‘Neo-legalisation’ & The Capture, Co-option, & Commodification Of The Fight To End Cannabis Prohibition
Originally published in Weed World Magazine issue 165 (July 2023)
Cannabis is one of humanity’s oldest companion species. Evidence of its cultivation and consumption has been found in ancient archaeological sites around the world. With its ritualistic, medicinal, and entheogenic use is recorded in surviving texts from a plethora of ancient cultures.
For thousands of years, cannabis was a vital crop for the populations of these bygone societies. It was utilised as a nutritious food source, animal feed, and highly versatile fibre and consumed as a prophylactic, medicine, relaxant, and euphoriant to name just a few applications.
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century hyper-wealthy industrialist robber barons, vulture capitalists, dogmatic religious zealots, colonial occupiers, and corrupt politicians conspired to criminalise those that consume, cultivate, and symbiotically coexist with the plant Cannabis Sativa L and its subgenus.
Over the following decades, this conspiracy was codified into law through the signing and ratification of several international treaties. As a result, countless national laws came into effect criminalising the unlicensed, unauthorised, or nonexempt possession, production, and trade of cannabis in nearly every country on earth.
Cannabis is an inanimate object, it has no agency, autonomy, or capability for culpability or criminal responsibility under the law. As such, since the ratification of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in the 1970s individuals that are caught possessing, producing, or passing on cannabis have been harshly judicially punished. This means that contrary to popular belief cannabis is and always has been 100% ‘legal’ - it is YOU that is criminalised, not the plant!
This century-long project of faux-moralisation, lawful discrimination, and state-sponsored propaganda has been perpetuated and promulgated by the mainstream press, mass media machines, and successive governments. This drip-fed indoctrination has hypnotised consecutive generations into believing their lies and gleefully further surrendering their rights. Resulting in the public demanding that the government take more of their basic human rights away to fight the bogeyman the state has created.
Calls to ‘legalise cannabis’ in the western hemisphere first began in the 1950s with the Beatniks before becoming a pop culture sound bite during the 1960s with the hippies, yippies, and the counterculture revolution. The powers that be responded aggressively to the peaceful demands of the ‘free love’ generation and in the following decade came the start of modern cannabis prohibition and the ‘war on drugs’.
Many years passed, people got locked up, they died, and people ultimately forgot why they were calling for the government to ‘legalise it’ in the first place and what it truly means. This first wave was calling for the cessation and an end of the criminalisation of cannabis-related offences, the liberation of those incarcerated for cannabis-related offences, and the lawful right to possess, cultivate, and trade cannabis freely as any other plant without government interference or demonisation.
Unfortunately, long gone are the days of tie-dye hippies peacefully calling for an end to the criminalisation of human nature and the liberation of cannabis consumers from the illogical, immoral, and unethical dogmatic and unscientific ideology of cannabis prohibition.
The calls we hear today to ‘Legalise’ cannabis are not the same as the ones that came before. It may be enunciated in the same terms and utilise the same language but it certainly doesn’t represent the same ideals and goals once universal in the movement to end cannabis prohibition.
Modern-day calls for the ‘Legalisation’ of cannabis are now coming loudest from those set to benefit and profit most from the implementation of an overly regulated, unnecessarily bureaucratic, and inherently financially restrictive and classist cannabis industry. These individuals may co-opt the language, appropriate the garb and style, and proclaim to represent the legacy culture and community but their actions ultimately betray their true intentions.
When musicians like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh sang about ‘legalising’ cannabis they weren’t singing about creating international multi-billion dollar monopolies, complex bureaucratic regulations, and highly restrictive taxation and licensing practices.
No, they were talking about ending the war on cannabis consumers, our culture, and our communities. They sang of liberating the cannabis prisoners and respecting everyone's basic human right to cultivate a relationship with cannabis free from state intervention and prejudicial police persecution. Unfortunately, this intention, spirit, and motivation that was once the foundation of the movement to end cannabis prohibition seems to have been lost over the years.
We currently lack the language to articulate the difference between individuals who believe that cannabis ‘legalisation’ should mean the ubiquitous end of the criminalisation of individuals for cannabis-related offences. And those individuals who believe that cannabis ‘legalisation’ should be a highly profitable strictly governmental and corporately controlled monopoly that continues to arbitrarily criminalise individuals for unlicensed and unauthorised activities relating to cannabis.
Today I would like to offer up the term ‘Neo-legalisation’ to refer to the captured, co-opted, and astroturfed ‘legalisation’ movement cultivated and championed by the latter group of aforementioned individuals. This movement is heavily populated with greedy venture capitalists, corrupt politicians, opportunistic conmen, green (in every sense of the word) entrepreneurs, and a whole lot of individuals operating under the Dunning-Krueger effect.
The goal of ‘neo-legalisation’ is not the liberation of cannabis consumers from draconian laws – far from it. It seeks to profiteer from the perpetuation of the most pernicious, predatory, and prohibitive aspects of cannabis prohibition. It's a neo-liberal and capitalist vessel to capture, co-opt, and commodify cannabis and its consumers. To coerce the conformity and compliance of the legacy cannabis culture and cannabis consumers into fighting for corporate and government interests above their own.
There is one little problem this pseudo-movement fails to consider. ‘Legalisation’ is defined as “the action of making something that was previously illegal permissible by law” and the fact is, cannabis is already ‘legal’ and thus cannot be made ‘legal’. As mentioned above it is simply unlawful for YOU to possess, produce, or trade without licence, exemption, or authorisation.
In reality ‘neo-legalisation’ creates more rules and regulations to police cannabis consumers not less. “Legalisation’ hasn’t ended the criminalisation of cannabis consumers in Canada; it has added an additional 38 laws on top of the 7 existing laws providing tax funds to further target and criminalise ‘offenders’.
Any form of limitation on the amount of cannabis an individual can purchase, possess or produce is a continuation of cannabis prohibition pure and simple. No such limits apply to the home brewing, sale, and possession of alcohol in the UK – a substance classified as a neurotoxin, physiological poison, and a group 1 carcinogen.
Yet cannabis, another popular euphoriant that shows promise as a treatment for cancer, amongst a myriad of other ailments, requires stricter legislation, more regulation, and unprecedented levels of state intervention to facilitate lawful access.
Cannabis is quantifiably less harmful than tobacco, sugar, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods. Yet there are no criminal or punitive restrictions and regulations inflicted upon the consumer of these individually self-destructive substances and goods for arbitrary legislative infractions
We now know that ‘legalisation’ doesn’t end the criminalisation of cannabis consumers nor does it mean an end to the so-called ‘black market’. This unlicensed and unregulated market is heavily demonised, vilified, and criminalised by governments for the benefit of the massive multistate/multinational cannabis conglomerate licensees.
Despite billions in investment and millions in lobbying and marketing, in my opinion, it’s evident that ‘neo-legalisation’ is failing everywhere that it has been enacted. A new report from Whitney Economics has found that less than 25% of US-based ‘plant-touching’ cannabis businesses are actually profitable in the US cannabis industry. ‘Legal’ sales in California fell 8.2% last year with two-thirds of all sales in the state still coming from the unlicensed legacy market - and don’t get me started on New York.
North of the border things aren’t looking much better either. Canada ‘legalised’ cannabis in 2018 with the expressed desire to eradicate the illicit sale of cannabis. Nearly five years later and the unlicensed/unregulated sale of cannabis is still thriving – making up an estimated 43% of all sales annually in Canada. Tilray, arguably the biggest player in the Canadian cannabis industry, reported losses of $628 million last year and the news isn’t much better at its rivals.
So what can we do about it? Well, I believe the only thing to do now is fight for the ubiquitous descheduling of the entire cannabis plant and all of its naturally occurring compounds, extractions, and by-products. We should remove cannabis from all historic legislation and lawfully protect the rights of everyone to choose if, when, where, and how they want to utilise cannabis.
Tax and regulate the commercial production and sale of cannabis, immediately release all prisoners convicted of cannabis-related offences and expunge their records. This would finally end the criminalisation of individuals for cannabis-related offences and strictly regulate the commercial practices of large-scale licensed producers.
Righting the historic injustices of cannabis prohibition requires us to address the conventions and legislation that have caused so much misery, needless suffering, and preventable death in the world. So if we cannot end cannabis prohibition by ‘legalising’ cannabis – then we must end it by ripping up and repealing the racist, classist, and fascistic drug laws and finally end the antiquated, draconian, and immoral war on us.
https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/news/whitney-economics-report-business-conditions-market/
Written for Weed World Magazine By Simpa
