As cliche as it may sound, the saying is as true as ever: Freedom is not free. Freedom is earned. Freedom is defended. Freedom is fought over and lives are lost over it.
Our Freedoms in the USA are celebrated annually during the holiday of Independence Day, July 4th. On this we celebrate our founding fathers, citizens of the New World, who declared the injustice and authoritarianism of the British crown untenable. And looking around today, it’s clear America has plenty to celebrate. So far, our 245 year experiment in democracy can be considered a success.
On the flip side, our country sits on taken ground. Regardless of the intentions of the people who took the land, the reality is this country will always have some blood and shame on its hands. Between the injustices borne by the indigenous people of the Americas, or the inhumanities of the slave trade on which the country was built — there are blood stains on steps of our democracy that can never be fully erased.
In addition to shortcomings on the equity side of things, our democracy has not properly defended the health of the American citizen. Bad government policy has let profit motivated multinational corporations make tens of billions off the health and wellness crisis in America, and there is no sign of the profits slowing down.
It glaringly evident that Americans are unhealthy. Nearly 90,000 Americans died last year from opioid related causes. Obesity is at an all time high. The mental stability of the average citizen could be described as shaky-at-best. As a country we are consuming more anti-anxiety, antidepressant, and anti-insomnia medications than ever before; yet we are more anxious, more sad, and more tired than ever.
It’s time we give cannabis and it’s medicinal properties another look. Americans are in desperate need of a release valve and cannabis can be a tool, a useful, multi-action herbal alternative to pharmaceutical drugs. Is cannabis perfect? No. But it’s a lot safer and less addicting than many of the medications being prescribed, so it only makes sense to offer medical cannabis earlier in therapy than pharmaceutical drugs.
We have come a LONG way since full cannabis prohibition just 25 years ago. It was then that California made history by defining cannabis as medicinal, and set in motion the snowball effect that is now a wave of global cannabis reform. A quarter of a century later, 47 states permit some type of medical cannabis (albeit only CBD in some of those states). There are numerous clinical trials ongoing with cannabinoids and our knowledge of the endocannabinoid has never been expanding faster.
I predict the ongoing wave of cannabis reform will be one that the retaining walls of global prohibition cannot contain.
Soon enough cannabis prohibition will end. When that times comes, true medical cannabis proponents must be ready to work on building the medical cannabis model that we want to see. If we do not put in the work, defend the sanctity of medical cannabis, and fight for patient access, then I am afraid cannabis will become another commodity, crop, ingredient or packaged good.
Sure cannabis can be all those things, but first and foremost, Cannabis Is Medicine!
Dr. Codi
