Rescheduling marijuana enables defamation defenses

Under Schedule III marijuana products and state‑licensed medical marijuana become federally recognized goods possessing the same legal protections under the commercial product libel laws as other lawful products making up regulated U.S. commerce.

Trade libel is an actionable tort in the American courts as long as a defamatory statement is made about a product that is false, published, malicious, and causes financial harm. The tort laws specifically cover false claims about product quality, safety, performance, and regulatory compliance. Nothing in the doctrine excludes controlled substances once the federal barriers to marijuana’s legality are removed. In lawful commerce tort laws apply.

Examples of false statements about medicinal cannabis might be that it causes liver failure, or is contaminated with fentanyl or LSD, or the THC content listing on the packaging is deliberately falsified.

Before Schedule III, a tort defendant could argue “you can’t defame contraband.” After Schedule III, the prohibitionists’ favorite legal argument evaporates.

An obstacle remains for recreational cannabis, however. Only FDA‑approved cannabis drugs and state‑licensed medical marijuana will receive Schedule III status. Recreational cannabis businesses remain illegal under federal laws and not protected from false statements of fact or opinion.

A problem for prohibitionists who condemn marijuana for recreational purposes is that medicinal and recreational cannabis varieties are very often absolutely identical. By slandering recreational marijuana prohibitionists denigrate medical cannabis by default. Nuances of the libel laws could see prohibitionists losing in court even though the prohibitionists and/or their propagandists didn’t explicitly malign recognized medicinal compounds.

Prohibition’s use of libel, manipulation and deceit is devised to make citizens of all types subservient to the rule of demagogues who reject logic and reason as a means of gaining political power. Demagogues prefer to exploit triggered emotions instead of reason. Hot button issues such as “protect the little children” often spotlight marijuana. Relative comparisons of marijuana accidents with automobile accidents are avoided for a good reason. About 1,000 to 1,050 children die each year in motor‑vehicle crashes in the United States. No children have been killed by marijuana. Pediatric edible exposures have risen – 7,043 cases from 2017 to 2021 – but these resulted in hospitalizations, not fatalities.

Demagogues and fascists are known to make false promises, blame others for failures, and break laws to maintain political and social control. Demagoguery that defames marijuana under Schedule III poses a serious risk of being exposed as such in an open court of law. Evidence of defamation can reveal other types of unlawful or questionable activities.

Rather than rejecting prohibitionist libel, commercial marijuana enterprises might consider welcoming it. A prohibitionist loss in a civil court at the level of a simple tort would be devastating to the very concept of prohibition. It would consign prohibitionists to the status of wretched defendants in a trial that could cost them their careers. Any skilled attorney is capable of demolishing whoever is naïve enough to take the witness stand and defend prohibition. A product defamation trial might be a fitting conclusion to a longstanding and senseless form of injustice.

In the final scenes the losers in the rescheduling of marijuana will be those who condemned marijuana professionally. Everyone else stands to gain. Prohibitionists will continue to fail by choosing to risk their physical health and their sanity by just saying no to self-medication with cannabis. They will squander what’s left of their lives by continuing to promote drug wars which were lost in the court of public opinion long ago. No matter how much prohibitionists harm themselves or others, they will never stop Americans from enjoying marijuana.