‘Rosetta Stoned’ ‘How False Dichotomies Perpetuate The War On Us’
Originally published in Weed World Magazine issue 154 (Nov 2021)
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient slab of granitoid from the second century BCE. It is engraved with a decree written in three languages that ultimately allowed researchers to finally understand how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, there currently is no such artifact that can help us to understand the complex and unique language in which cannabis is trying to communicate with us.
As it currently stands we have some remnants of knowledge and references to cannabis from our history but these are only fragments and they are being analyzed and assessed through the cracked and warped lens of the modern prohibitionist era.
Over a century of intergenerational, ingrained, and internalised social dogma, faux-moralising, and state-sponsored propaganda has shaped and altered our perception and thus our conclusions when attempting to quantify and qualify the synergy and symbiosis between humans and Cannabis Sativa L.
So it looks like we are going to have to figure out this mystery for ourselves. I know that may seem daunting at first but don’t worry we are not alone in this journey of rediscovery. For centuries a myriad of individuals from countless civilizations, cultures, and traditions have heard the plant whispering its secrets to them. From tribal shamans, traditional healers, religious mystics, and spiritualists to modern scientists, academics, intellectuals, and millions of layman consumers too.
Many of them attempted to share their accounts, anecdotes, and experiences in the best way they could within the confines of the legal apparatus, language, and understanding of their era. They produced art, wrote poems, created music, wrote fables and tales, held public gatherings, and conducted experiments and investigations. Above all else, they wanted to gain insight into the majesty and unique potential of this humble plant.
All of this individual experimentation and exploration under the influence of increasing global prohibition resulted in a fracturing of the language and terminology we use to define and describe cannabis. A plethora of interchangeable colloquial words for the plant and its constituent components, its potential applications, and its effects have consequently created a vast legal and moral grey area.
This no man's land is populated by many decent truth and freedom fighters who would and do gleefully and gladly share their knowledge and skills with the next generation. However, it is also rife with many bad actors willing to lie and say they have heard the whispers of the plant when all they have heard is their internal screams of greed amplified in their cultural amphitheater.
These duplicitous and pernicious individuals have discovered that they can simply adopt and co-opt the language, mannerisms, and traditions of the cannabis culture to trick them into believing they are one of them. This has allowed them the opportunity to plunder, pillage, and profiteer from the perpetuation of prohibition while purporting to be fighting to end it.
The largest group within this pool of bad actors are the prohibitionist-lite neo-liberal venture capitalists who are using their vast ill-gotten wealth, ruthless business experience, and corrupt political connections to control, manipulate, and determine the fate of those seeking cannabis liberation and justice.
They have become so powerful not because they know more about cannabis or have more experience with the plant than the legacy industry and culture. Nor have they changed their minds on cannabis because it is the right and proper thing to do. No, their motivation to ‘legalise’ cannabis is the same old cliché that has been their quintessential intrinsic driving force for decades, profit.
The vast majority of these individuals currently operating within the nascent ‘legalised’ cannabis industry are unaware they are heavily suffering the Dunning-Kruger effect and have, for the most part, become blinded by their bullshit, greed, and synthetic self-righteousness.
They are easy to spot, you can find them confidently espousing pseudoscience, manically marketing misinformation, and doggedly defending deliberately divisive and dogmatic solutions to problems they do not want to, nor are capable of understanding.
So how did this loose cabal of vulture capitalists hijack the people's fight for cannabis liberation? Well, as religious hysteria and faux-moralising around cannabis began increasing in the latter half of the 1800s and early 1900s so too did alternatives to the myriad of medicinal, commercial, and industrial applications of cannabis.
It was the classist, racist, and unscientific codifying of the international prohibition conventions that artificially and arbitrarily split the species into so-called ‘hemp’ ‘the good one’ and cannabis ‘the bad one.’ This wasn’t determined by its taxonomy or based on the extensive literature exploring the applications of the plant, no it was based on each cultivar's ratio of THC.
This gave the business and ruling classes the perfect way to have their cake and eat it too. They could profit from the cultivation of cannabis and the sale of its by-products while continuing to criminalise those they deemed undesirable who chose to consume it as a drug.
Since this fraudulent legal separation of the industrial and commercial applications of cannabis capitalists have been able to find new innovative ways to exploit these grey areas in the law and profit from the continuation of cannabis prohibition.
The usage of their word ‘hemp’ for example creates a false dichotomy and a kind of mental binary that if ‘hemp’ can do ‘xyz’ then cannabis cannot. When in reality all ‘hemp’ is cannabis and all cannabis can do what so-called ‘hemp’ can do – if not arguably much better given its far larger biomass.
The use of ‘hemp’ and ‘hemp-derived’ and the pushing of ‘CBD isn't the bad one’ style of advertising and marketing has now created a bastardized cannabinoid market in many countries around the world that once had whole plant natural cannabis products a plenty.
This language and the false dichotomies they create have been utilised by those same neo-liberal capitalist ideologues to corrupt, consolidate, and conquer the majority of the mainstream ‘legal’ CBD industry. This has created a huge disconnect between the producers, regulators, and consumers and has led to a dramatic rise in the sale of isolate, synthetic, and biosynthesized cannabinoids.
The majority of these novel cannabinoids have no history of human use at large doses and we have even fewer data and research to show what their medium to long-term effects of them could be on consumer' health. Hey, but don’t worry they have made sure to keep THC illegal and that you cannot profit from growing the plant at home, for your protection of course.
The same is true with the deliberate use of the SEO and marketing term ‘Medical-Cannabis’ instead of the correct wording of ‘the medicinal use of cannabis.’ This creates another false dichotomy and artificial cognitive binary that states that if there is cannabis that is ‘medical’ therefore all other cannabis does not and cannot have ‘medical’ benefit or value. Something we know that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Another way that not having a standardised language is being used to divide us is the binary debate and false dichotomy of ‘legalisation’ vs ‘decriminalisation’ Again, this is simply a distraction, an attempt to further divide those calling for cannabis liberation and a cessation to the war on all of us.
‘Legalisation’ is defined as ‘to make legal’ this implies that cannabis is currently illegal, which it is not. The plant Cannabis Sativa L and its multitude of subgenus, chemovars, and cultivars are not capable of being illegal, they are plants. What is happening here is that humans are criminalised if they deliberately cultivate, possess, sell, or trade cannabis without a lawful defense, license, or other authorised exception from the state.
This binary zero-sum debate has disorientated, disillusioned, and distracted the masses from that truth and has been utilised to convince a large part of the legacy culture and wider society that not only do we need to ‘legalise’ cannabis but also that we should put them in charge of it.
Are you fucking kidding me? They cannot think that we are all that stupid, can they? Nothing will ever convince me that the same system and individuals that have profited from perpetuating my pain, paranoia, and criminaliastion under prohibition should or could ever be the ones to determine what cannabis justice looks like.
The vast majority of cannabis consumers simply want to see an end to the repression and criminalisation of their choices, lifestyle, and culture. They do not want to have it stolen through the lie of ‘legalisation’ and sold back to them, they want liberation, and they deserve freedom.
To allow the system to ‘legalise’ would be to invite further unwanted judicial intervention, cultural exploitation, and the asset stripping of our communities. It would be a slap in the face to the hundreds of millions that have suffered for decades under prohibition. If a corporation can grow cannabis then we all should be able to grow cannabis. If a corporation can sell cannabis then we should all be able to sell cannabis – just like any other plant.
Now that we have identified the enemy within and the tricks they use to exploit, manipulate, and divide us what can we do about it? Well, remember how I was waffling on about the Rosetta Stone at the start of this article? Now is the time you find out why it is relevant.
I am proposing that we need to forge a kind of cannabis Rosetta Stone. A foundational document that would act, in this case, as a basic international dictionary or universal index of the most recent scientific terminology and nomenclature pertaining to cannabis. One that would for the first time finally allow us in one tongue to speak aloud what cannabis has been trying so desperately to tell us for so long.
Written for Weed World Magazine By Simpa
