Cannabis Legalisation and Capitalism: A Love Story
Originally published in Weed World Magazine issue 158 (July 2022)
Over the last decade, the world has seen a sharp shift in attitudes toward cannabis and cannabis culture. The humble seeds of this ever-growing revolution were sown in the successful passing of the 2012 US state ballots in Washington and Colorado. This was the first time a group of citizens not only gathered enough signatures to secure a state-wide vote on the ‘legalisation’ of cannabis, but they also got it passed by the populace.
This was the first great victory for global cannabis liberation in the twenty-first century and as I will unbelievably now argue probably its last. I know that statement might at first sound rather hyperbole and unfounded, but please stick with me here as we contemplate the current state of play in the lawful cannabis industry together.
In the decade that has followed in the US, an additional 17 states have ‘legalised’ cannabis, an additional 36 states have also passed some form of medicinal access program, and many more are taking steps towards it. Although the lawful US industry now boasts 428,059 jobs according to this year’s figures from Leafly1 how many of those jobs are filled by members of the legacy culture or industry?
How many of those now employed in the lawful industry did anything at all to actively support and protect cannabis and celebrate its culture during the darkest days of prohibition? Sales may have increased dramatically in the lawful industry to $25 billion in 20212 up by 43% from 2020. Yet how much of that money was made and kept within the same communities so heavily vilified and victimised by successive generations of violent cannabis prohibition.
How many Americans can now buy weed but cannot grow it lawfully at home? How many of them have the credit or can afford to open a lawful business, bid for an extortionately priced license, start and market a brand, or transition from the unlawful to lawful market should they choose.
Why are economics driving the conversation and setting the narrative at all when it comes to ending cannabis prohibition. Why is the same group of individuals that lied to us for decades, destroyed our communities, and tore apart our families now being allowed to determine in what form we build a relationship with cannabis?
While I accept that US states like New York are trying to include and prioritise social equity, criminal record expungement, and restorative justice schemes funded through taxation in its version of state legalisation, it just simply isn’t good enough. It is not enough after several decades of media demonisation, faux-moralization, increased police militarisation, and the disproportionate criminalisation of members of ethnic, racial, and lower class communities.
I find it reprehensible and indefensible that the same bigoted out-of-touch prohibitionists, capitalists, and politicians that waged a literal war against us are now being allowed to be the ones to profit most from the cessation of their violent inhumane aggression and vilification of our actions and beliefs. In an abusive relationship you do not allow the abuser to determine how the victim is treated, so why are we giving our abuser the right to decide what justice for their crimes looks like?
We cannot allow the ruling class to politicise its way out of a problem their ignorant politicking, racism, and classism created. I find it hard not to see these first few iterations of ‘legalisation’ as little more than profiteering from the perpetuation of the most pernicious parts of prohibition and the creation of a kind of prohibition 2.0 paradigm.
One in which the neo-liberal mechanisms of nepotism, cronyism, corruption, artificial scarcity, and intrinsic obsolescence are woven into legislation to protect corporate profits, intellectual property, product patents, and shareholder interest over the basic human rights, safety, and liberation of the individual from unjust laws.
We currently have international corporations that are out here profiteering like pirates. They’re extracting the hard-earned wages of the working and middle classes and the most vulnerable through ‘legalisation’ and medicinal access laws. They’re then burying it away creating a pipeline of intergenerational wealth flowing from the poorest neighbourhoods to the most affluent ones. Yet further perpetuating the same problematic socio-economic patterns that will only beget more of the same in the years to come.
This kind of capitalist opportunism creates an imbalance and inequality in information and education as well. This is borne out in the ubiquity with which the mainstream approved venture-funded corporate cannabis brands can post and promote their products and services with no issue displaying images of cannabis leaves and using co-opted cultural terminology. All while other accounts remain maligned, marginalised, and minimised by big tech platforms and their rather selective interpretations of their terms and conditions policies.
From shadow banning to restricting how much a page can post and what it can see to ultimately being deleted with no explanation or viable route to seek meaningful recourse or reinstatement of the account. These are just a few ways that the inherent class bias of capitalism manifests under ‘legalisation.’
It also allows the legacy corporate media to continue to publish propaganda produced by the neo-liberal capitalist machine churning out unevidenced, unscientific, faux moralising hysteria. Yet silencing and censoring the consumer, community, and cultures attempts to promote evidence-based education, harm reduction, and benefit maximisation information.This has led to a rather one-sided source of industry preferable ‘information’ and ‘education’ becoming ‘fact’ over scientific peer-reviewed research and the decades of lived experience and expertise of the individuals that built this industry. So why do they do it? It is in my opinion arguably about one simple thing the continuation of social control thorough subversive, invasive, and dehumanising tactics.
Cannabis prohibition has caused decades of individual, societal, environmental, and ecological damage. I fear that now through ‘legalisation’ we’ll see a kind of erasure, whitewashing, rewriting, and gentrifying of our history and cannabis culture. I worry that decades more harm will come not just to America but now to the rest of the world as the other nations once again look as they did at the start of the war on drugs to the US as a model of how they should proceed next.
It is their eagerness to follow the US capitalist model that I fear will lead to the prioritising of fiscal interests over restorative community and social justice. I believe that the philosophy and ethos of neo-liberalistic capitalism as best embodied by the America ‘legalisation’ has corrupted, contaminated, and co-opted the fight to actually end cannabis prohibition. Replacing it with a new incarnation of prohibition where those that can afford access and are willing to play the politics game get to make unimaginable amounts of money from those that cannot or will not participate in ‘legalisation’.
‘Legalisation’ seems to have all but killed calls and arguments for truly ending cannabis prohibition as it's our basic human right to cultivate a relationship with cannabis. Replaced by venture capital-funded flashy media campaigns and stories about how a patented product produced by a pharmaceutical company could help a small number of individuals with a rare condition – an important fight don't get me wrong but one that only helps a drop in a vast ocean of consumers who deserve to be free to choose how they access cannabis and for whatever reason they choose to consume it.
Ironically ubiquitously ending the war is the best way for everyone with any condition to cultivate a personal relationship with cannabis to prophylactically help to prevent future disease, illness, and degenerative conditions. Something I think the ‘medicinal cannabis industrial complex' might consider a potential threat to its business model and bottom line.
Under ‘Legalisation’ where are the calls for the reforming of the prison industrial complex, where are the cries for the release of the cannabis prisoners? The war will not be over until we liberate and restore the lives of everyone criminalised and harmed by cannabis prohibition and have ensured that never again will another human be locked in a cage for a plant.
There currently isn’t a meaningful road to recovery, reintegration, and rectifying the many, many wrongs inflicted on consumers and the communities collaterally criminalised and harmed by proxy and association to cannabis culture. There is none other than the Last Prisoner project.
The astroturfing of the movement to end cannabis prohibition by disingenuous, duplicitous, and deceitful actors has over the last decade seen the creation of an upper-class gravy train. Its tracks installed to facilitate the strip mining of wealth from communities and a culture that until recently and in many ways still is heavily vilified, demonised, and mocked by these same individuals that are now profiting from its cultivation, sale, and consumption.
‘Legalisation’ means that capitalists are now free to espouse the therapeutic benefits of cannabis and profit from selling white-labeled isolate products and synthetic cannabinoids produced from converting cheap low-THC biomass at inflated prices to patients. They do this while remaining consciously blind and impotent to the daily crimes of global cannabis prohibition and all of the other potential benefits of cannabis. They do this because their profit is based on following those racist, antiquated, and unjust laws not challenging them.
In the decade that has passed neo-liberal capitalists weaponised the optics of sick adults and children exploiting them in advertising and marketing campaigns to shape policy discussions and decisions that predominantly benefit licensed producers and not the patients.
Ask yourself why are there now politicians saying that children desperately need their ‘life-saving medicine’ while they are still calling for tougher sentences for ‘skunk.’ Do you believe they have seen the light or just the potential payday from the nascent ‘medicinal cannabis industrial complex?’
We must remember that what is true for the patient is true for the criminalised consumer. What is true for the lawfully licensed cultivator of low-THC is also true for the criminalised clandestine grower. Cannabis is cannabis and its culture and the communities that champion, celebrate, and consume it shouldn’t be closed off, censored, and criminalised. Neo-liberal capitalists shouldn’t get to set the narrative and agenda around cannabis and get richer while those individuals that suffered, slaved, and sacrificed to build the industry are locked out and get poorer.
Meanwhile across the pond in Europe in the decade that has passed since those historic votes little has changed for the vast majority of cannabis consumers across most of Europe. Yet a lot has changed for a small group of already influential, wealthy, and well-connected politicians and capitalists that are banking on the EU adopting a US-style ‘legalisation’ model.
The publishing of a recent report proclaiming that 55% of Europeans3 now fully support adopting cannabis ‘legalisation’ fills me with dread for the future of my fellow Europeans when the vultures of neo-liberalistic capitalism descend upon the corpse of the continent.
1. https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/cannabis-jobs-report
3. https://hanwayassociates.com/news-opinion/recreational-europe-report-launch
Written for Weed World Magazine By Simpa
