I believe it is a matter for the majority of people to see that the whole cannabis prohibition, the whole DEA “dogma” that “marijuana is a dangerous drug without accepted medical use” be exposed in its anti-scientific, deceptive nature. What makes dogma “dogma” is the categorical refusal of its defenders to recognize any logic, however obvious, that contradicts (or even does not explicitly confirm) the dogmatic “foundation”.

There are several such false premises that make it “justifiable” in the eyes of the DEA and its allies to keep the remarkable medicinal plant known as cannabis illegal”. Let’s try to refute some of these “reasons” for cannabis “illegality” as has been articulated by the DEA (which is the sole arbiter of a substance’s “legal” status”, a fact that is in itself an affront to democratic principles. To start with, cannabis is not physically addictive as it lacks the recognizable “physical withdrawal syndrome” (like opiates, or alcohol, for example); the so-called “gateway drug theory” has been proven to be nonsense by a scientific research, and was even declared “half-baked” by a recent study; drug Marinol, much touted by the DEA, is not at all the same as medicinal cannabis which, as opposed to Marinol, has over 70 active compounds interacting in therapeutic ways. Cannabis decriminalization is followed by a decrease (not an increase) in “teenage use”, as the example of Portugal clearly shows, and (with another major scare-tactic disintegrating), smoking cannabis does not increase one’s risk of lung cancer; combine all this with the violence-suppressing qualities of cannabis use, its propensity to be a “safe alternative” to alcohol/hard drugs, its remarkable medicinal properties, and then see if the DEA “dogmas” have any factual foundation and not just an empty talk that is being enforced by a version of philosophical “radical pragmatism” which basically “allows” its followers to disregard the truth in favor of, let’s say, DEA “dogma”, with such a dogma being constantly “reinforced” by a consciousness of “guilt” and “fear”.

Another big “unreality” that DEA just loves is its Utopian “vision” of a “drug-free society”. This would not be even hypothetically possible, as we, humans, have always used substances in one way or another since the dawn of history to help us “cope” and endure. The key here is moderation and proper education about “safe substance use”, and the problem in the future that I envision is not the increased use of cannabis, but the perseverance of the deadly “appeal” of alcohol on many, many people, not to mention dangerous, physically addictive prescription drugs (even if we forget about hard drugs for a moment). So, how would the DEA pursue its drug-free Utopia even if its anti-cannabis repression proved successful, is not entirely clear for me!

These non-entities, or “un-realities” can still be used as if they were “realities”. Shamefully and ignorantly, the patients of the State of Illinois were deprived of a legal access to their medicine on the grounds of the DEA intimidation having to do with “gateway drug” theory! Imagine, a social policy of this magnitude decided on the basis of an “entity” that does not even exist! This would be a good example of how powerful in its evil potential the philosophy of “radical pragmatism” can really be. Another example is the effort by a group of rogue politicos to overturn the will of the Montana voters and to repeal the medical marijuana law, duly enacted by the people of that state. But isn’t it really easy to see the “radical pragmatist” doctrines and quickly reject them? Not so fast!

This is where the consciousness of “guilt” and fear come in, when our “courageous” politicians pretend that they see “black”, where as in reality they often know that they are seeing “white”. For any of them to say that they see what they see would be “heresy”. This is how the radical pragmatist systems survived in history, occasionally for quite a long time. So, why does a “radical pragmatist” system eventually fall? For many reasons, such as economic and ethnic in the old Soviet Union, but almost always radical pragmatism falls on its face because the people are no longer willing to be “living a lie”. Currently, in this country there seem to appear the new “breed” of elected representatives who are refusing to “live a lie” when it comes to cannabis legalization, even if a position like this will “jeopardize” the support by the DEA and its prison-industrial complex clients. Even the fact that cannabis use suppresses violent behavior may not necessarily “appeal” to the prison-industrial complex, as less violence means less prisons, fewer prisoners, the whole “nine yards”.

There has been what I perceived as a slightly veiled criticism on Facebook of my persistent effort to bring philosophy into the cannabis legalization discussion. Let me answer this criticism as briefly as I can. First, the legalization supporters do not, in my view, have any choice in the matter. DEA and its allies rely on “radical pragmatism” to effect their policies, and that is a “philosophy”, a wrong, dangerous philosophy, but philosophy nonetheless. Another point is that, even though this may take some time”, no system, be it political or economic, can indefinitely survive based on a bunch of “un-realities”; sooner or later someone is going to “get up” and say, Wait just a minute! Where is the evidence for any of those scary things (about cannabis, for example) that you’ve forced us to take as “absolute truth” for decades? I really do believe that even such a “monolithic” system as Marxism finally fell in good measure because the Marxist philosophy was shown to be totally bankrupt, and that, believe it or not, may prove quite demoralizing for the regime supporters.

So then, what we (and I mean, all of us) need to do is spread this scientific knowledge (along with the refutation of “dogma”), so that even for the politicians this becomes a question of either siding with fear and ignorance (which will assure one kind or “legacy”), or with science, progress and compassion, which will bring a totally different “legacy” altogether; for if some of these crooks care about nothing else, they will care about their “legacies” and whether they stood and kept silent while the modern-day “storm troopers” dragged a cancer-afflicted granny to jail for using a natural remedy for her cancer symptoms! Let’s also not forget to ask our politicians as well why they are “crying broke” and yet, at the same time, keep financing the so-called “marijuana enforcement” while most of the country wants this rather harmless natural substance decriminalized altogether, and definitely legalized when it comes to its many remarkable medicinal uses.

Sometimes when I think about these issues, I am sincerely wondering as to why we are still discussing marijuana legalization as if the arguments against it were rather compelling. Isn’t it amazing that we are still talking about this issue, and the arguments are compelling, but for the cannabis legalization, not against it.

Indeed, let’s forget about marijuana for a moment, along with the contentious arguments about its “merits” and “demerits” and imagine the hypothetical situation of this nature: Let’s just imagine that we would have a natural, non-toxic substance, capable of helping many serious medical conditions without any appreciable side effects, that on not even one occasion caused a death or an overdose in all its 5,000 years of its use by humans, and that, in addition such a substance had an ability to suppress violent behavior, increase appetite, induce rest and enhance sexual experience without any serious “undesirable” long-term consequences of its use. If we were a normal, rational creatures, we would be ecstatic because we do have such a substance, it’s been known to humans for millennia and its name is cannabis. And yet, not only we (or at least our government) are not “ecstatic”, but the lives of thousands of people have been severely damaged or destroyed as a result of a simple possession of this almost miraculous herb. This situation is so ridiculous that it is almost hard to believe, and yet it is very much the reality.

It is a reality because of a racist rant by one Harry Anslinger, this country’s “first chief narc”, a paranoid president Richard Nixon, and some very powerful industrial interest, alcohol and tobacco lobbies being, of course, at the very forefront of the anti-cannabis battle. And then, of course, there is a prison-industrial complex with its practically insatiable appetite for human blood directed by the “Drug Enforcement Administration” and other highly repressive entities in alliance with it. And so, as I tried to explain in other articles, the powerful “dogma” was created, a dogma that claims that marijuana is a “dangerous drug with no accepted medical use”, but in order to maintain such a dogma, a strong apparatus of repression is needed, and so its proponents have resorted to a philosophy of “radical pragmatism” that supposedly “allowed” them to substitute their own “truth” for the historical and scientific one.

As discussed in other articles, the “radical pragmatist” system of cannabis prohibition is based on a series of scientific and philosophical un-realities, that more and more people can see for themselves. Cannabis is not physically addictive, the so-called “gateway drug” theory is fully discredited, smoking cannabis is not associated with the increased risk for lung cancer (wasn’t that a disappointment for the prohibitionists who counted on that as their “reliable” scare-tactic); Cannabis use also suppresses violent behavior, and to even suggest that it does not have remarkable medicinal properties is a clear break with reality! I suspect that not all people are yet aware that cannabis use suppresses violent behavior, but this information must be disseminated to become a common knowledge, as there are very few things in our society that are feared and abhorred as violence. I do believe that only the direct quote from the prestigious “Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook” will suffice, lest I am somehow accused of falsifying the facts: We can be sure that the DEA and its allies are unlikely to educate the public that

Cannabis use has been shown to suppress violent behavior. Yes, that’s right, marijuana use suppresses violence. As Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook explains, “by inducing a calm, relaxed state, marijuana is not conducive to violence and only the unsophisticated think otherwise”. Wow! Although I believe that the DEA can easily withstand the “accusations” of being overly “sophisticated”, this alone, in my opinion, should put an end to the whole argument about Cannabis legalization.

But wait, there are more “good reasons” if our opponents really want to see them. Even in the presence of such overwhelming reasons to immediately legalize cannabis, some people, even our so-called “politicians” are not as receptive to the truth as they should be. “Well”, they “reason”, it would be more politically correct and “safe” for me if I “don’t rock the boat” and vote against cannabis legalization. “I mean, after all, why would I complicate my relationship with the DEA and its allies”? Unfortunately for the prohibitionists, the truth is far from being that simple as to simply violate the rights of a few people and “get on” with their lives. It just so happens that cannabis is retained in the “system” for much longer periods of time than, say, alcohol, opiates, cocaine and methamphetamines, so that the whole “random drug screens” are completely counterproductive, as they are unfairly targeting cannabis users, tend to “weed them out”, while ending up “stuck” with alcohol, hard drug or prescription drug abusers whose drug use (especially on the weekends) are hard to use because most of those dangerous substances, as opposed to cannabis, are out of the system by Monday. Is this what the employers really want? Which brings us to another, related issue.

I believe that the biggest unreality in which the “drug-free.org”, similar organizations and their DEA sponsors are the victims of (if we can even think of these people as “victims”, is that they live under the utopic delusion that the completely “substance-free” society is possible. Yet, they are unable to name one single culture in the whole of human history, where the substances, in one form or another, were not used. We want to think about our society as “full of stress”, which it, without a doubt, is! Bit the same were true of human societies throughout history, and humans always needed “something” to help them hope with the harsh realities of this existence. So then when the DEA and its allies spend so much money and effort chasing a non-toxic natural substances, while teenagers poison themselves with all kinds of junk, from “sniffing glue” to “alcohol-caffeine mixtures”, this does appear ridiculous to an ordinary human mind. The solution to the nation’s alcohol and drug problem is not repression, but education. Education about the safe substance use, similar to the safe sex education in the past (and remember the opposition to that?)!

However, there is simply no other choice and the “powers that be” will see it in due time (and some are already seeing this). But in the meantime we need to defeat the “dogma”. We need to defeat this monstrosity that sends people to prisons for decades, that condemned a 25-year old mother to 10 years in prison over 31 dollars worth of cannabis, we need to free our cannabis political prisoners such as Marc Emery, Roger Christie, Rev. Eddy Lepp, Chris Bartkowicz and other victims of the anti-cannabis tyranny! And again, as I stressed before, only as we organize and act together, will we succeed. Otherwise this flagrant deception perpetrated by the government against its own people with respect to cannabis medicinal plant will continue to last for a long time, for years, for decades, for generations…. And every time, since Jack Herer and before him we promise to ourselves that we would defeat the prohibition, but it never happens… Because of our inactivity!

Yes, it is a “hassle” to register in the newspapers “on line” so we could comment on articles; yes, it takes time to write to Editors, yes it takes time and effort to write articles such as this one that hopefully point out to the truth yet another time! Young people should remember to register to vote and to actually vote, marking the anti-cannabis political bigots for a certain and bitter defeat! We need to educate our parents, our grandparents, our neighbors and even our educators about cannabis, and destroy the “dogmas” they have all been brainwashed with for decades! But we will do it, we will do it together, because, just like other repressive systems fell as they lost all credibility, this one, unreasonably and cruelly targeting the cannabis medicinal plant will fall as well!

March 3, 2011

You cannot have a total devotion sometimes - “A Course in Miracles”.

As I observed in other comments and articles, the DEA and its prohibitionist allies have intensified their anti-cannabis “crusade”, something that is worrisome because the anti-marijuana repression is becoming more and more brutal all around the country. Many of the recent events confirm this observation, especially sentencing a mom in Oklahoma to 10 years for $ 31 worth of cannabis. At the same time, a group of rogue “politicos” in Montana are trying to directly trample the will of that state’s voters by “outlawing” the medicinal cannabis contrary to the wishes of at least 67% of the electorate. At the same time in Las Vegas, the city where compulsive gambling, alcohol abuse and violent crime are all pretty rampant, the local police and DEA agents have the “nerve” to go after and mercilessly harass the medicinal cannabis patients in that city.

The open warfare that the DEA and its minions wage against the medicinal cannabis is also bringing some heart-breaking results: in Illinois the medical marijuana Bill lost by only four votes due to a systematic campaign of disinformation and undisguised “arm-twisting” by the DEA and its “law enforcement” allies. And in Maryland, the Speaker of the House wants another “several years” to establish the “safety” of medical marijuana before it can become available to the patients in need. Several more years? Meaning that 5,000 years of the safe cannabis use by humans are “not enough”, that more delays are needed, the delays that will allow the DEA to invent new ways to combat medicinal cannabis and the rights of patients who need it. Look how hypocritical the medicinal cannabis opponents really are: they seemingly worry about “our children” while ranting against the medicinal cannabis, yet they would much rather uphold their “dogma” than see children with painful syndrome, wasting illnesses, cancer chemotherapy, autistic disorders or intractable epilepsy to get relief. This is the kind of people we are dealing with in our struggle for patients’ rights and for medicinal cannabis.

But even the ruthless cannabis prohibitionists are not “immune” from the general philosophical principles which, as I will try to show, spell the prohibitionists’ inevitable future ideological demise, despite the utmost fallacy of their whole truth-defying mentality, or the methods that they employ indiscriminately to delay their inevitable collapse. The main philosophical “difficulty” for the prohibitionists, and the one that clearly “spells” the final disintegration of their “dogmas”, is the series of interlocking “un-realities” on which their doctrines are based. None of the social systems or policies that have been based on un-realities have survived a test of time, and all of them ended up in a “trash can” of history, being remembered simply as products of the delusional thinking of the time.

Let’s look at some recent un-realities that will be easily understood, as most people do agree that those patterns of thinking were “unreal”, but it is also our task also to show that the unreality of false or dogmatic worldview, and a thinking based on such false beliefs, do lead to disastrous social consequences. One glaring example of such policies comes to mind when we remember the AIDS epidemic, especially when it first started. Not only the appropriate “containment” measures were not undertaken (because why interfere with God’s punishment for “sinful” behavior of the victims), but the succession of the US administrations denied anti-AIDS finding to the developing countries unless such finding was to be exclusively used for the “abstinence-based” programs. Such a policy, based on dogma and on “unreality” led to a rapid spread of AIDS epidemic, with hundreds of thousands of victims, including children. Of course, as the “dogma” of abstinence was shown to be negligently counterproductive, the safe sex, including with the use of condoms, has had a very positive impact on the further dynamics of the HIV epidemic.

Now let’s direct our attention to another “unreality”, the one involving gay people. In all of history and in all respects, gay people were discriminated against because of an “unreal” notion that sexual orientation is a matter of choice, and not just “choice”, but a “moral” choice. Again, boundless suffering has been the result for many thousands of gay people, and all of it was based on an “unreality”. It is only lately, after it was proven conclusively that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice, moral or otherwise, that the whole notion of anti-gay bigotry collapsed, but not before inflicting a very significant damage on a very significant number of people without any fault of their own.

We can also look at the history of stem-cell research where the conservative “hawks” still try to block it, despite the overwhelming benefit that such research can bestow upon humans and the many serious medical condition that they suffer. These efforts by the religious fanatics is “based” on the belief that life begins at conception, and that, somehow, using the human embryos which are to be discarded anyway, violated the sanctity of life. This particular line of thinking is based on a total unreality, for an early stage embryo and “human life” are two very different things. Philosopher Aristotle distinguished between “potentiality” and “actuality”, where the acorn, for example, represented a “potentiality”, while a filly grown oak tree is an example of a developed “actuality”. Just the same, an early stage embryo represent a “potentiality”, but it is not to be confused with the “actuality”, and it is not to be acted as if “potentiality” and “actuality” were one and the same.

And how about the recent war in Iraq? The whole “affair” that cost billions of dollars and created countless victims, was based on an “unreality”, unreality invented by the war mongerers to justify their blood-thirsty “adventure”. The “unreality” of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, serving as a pretext for war, and its subsequent disastrous consequences in all that has followed that insanity. I made these several examples (and the list of them is infinitely greater, as we can imagine), simply to demonstrate that any social policy, military policy or any kind of policy will eventually disintegrate if such a policy is not based on “reality”.

It is on this philosophical consideration that I based my prediction of the inevitable and miserable collapse of the DEA “dogmas”, as they are “anything but” based on reality. Perhaps to understand the forthcoming explanations even better, we should not overlook yet another “unreality” held in “high esteem” by the DEA and its allies. The “unreality” is based on a utopia that the substance-free society is “possible”. Yet, there has not been one single human society in history that has not used substances, in one form or another. Human beings need “substances” to help them cope with the trials and tribulations of life, and the only question is whether a substance used is safe or not, and whether it is culturally mandated that the substances be used “responsibly”.

The DEA and its allies do not even “see” the delusional pattern of thinking advocating for a “drug-free” society, just like very recently the politicos in Arizona preached of “drug-free” Arizona, and I remember thinking, “what drug-free, what with alcohol, and dangerous prescription drugs floating around”. And so now, just because the sick people will be able to get their cannabis medicine, the state of Arizona, according to those people, will not be “drug free”! Indeed, when a “dogma” is defended, the truth does no longer matter! Now, we see better (at least on the basis of these limited examples), what kind of havoc we can expect if we allow our “leaders” to build their social policies based on “un-realities”. It is noteworthy not to overlook that the DEA and its allies are completely indifferent and impervious to the suffering that they inflict upon people, acting together with its “client” and the most faithful ally – the prison-industrial complex.

Sick patients, including the celebrities like Montel Williams practically beg with tears in their eyes to have compassion towards seriously ill people who need cannabis as medicine – and to no avail. When the remarkable medicinal properties of the cannabis plant, along with its safety are brought up, all the DEA and its allies have to say is “so what”? None of this matters, because cannabis is illegal under the federal law, and the people controlling this deplorable status quo are us! An ultimate mockery of the democratic principles, if you ask me! According to the DEA warped and ruthless mentality, it makes no difference how many people suffer as a result of its policies – as long as their “dogma” is intact.

When during the senate confirmation hearings as a result of which the anti-scientific extremist Michele Leonhart and the arch-conservative Republican “hawk” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), swore the “eternal allegiance” to one another, they also pledged to violate the voters’ rights in the states that legalized medicinal cannabis. During this “touching expression” of mutual devotion between these two anti-democratic stalwarts failed to mention the voters even once! I kept wondering as to where do the voters come into this “grand scheme” of escalating anti-cannabis repression? Do the voters who legalized medical marijuana in their states have any “voice” at all in deciding these matters”?

Which brings us straight to the main point of this whole discussion – what will happen if the DEA and its prison-industrial complex friends happen to prevail in this struggle – against all logic. In fact, many people are worried about exactly this, and they often ask me this question to which we now turn. Let’s first establish beyond doubt that the DEA policies are hopelessly based on a series of glaring philosophical and scientific un-realities. The details of these people’ untenable position have been addressed in several previous articles, but let’s still look at it, as it is extremely important for understanding that the DEA “philosophy” is doomed. In its opposition to cannabis freedom, the DEA cites certain premises, none of which is “real”.

Cannabis is not physically addictive as it lacks a “documented physical withdrawal syndrome” in its users; the “gateway drug theory” is completely discredited and is declared “half-baked” by the scientific community; cannabis use does not increase the rates of lung cancer; the rate of cannabis (and substance use in general) go down when personal possessions of substances are decriminalized (as in Portugal); cannabis is non-toxic and is incomparably safer than alcohol and many (if not most) prescription drugs, even the over-the-counter medications; and if all this were not enough, cannabis use suppresses violent urges and behaviors. Furthermore, to even suggest that the drug Marinol (which is just a synthetic THC analogue) and medical marijuana are one and the same is to challenge reality in yet another, totally incomprehensible and bizarre way. Needless to say, the assertion by some that cannabis plant does not have medicinal properties is a clear “break with reality”, and further assertion that seriously ill patients simply lie to obtain the drug “to get high” is not only the break with, but also an assault on, reality! Of course, no one ever died or overdosed as a result of cannabis use.

Earlier we already addressed the unrealistic and delusional mentality that society without substance use is possible. We cannot help but to recognize that the DEA “dogma” that marijuana is a “dangerous drug with no accepted medical use” is a fable based on glaring scientific and philosophical un-realities, and therefore, it cannot survive the test of time. In fact the people of the future will be totally incredulous that the rogue, unconstitutional agency such as the DEA could actually imprison people for cultivating and using a natural substance alleviating their suffering in the privacy of their own homes! Is this the “presumption of liberty” that our founding fathers had in mind when they devised the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence”? I don’t think so.

So then, what will happen if the DEA and its allies win? Well, for one thing, the principles of democracy will be trampled because the DEA could not care less about the voters’ will. What is just as important is that the current “random drug screens” unfairly target the cannabis consumers, as cannabis metabolites are “slow” to leave the “system” as opposed to cocaine, alcohol, or opiates, for example. So then, the so-called random drug screens open the door for alcohol, hard drug, and dangerous prescription drug abusers to enter the job market at the expense of peaceful, agreeable and productive employees who may also be cannabis consumers. Is this what the employers want?

Let’s not forget that we live in a basically contentious and violence-prone society, and that people do need to relax after dealing with their diverse and often difficult to deal with, realities. The question becomes that of a “safe substance use”, just like the “safe sex” education a few years ago, and responsible cannabis use is the best for this purpose than any other “alternative”. If we look again at the main DEA “dogma” that “marijuana is a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use”, we can easily see now that the whole thing is based in an “unreality”, and, therefore, cannot succeed in the long run.

Any social policies based on the unreal premises cannot be successful as well. Even the persecution of medicinal cannabis suppliers and growers is based on an unreality, for unless medical marijuana can start falling to earth as a Manna from Heaven, it needs to be sown, grown and tended to, so a continuing harassment of medical marijuana providers has unreality as its basis as well. Sensing the hopelessness of their “dogmas”, the DEA and its allies fully embrace the dangerous philosophy of “radical pragmatism”, that basically “empowers” them not only to impose their own “truth”, but to actually make it so that their dogmas “become” the “truth”. To strengthen their position, the DEA and its allies fill the prisons with the non-violent “offenders”, criminalize more citizens than any other country of the civilized world, blackmail politicians, deny the patients their medicine, and do all this at a great financial and moral cost to society. And if for this purpose the free exchange of ideas, as well as appropriate scientific research is suppressed – so be it!

Many (of not most) of the despots in history resorted to “radical pragmatism” to reinforce their ideologies, but none ever succeeded. This is because, even though the radical pragmatists make people “live a lie”, the growing segments of society refuse to continue living a lie forever. When these societal forces mature and organize, the system of “radical pragmatism” falls to the ground, as it inevitably will with respect to the DEA and its “dogmas”.

However, philosophical necessity or not, the change will not come on its own. Freedom is not “free”, or easy, for that matter. In article after article I implore the people, especially the young people, to get actively involved in the process. It is necessary to write comments to articles appearing on the Internet, it is necessary to write “letters to editors”, it is crucial to register to vote and actually voting, it is quite helpful to donate money to cannabis freedom organizations, so that they can continue their struggle on behalf of all of us! Even talking with one’s parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers or trusted coworkers can bring sizable benefits to the “cause”.

When I write my articles, or my comments to other people’s articles on the Internet, or “letters to editors”, I conceptualize this as “sowing the seeds” in consciousness, the seeds without which no “fruit” will ever materialize. The “idea”, as holistic theologians and philosophers have always known, gets strengthened by being shared, and as great philosopher Georg Hegel said, our whole history is the “evolution of the consciousness of freedom”. Let’s win the struggle for cannabis freedom, and let’s prove another statement by Hegel, and that is “the real is the rational, and the rational is the real”!