Lets Face it..we are in the midst of an opioid epidemic in the United States. Somehow, our society's moral compass has taken us to a place. where pharmaceutical companies are now hosting all expense paid drug selling/marketing symposiums that look like something out of the world wrestling federation. These seminars are merely drug pushing forums where they "educate" doctors on how to write prescriptions for pain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/ .
Patients then trustingly take their doctor's advice, when in reality it is far too often just a part profit driven machine created by pharmaceutical companies to sell highly addictive pain pills that people can't stop taking. The time has come to flip the moral compass and find true North. Many of us have grown up with propaganda about Cannabis being a gateway drug. We all hear the stoner stereotypes, the reefer madness hysteria, the constant fear mongering about legalization... Lets look at what is really happening, shall we?? Prescription drugs, prescribed by doctors, and advertised all over TV, internet, radio, and print media are killing 50,000 Americans per year. Legal tobacco is killing over 400,000 per year. Legal alcohol, advertised relentlessly during every athletic event (of all places) kills another 90,000 Americans per year. How many people are dying from Cannabis?? Probably about as many people who died from drinking water....or maybe less.
Do you know who contributes the most to prevent Cannabis legalization?? Alcohol and pharmaceutical companies...thats who. In the 2016 election, five states had cannabis legalization on their ballots. California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Maine, and Arizona. Only Arizona did not pass. Why, you might ask??..maybe because a fentanyl manufacturer donated half a million dollars to their anti-legalization effort. To make this story even more ridiculous, that same company actually patented a synthetic version of THC shortly after...and yes, our trusted experts at the FDA approved it. The same people that tell us year after year, that Cannabis has no medical value, and should be considered a schedule 1 narcotic, somehow allow a fentanyl manufacturer to synthesize it, and patent it and sell it. Wow! It's time to wake up..Massive expansions in pharmaceutical budgets devoted to marketing and pushing addictive drugs reaped the exact results they were designed to achieve, and caused devastating effects that have probably touched someone you know.
Enough of the bad...lets move forward to the good, enter 2019, enter legal Cannabis, enter Hemp grown legally in 17 states and protected federally under the farm bill, enter legal on-line CBD sales, enter safe, plant based medicine which can dramatically reduce opioid use. This is the year that will finally see what Hemp is capable of. It is still just the beginning, but we are about to witness a human/plant connection that is thousands of years old begin to re-establish itself after being banned for nearly a century. Let the healing of a nation and a planet begin. Find your true North, use your own moral compass and support what is right.
We'll leave you with this as food for thought: