop failures, famine, and increased crime. The harsh climate change made the public crazier than usual. By being linked to witches, cannabis connoisseurs were also seen as guilty of causing bad weather.

Innocent VIII was pope during the reign of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain. The two monarchs were preoccupied with the Reconquista that reclaimed the Iberian peninsula from Muslim rule. Part of the strategy for domestic warfare against alleged internal enemies of the Spanish Empire was the formation of the Spanish Inquisition on November 1, 1478, in which Jews and Muslims were targeted if they didn’t immediately leave Spain or convert to Catholicism. Of those who didn’t, or who merely pretended to convert, over 275,000 Muslims were expelled. Many died as a result of their deportations. Of the luminaries to emerge was the infamous Castilian Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada (1420 – 1498) who tortured and burned women herbalists along with roughly two-thousand Jews and other heretics, including those caught using cannabis.

Thanks to the inebriated influences of Catholicism, England had largely suppressed medicinal cannabis use by the 1890s. Great Britain and the United States inherited the radical views held by many modern prohibitionists who conflate marijuana’s effects with opium or alcohol. Part of the problem originated in British-controlled India from an 1891 report on the effects of ganja on mentally ill patients. The review made ganja look worse than opium. False rumors of marijuana’s supposed ill-effects were linked to British imperialists by politicians who opposed the British opium trade in China. The opium wars produced the Boxer Rebellion; all of which culminated with the production of the 1972 movie classic Kung Fu in which Kwai Chang Caine, a Chinese Boxer, adds a mysterious herbal powder to his glass of water before confronting a drunk in a bar room scene.

Even stranger than drug history is a lasting obsession over prohibiting a simple beneficial plant. Religions and governments still wield cannabinoid illegality as a political or social weapon to be used as needed against certain types of people or different cultures. The problem in the U.S. for organized religion is marijuana’s prohibition cannot be based solely on a particular group’s religious beliefs. Arrests, detentions, and fines for marijuana consumption are legally justifiable only if marijuana can be scientifically proven to pose an actual physical threat to all people everywhere, not just some ideological threat to a culture still living in the Dark Ages.

Modern science isn’t buying it. As new research data emerges from all over the globe, cannabis and its components are receiving an ever expanding and exceptionally clean bill of health, particularly when compared to alcohol, opioids and other pharmaceutical drugs. Weed won’t kill anyone. The only excuse remaining for marijuana prohibition appears to be a religious one. A religious justification alone such as a taboo would make marijuana’s continued federal prohibition in the United States an unconstitutional establishment of religion under the First Amendment.

As Pope Francis continues his recovery from bilateral pneumonia, he might want to consider marijuana’s apparent ability to suppress or alter lung infections like COVID-19 as possibly indicative of marijuana’s overall medical potential. This is the second close call the pontiff has had with pneumonia. His first happened at age 23 when he ended up having part of a lung removed. Francis is pro-science in ways unlike any of his predecessors because he actually studied it. He could do himself and science discovery a monumental favor by issuing a papal bull that revokes Catholicism’s medieval rejection of medical and recreational cannabis. A drug peace is possible. The papal legalization of marijuana would also be a fitting finale to the Spanish Inquisition.

Reactionaries who oppose recreational marijuana rest their objections solely upon its ability to produce pleasure in its users. Cannabis advocates argue that pleasure is as much a legitimate medical treatment as a trip to a luxury health spa. The political and moral divide involving recreational drugs is bound up in antiquated philosophical debates regarding stoicism and Epicureanism. Beginning with early Christian leaders like the stoic Ambrose of Milan (339–397 CE) hedonism via chemicals was believed to be a source of decadence in people and particularly those in leadership positions. It was presumed that decadence and debauchery could trigger the destruction of empires. It was never that simple.

The culprit at the center of the dispute is a neurochemical called dopamine. Dopamine increases its concentration in the brain as THC interacts with cannabinoid receptors. It’s called the feel-good neurotransmitter because of the vital role it plays in brain chemistry with regard to motivation, pursuits of pleasure and mental and physical rewards.

Believing that THC is morally harmful because it increases dopamine makes little sense once it’s understood that dopamine blood levels will also increase with physical exercise, a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, meditation, listening to music, spending time outdoors in the sunlight, attending health spas, and pursuing positive social activities that include hobbies, achieving goals, and socializing. Foods rich in tyrosine such as almonds, avocados, bananas, eggs and beans also boost dopamine levels. None of these activities or foods are prohibited or criminalized in the manner of marijuana.

U.S. federal drug policies that currently criminalize marijuana consumers lag behind many cultures that accept its medical use, like modern Islam. American religions, sects, and cults rejecting marijuana use tend to be at the forefront of drug enforcement. Despite endless arguments condemning hedonism no evidence exists that cannabinoids ever destroyed empires and societies or killed people.

Confucianism is another religion that scapegoats drugs for the self-indulgences of leaders and other social disruptions. As Confucianism became a state ideology in the 6th century CE cannabis use in Japan, China, and Korea was suppressed. East Asian prohibition of cannabis was due largely to its use being associated with nomadic Central Asian invaders.

Early Egyptian, Greek, Carthaginian and Roman civilizations were kind enough to allow their citizens the use of cannabis during all the empires’ phases from rise to fall. Cannabis never hindered a great civilization’s empowerment or world dominance. Lazy stoner stereotypes didn’t exist. Instead, stoned Egyptian stonemasons and engineers built the pyramids and fit the large stones together with a precision unequaled for its time. Greek and Roman architecture, culture, science and intellectualism flourished along with the use of cannabis. Hannibal and his fellow Carthaginians consumed marijuana in the form of a tea. As for the fall of empires or city states, historians typically attribute the causes of decline to economic instabilities, corruption, military defeats, mega-droughts, famine, meteors, salinization of farm soil, isolationism and social upheavals—never marijuana.

Marijuana’s usefulness and its effect upon empires can be better understood by treating it as a dopamine booster or accelerator. Combining marijuana with music seems to make the music sound better. It gives its users an improved appetite—the munchies. Combining THC with meals can improve the taste of food, which is why it can be used medically to stimulate the failing appetites of cancer patients.

Public polling in the U.S. indicates marijuana’s role as the scapegoat for society’s ills is coming to an end. When its federal criminalization ceases it will mark a horribly traumatic defeat for prohibitionists. Rejecting the use of mind altering drugs the drug warriors will have no reliable way to treat their mental pain and anguish when they clock out from their jobs for the very last time.

On the other hand, stoic reactionaries who believe suffering is good for the soul, that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and that it should remain that way, may require public assistance and specialized attention that guarantees their continuing misery. Torture salons and pain spas might work. Packaged vacation trips to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could become a big thing. Patrons of misery could relish the rack or the cat o’ nine tails. Christianity could revive and promote its practice of self-flagellation.

Whatever new or old services emerge, systemic wretchedness will always be available in stoic societies in the form of social stagnation, a lack of empathy and social bonding, suppressed emotions, inflexibility leading to a lack of adaptability, and detachments from external events or outcomes—a prohibitionist’s paradise.

Twenty-four U.S. states have legalized sales of recreational marijuana, yet parts of the Rocky Mountain West remain steadfast in their opposition to cannabinoids. One reason is state and local political domination by the LDS or Mormon Church. Starting in 1915 Mormons made marijuana taboo.

A hundred years later problems with Mormonism’s public image resulted in an attempt to rebrand itself exclusively as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Try as it may, Mormonism cannot outrun the history of its attitudes toward marijuana. It clearly outlined its position on cannabis and drugs in its out-of-print 1992 edition of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism:

In addition to avoiding tea, coffee, and alcoholic beverages, members should not misuse legal drugs, and should not use any substance that contains illegal drugs or other harmful or habit forming ingredients.

The Encyclopedia goes on to contrast Mormonism with the drug awareness of other religions in a holier-than-thou ranking system that uses marijuana legalization as its moral benchmark:

Legalization of Marijuana: Only one in ten Latter-day Saints supports the legalization of marijuana, compared with about two in ten among Protestants and Catholics. Forty-one percent of Jews and half of those with no religion favor legalization of marijuana. [NORC pooled surveys for 1972-1988]

If someone wanted to construct criminal laws in which a higher probability of arrest falls upon Jews, non-believers and people other than themselves, few better options exist than making marijuana illegal and creating draconian penalties for its use. Faith alone cannot justify the constitutionality of anti-marijuana laws. That would be an illegal establishment of religion by the government. Something more organic or scary is needed.

Prior to and after World War II, Jews and non-believers were often lumped together with Communists. Mormonism was strongly tied to the anti-Communist John Birch Society by one of its biggest fans, church president Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994). Benson and the Birchers believed legalizing marijuana and water fluoridation were Communist plots. Fluoridation has since been cleared of all charges of Communism by medical science.

Marijuana criminalization remains useful to religious isolationists living in remote towns and villages because its illegality discourages certain undesirables from traveling, working or retiring there. Anti-marijuana laws give Mormons and other prohibitionists an edge when it comes to government employment. Persons applying for a drug enforcement job with the DEA, or the FBI which also covers drug cases, will be summarily rejected if they have tried cannabinoids only once in their lives. Service in the military is unlikely with marijuana or other drug arrests. Security clearances will be denied. All it takes are polygraphs or a positive urine test to terminate a government career.

Persecuting marijuana consumers creates easier pathways for anti-marijuana religious groups to take over government agencies. In one example Mormon FBI managers attempted to usurp the bureaucracy—if not the whole of the FBI—only to be busted in 1989 for discriminating in the hiring, training and treatment of Hispanic job applicants. The offending agents also targeted FBI employees possessing seniority and perfect job performances based solely on skin color, culture, and ethnicity. The Book of Mormon labels darker skinned people as “Lamanites” who it says are “loathsome” since they are believed to be the descendants of Laman and are thereby allegedly cursed for their evil nature and corruption. It goes on to proclaim that Lamanites can repent and embrace the Book of Mormon and automatically become “white and delightsome”. A landmark lawsuit brought by Hispanic FBI agents, Mat Perez vs. FBI, resulted in the presiding judge ordering the FBI to clean up its act.

The LDS Church has experienced a declining membership since 2013 in contrast to cannabinoids which show a tolerance or popularity increase that now encompasses 70-percent of adult Americans. The Church’s declining membership has several sources: lower birth rates, modernism, science, secularism, eroding beliefs, its cover-up of its neglect of charitable functions, and a scandal in which shell companies were used to disguise its ownership of for-profit businesses and other organizations. Typically left out of the calculation is the Church’s disdain and persecution of consumers of a plant the ancient Egyptians referred to as the “branches of bliss”. It’s possible that many Mormons who once regarded Mormonism as their preferred drug switched to a better one. Certainly few of those who enjoy branches of bliss today would give it up merely to join the Latter-day Saints.

Few major hospitals receiving Dave Weldon’s job resume would hire him. Few patients would trust him as their doctor. Yet, if confirmed, former congressional representative and physician Dr. David Weldon (R-Fla.) will head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), becoming the overlord of a government agency whose function is to protect people from pandemics and other illnesses.

Weldon has some hang-ups regarding marijuana, along with several other things. He sees cannabinoids as medically ineffective. He said marijuana’s medical use is a form of “lunacy”. He is anti-abortion. He is an anti-vaxxer. Contrary to established medical science he believes thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines leads to autism. Ironically, marijuana has recently shown promise in reducing symptoms of autism. Weldon rejects therapies that successfully treat certain cancers and disorders of the blood and the immune system because the treatments employ human stem cells. Stem cells have the potential to assist in the treatment of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and spinal cord injuries, unless research funding is cut off.

After he left Congress, Dr. Weldon returned to his medical practice and continued to be involved in community and faith-based initiatives. His elevation to a possible CDC directorship hinges entirely on his close association with a politically styled religious group calling itself the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The NAR was founded in the 1990s. Some of its members are Pentecostalists who believe in faith healing. Firebrand prosperity-gospel preacher Paula White is a charismatic evangelical pastor associated with the NAR. As President-elect Donald Trump’s current spiritual advisor or guru, White has a Rasputin-like influence over Trump. She boasts she will bring in angelic reinforcements to outlaw democracy and create an American theocracy. Anti-marijuana prohibitionist and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney General, is tied to the NAR. So is Ann Coulter. Other NAR notables include Lauren Boebert, a supporter of marijuana for medical use only, and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who believes marijuana smokers are “zombies”.

True believers in marijuana’s satanic powers are right about one thing. Despite all angelic reinforcements to the contrary, marijuana, the Devil’s Lettuce, is capable of changing people’s minds about myths and fallacies. The plant achieves this miracle by generating faith-based laws that lead to prohibitionists vilifying themselves and ultimately their ideologies by their support of marijuana drug enforcement, or employment within its ranks. Not all conservatives fall into the trap.

In the early 1970s conservative commentator William F. Buckley positioned himself and his sailboat on the high seas outside the three-mile limit of U.S. legal authority and tried marijuana for the first time. Buckley’s one and only cannabis experience was much ado about nothing: “…it didn’t do a thing for me.” Nor did it do him any harm, like getting him arrested. A conservative is commonly characterized as being a stick-in-the-mud, however Buckley quickly changed his mind about marijuana and went on to publicly advocate for its decriminalization.

Florida and South Dakota Catholic bishops applauded the recent defeats of marijuana legalization in their states, something they easily aided and abetted given Florida’s population is 21-percent Catholic and South Dakota’s is 18.4-percent. Protestant factions in the two states also fear and hate cannabis.

The bishops went to the trouble of creating a stack of misinformation about cannabis that likely added to the loss of votes for the ballot proposals:

…marijuana use overstimulates the nervous system while also decreasing high-functioning rational thought.

Often these effects are accompanied by others, including distorted sensory perception or hallucinations, irrational anxiety or panic, diminished motor control and slowed reactions, and reduced learning and memory,” South Dakota’s bishops said. “Studies have shown that impaired cognitive function continues into the workweek even after a person no longer feels intoxicated, and that regular users are at approximately twice the risk of developing psychosis as non-users.” […]

One reason people use and enjoy marijuana is it stimulates high functioning rational and creative thought. It’s not an extraordinary process. Mere daydreaming can create entertaining or useful ideas. And no marijuana smoker has claimed they are latently affected by marijuana well into their work week. Upon cessation the effects of smoking marijuana typically wear off after an hour or so.

Falsehoods are dangerous. People who believe absurdities can go on to commit atrocities. Catholicism and other sects and cults that equate persecution with protection can emerge to survive in ways that require continuous reinforcement of public ignorance. Critical thinking is rejected. Cults engage in mind control techniques designed to prevent their members from using their imaginations, thereby leading to lifelong impaired cognitive functions for their victims. The inquisitions punished improper thinking with burning at the stake. In his 1633 trial Galileo barely escaped with his life. Religious extremists all seem to fear that analyzing or musing about their beliefs and histories will cause their assemblage to collapse.

That is why many religions present themselves as a package deal for people who don’t have time to read the ancient texts in their original languages to produce their own religious viewpoints and experiences. Cult followers like those in Jonestown are expected to swallow their grape Flavor Aid without complaint. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a Protestant who wants to introduce prayer back into public schools was overjoyed when her state’s marijuana initiative failed to pass. She went on to proclaim she never met anyone who got smarter by smoking dope….. Drinking a glass of water doesn’t make anyone smarter either. People do it anyway.

The Catholic Church is famous for their book burning sprees starting in the 9th century. In 1560 it published the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of forbidden books that included medical texts. The Index wasn’t abolished until 1966. In the end all types of literature were purged, along with ancient written records that covered mind expanding cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms. Medical science and progress was replaced with fatalism and a 900-year long Dark Ages that would renew itself in some perverse way if medicine and science is overtaken again by bishops who are anti-marijuana and anti-physics.

Complaints about the concentrations and strengths of active ingredients in commercial grades of marijuana are being raised by cannabis critics such as Malcolm Ferguson who appears to confuse marijuana’s THC with potentially lethal mind-affecting drugs. Much as Ferguson would have people smoke rope instead of dope, too many politicians and public officials need to educate themselves about toxicity and the history of medicine before speaking publicly about marijuana.

Toxicities of dangerous drugs are measurable and comparable. In toxicology, the LD-50 is defined as the lethal dosage of a chemical needed to kill 50-percent of a test population of some unfortunate lab rats. For humans, multiplying the LD-50 for rats by a person’s body weight in kilograms gives the approximate lethal dosage for that person. For morphine, the LD-50 is 200-300 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) of human body weight. For cocaine the LD-50 is 96 mg/kg, for methamphetamine it is 55-57 mg/kg, for heroin it is 21.8 mg/kg, and for fentanyl it is 2.61 mg/kg. The LD-50 for marijuana is considered out of reach for a fatal dose, with an estimate of 20,000 to 40,000 marijuana joints needing to be smoked in quick succession. There has never been a documented case of a fatal overdose from marijuana in the 12,000 year known history of its use. In contrast, over-the-counter aspirin resulted in 20,000 overdoses in 2004 that killed 43 American citizens.

And recently a meta-analysis of various published papers raised a prohibitionist red flag by stating that marijuana use can lead to a greater number of head and neck cancers. Marijuana ingredients tested on lab rats are not cancerous. However, when it’s burnt its combustion products can create health problems. Cancerous byproducts include tars, carbon monoxide and other chemical compounds found in tobacco smoke. Bypassing the problem involves doing what chronic smokers have always done by changing the means of ingestion using bongs, hookahs, vapes and cartridges, or by using small amounts of concentrated and more potent forms of marijuana such as oils, hashish, or edibles that reduce or avoid burning the vegetable matter and hemp fibers that produce toxins.

Ancient Mediterranean people and their physicians had a better drug classification system. They divided medications into two categories. One category included deadly drugs like opium and hemlock (Latin: venenum), with the second category consisting of herbs and medications which were never fatal (Latin: remedium). Under the Greek and Roman classifications opium was sharply distinguished from cannabis. Safe use of opium could require careful supervision by a physician familiar with dosages and tolerances. Hashish didn’t.

The early Greek and Roman physicians and scholars who wrote about cannabis included Galen, Oribasius, Aëtius of Amida, Dioscorides, a Greek travel writer named Pausanius, the historians Strabo and Herodotus, and the Roman military commander and naturalist writer Pliny the Elder. Byzantine Greek texts known as the Hippiatrica contain the medical manual of the veterinary surgeon Apsyrtus providing cannabis information for treating horses. Nearly everyone grew marijuana for personal use and no record has been found claiming it created health or social problems. Growers made distinctions between two types of marijuana. Wild cannabis was called indica while the much preferred backyard cultivated and bred variety was called sativa. All the writings present clear evidence to justify a laid back and realistic approach to classifying marijuana.

A new and improved drug scheduling system would reflect the wisdom of the Ancients. It would scrap the current classifications in favor of new ones bearing distinctions based on a drug’s actual toxicity. Had this been done in 1970 when the drug schedules were created and implemented under President Richard Nixon and John Erlichmann, cannabis sativa and indica and magic mushrooms would never have fallen into the same category as heroin. The confusion over switching marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III could have been averted.