The US Government Is Still In the Dark Ages With Regards To Cannabis

Found the following in Quora today. Thought it worth reposting as there is much truth in the few simple words penned there.

Why is the US Government so against marijuana when studies show and prove its positive effects on a variety of diseases as well as the taxes it's brought in for schools in states that have legalized?

When it was declared illegal nearly 100 years ago, it was for political purposes. When Nixon re-up’d the drug war, it was for political reasons. They were recommending decriminalization at the time and he went hard the other way, using it as a tool to arrest and disrupt communities of colour and war protesters.

In the meantime many groups popped up to preach against the dangers of cannabis, assuming that it must be bad if its illegal. DARE came out and taught many false-hoods about drugs, notably the gateway theory, that cannabis is addictive and it could kill you.

Since the internet was born and placed easy verification of facts within our grasp, we realized that much of the information we had learned about drugs was plain wrong.

There are groups that still preach against cannabis use - including Project SAM. They are stuck in the drug-war mentality and refuse to read or believe any sort of research that diminishes the harms of cannabis. Don’t forget, the head of these organizations are paid…. and they lobby congress.

Can you think of any other industry that would stand to lose billions if cannabis is legalized? How about the pharmaceutical companies? If people start taking cannabis instead of opioids then these companies stand to lose billions.

I read somewhere that pharmaceutical companies fund groups like Project SAM and various treatment centres. Seems pretty self-serving to me.

So to answer your question, cannabis is still illegal at the federal level for a couple of reasons:

A) Lobbying by dissenters. Money purchases policy. Give a congressman enough money and you can implement nearly any law you wish.

B) A misunderstanding of the science

C) Hypocrisy. Alcohol and tobacco both kill thousands of people each year and cannabis has killed exactly zero people in thousands of years. Coupled with point B it can be interpreted as immensely stupid. Why would you allow such dangerous substances to be freely distributed around society when you could have a safe drug that doesn’t kill anyone. But no, lets make the safe one illegal. Their argument? Why should we allow another intoxicating substance? Guess what? I would be fine with that especially if people lowered their alcohol intake. You would find life-expectancy rising over the next 20 or 30 years.

D) Religion. For some reason Christians hate cannabis. Most of them are fine with alcohol, just not cannabis. And you know what? Even THEY don’t know why. If you ask them they’ll tell you about the gateway theory and that addiction will ruin lives and so on… but none of these things are applicable to cannabis. So if you correct their “facts” it won’t matter because they’re sticking with the opinion that someone told them to have, usually some preacher or what they think God wants. The ones I’ve come across (and I was a Christian for nearly 30 years) aren’t interested in YOUR facts. They have already formed their belief and will do nearly anything to support it, including twisting themselves into word-knots, hyping junk-science and disagreeing with dissenting views and studies.

hope this helps.