Are you ready for Big Marijuana?

Photo: Reefer Madness via Wiki Commons

Big Marijuana is ready for you.

The fact is that Big Marijuana has been ready for some time. Now it is on the cusp of near-universal legalization in America. And that spells trouble, especially among the mentally ill, as we shall see.

But not just for the mentally ill. As we shall see.

Here is a quick annotation of what I mean by “trouble”:

To legalize, in our consumer-dominated society, is to legitimize. To legitimize is to strip away any considerations of risk—any considerations whatsoever, except price.

To legitimize, in short, is to commodify.

Consumers are paying for this particular commodity—this exciting new product being rolled out, or rolled up—in various ways. Some pay with their credit cards. Some pay with cash. Some pay with their sanity. Some pay with their lives.

As of September, twenty-nine states—three-fifths the total—and the District of Columbia have moved to legalize cannabis1 “Cannabis” is essentially the same as “marijuana,” a Latino variation. use under varying conditions. With a few exceptions on either side, only the Great Plains states, parts of the Midwest, and the Deep South have resisted legalization. The rules are complex in those states where it is approved. Many states, for instance, restrict it to medical use, as a relief for chronic pain.

Yet few players in what is now being called, without irony, “the industry” doubt that most if not all of these holdouts will eventually fall into line. And that the rules will relax. Some already are being flouted with impunity.

This is what happens when a “substance” becomes a commodity. Money begins to talk; and money, big money, is drowning out the rest of the conversation surrounding Big Marijuana.

The volume went all the way up to eleven when hip and youthful Colorado (2014) and then massive California (2016) became the fifth and sixth states to legalize pot for recreational use. California is expected to be issuing licenses for pot shops by January 1, 2018. Canada—Canada!—is working on legislation. The money people are lining up, clutching their open checkbooks.

They will be writing checks in the aggregate billions.

The “commodity” cachet of cannabis is being reinforced by such impeccably establishment periodicals as Forbes, which in May was pleased to advise its elite readers concerning “The Top 5 Financial Leaders in the Cannabis Industry.”

As the reporter Tristan Green wrote last July in the online magazine Finance: “It’s difficult to determine exactly how much money there is in the cannabis industry. A report from Forbes states that North American sales totaled $6.7 billion in 2016. Investors looking for an emerging industry that’s worth billions, doesn’t have stiff competition from major international companies, and is as close to a ‘sure thing’ as possible need look no further than cannabis. The Motley Fool expects a 300 percent increase in cannabis revenues, in the US alone, over the next five years. That figure could increase exponentially if more US States legalize cannabis for adult recreational use.”

 

I suppose I should say here that I don’t oppose marijuana use because I think it’s immoral. As a young Chicago journalist in the 1970s, I found it commonplace among the people I knew and liked. In my beloved adopted state, Vermont, I sometimes wonder whether the blue haze over the Green Mountains is mist or smoke. Yet I have never judged anyone on the basis of race, color, or tokes. Hell, I toked up myself. Once. It made me hungry for a pizza. I lost interest after that. In grass, not in pizza. Yet I was never “against” it. It was none of my business.

I’ve lately changed my mind. I have come to believe that marijuana poses a critical societal threat. Not to our morals, but to our public health—particularly the health of the mentally ill among us.

And the bedrock reason that it poses a critical threat? Commodification.

By this, I don’t mean to say simply that legalizing pot makes it easier to obtain. While that is certainly true, the deeper threat is more insidious, and more troubling. The deeper threat is increased potency. The cannabis on the market today is mind-altering on a scale far higher than the weed puffed by the counter-culture in the 1960s and 70s.

Cannabis’s main psychoactive component is tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as THC. You will find a variation of “cannabis” inside that name. Cannabinol is a chemical that interacts with receptors in the brain that are associated with pleasure. It is an adversary of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that controls (among other things) reward-motivated behavior. An overflow of dopamine, triggered by stress, trauma, or—oh—too much THC in the system—can produce psychosis.

(Because no two highly complex neurological systems are identical, some people—me, for example—are not as affected by THC as others.)

Over the long history of pot consumption, the THC level in cannabis plants averaged out to something under ten percent. This relatively benign percentage held through the years of love-beads and “Power to the People.”

That was then. In recent years, researchers have found that the THC in legalized-sale states is three times that percentage. This means that today’s puff produces a higher high—but also a threefold increase in the likelihood of psychosis due to interference with dopamine.

Photo: Marijuana via Wiki Commons

And this is not the only change in the plant. Another component of cannabis is cannabidiol, or CBD. This secretion, traditionally only 0.28 of each plant’s makeup, is responsible for marijuana’s cachet as a benefit to patients who suffer extreme pain. Legalization for medical purposes would be meaningless without it. CBD’s presence in the blood system reduces pain and anxiety. It also is found to block the psychotic potential of THC.

Guess what: lately, those same research projects have found that CBD’s average level has fallen from .028 to 0.15 percent.

What has happened to jack up the potency and lower the medical benefits of cannabis? Is it some abrupt shift in the evolution in the plant?

No. As I have heard public-relations people smirk after their company’s product gets a favorable story in a newspaper: “These things don’t happen by accident.”

The changes have happened because of selective breeding. Another name for this is “eugenics.” Marijuana growers are finding that more potent plants fetch more money from wholesalers. Among the leading wholesalers is Tardiv, Inc., of Boulder, Colorado, a startup in 2015 that now calls itself “the cannabis industry’s largest online wholesale marketplace.” (The acceleration of commodified weed can be grasped from the report of one market research firm Arcview that the cannabis “industry” generated $2.4 billion in sales in 2014, up 74% from 2013.) Tardiv, which keeps its profits a secret, advertises its mission as “To Make Wholesale Cannabis Trade Efficient, Easy & Secure.”

Secure from what?

Secure from being evaluated on its own demerits, for one thing. Big Marijuana is in its infancy compared to, say, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, and Big Guns. Yet it is learning quickly from its elders.

Learning to turn liabilities into assets, for example: higher wholesale prices mean more cost to the consumer. But with this commodity, that’s not a problem. Higher bucks connote a higher high, not to mention the fantasy of elite consumption. And anyway, many smokers develop a tolerance for THC over time, and actually require ever-larger jolts. In this sense, marijuana is its own gateway drug.

Here some other adaptive skills that Big Marijuana has absorbed.

Its business structures serve to further camouflage the irreducible gaminess of its product. These ape the sleek structures of the Corporation Eternal: advertising, marketing, and research divisions; sophisticated advertising accounts; acquisitions (“Aurora Cannabis Acquires Larssen to Offer Turnkey Cannabis Cultivation Services Worldwide”); flow charts; conferences (the “Aspen High”); burnished websites; speakers bureaus.

All of these strategies are important. None, perhaps, is as important as the manipulation of language to (further) neutralize activist opposition on public-health grounds. Big Marijuana has scrubbed its jargon clean of any usage that might summon thoughts of the product’s potential menace to human well-being and sanity, and replaced that usage with the antiseptic jargon of Corpspeak: “We connect investors and entrepreneurs to the deals and information they need to make the most of this emerging market.” “Cannabis, meet capital.” “Quality Products that Pave the Way for Mainstream Acceptance.”

And get this, for appropriation of the gilt-edged idiom of politesse:

“Snoop Dogg is one of the most revered figures in music, entertainment and more recently, a business pioneer in the cannabis sector. Over a respected career that stretches 25 years, his repertoire has turned him into a cultural icon across mediums. Snoop and business partner Ted Chung recently launched online media platform MERRY JANE, the definitive cultural destination for news and original content.” https://www.canopygrowth.com/

 

A capitalist juggernaut has formed and is rolling. Armed with its vast arsenal of persuasion; outfitted in the fine-woven haberdashery of Success; anointed with further legitimacy-by-association bequeathed by “progressive” billionaires such as George Soros and former Facebook chairman Steve Parker; dripping second-hand stardust from celebrity investors such as Roseanne Barr, Whoopi Goldberg, Melissa Etheridge, the inevitable Willie Nelson, and others, Big Pharma seems poised to overrun the rusting Maginot Line of social checks and balances: federal and state governments, regulators, educators, medical doctors and psychiatrists. It seems guaranteed to take its place among the rest of the ethically impervious Bigs: a massive Goliath striding forward, its path clear of natural enemies.

And yet a resistance remains in place. Across the country, determined local activists have dug in against the onslaught. They are armed with the flimsy-seeming small-bore weapons of medical research, demographic statistics, personal testimonies, and legal savvy. Their most valuable weapon, in the end, may prove to be what William Faulkner called “man’s puny, inexhaustible voice.” They are determined to prevail.

In some ensuing blogs, we will meet some of these Davids, and we will see what they have in their slingshots.

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