The ‘Hemp’ industry is already facing an extinction-level event following the recent passing of the federal spending bill, which includes a provision to effectively ban synthetics and full-spectrum products, tighten up the legal definition of ‘Hemp’, and add all isomers of THC, not just Delta 9 THC, to the 2018 Farm Bill definition. Luckily, the industry has been given a 12-month grace period before the law comes into effect, giving it time to fight back against the legislation and new definitions.
The combination of the 2018 Farm Bill updates and the rescheduling of cannabis will highly likely result in the US ‘Hemp’ industry eventually losing regulatory control of all natural, semi-synthetic, and synthetic cannabinoids, including CBD, to the so-called ‘medical’ and ‘recreational’ industries in the coming years.
The consequences of these legislative changes will remould the ‘hemp’ industry into a purely agricultural and industrial sector producing non-intoxicating, non-consumable products. The same thing has been happening to various European countries for the last decade.
The ‘medical cannabis industrial complex’ would arguably be the biggest winner of a schedule III ruling. The new scheduling would not only recognise the ‘medicinal benefits’ of Cannabis Sativa L in law, but it would also seem not to impact existing state medical access programs.
Schedule III may lead to tax breaks for state-regulated ‘medical’ cannabis companies, expand qualifying conditions, reduce barriers for patients, and increase cannabinoid access. It may also theoretically be used to implement new programs in the remaining 10 states that haven’t already enacted a domestic ‘medical’ sector.
One of the most significant potential issues for the industry is the fact that under Schedule III, the DEA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be responsible for federally approving and regulating cannabis medicines and cannabis products for medicinal consumption. This means that eventually, all dispensary products sold as ‘medical’ will have to be FDA-approved drugs.
In many ways, the rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule III would complete a 30-year-long experiment in how best to integrate and regulate cannabis under the pre-existing federal pharmaceutical framework. Since the passing of Prop 215 in California (1996), each subsequent state that has passed similar legislation enabling limited lawful access to cannabis for medicinal purposes has done so in a way that increasingly reduces patient autonomy and self-sufficiency.
We saw the same thing happen with Papaver Somniferum (the Opium Poppy) opiates, and opioids over the last century, and now it’s the turn of Cannabis Sativa L.
The same thing is happening with so-called ‘recreational’ cannabis, gradually reducing and removing autonomy and self-reliance from the consumer with each new iteration of legal regulation.
This creates profit for licensed producers, investors, and capitalists, while impoverishing the same communities ravaged and victimised by the ongoing ‘war on drugs’.
Despite what the internet would have you believe, Trump didn’t sign the executive order at 4:20 PM. Do not get it twisted, this is not a victory for the legacy cannabis culture. Schedule III is the most unambiguous indication yet that, as far as the investor and ruling class are concerned, cannabis products and cannabinoids should be controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. Likely to protect its vested interests in other monopolised global industries.
The signing of this executive order is set against a backdrop of increasingly paranoid propaganda-style reporting from the MSM about an ongoing ‘scromiting epidemic’ and a recent Gallup poll revealing that just 54% of Americans report drinking alcohol, the lowest percentage since records began in 1939.
So while some cannabis advocates and industry players have been making the usual “a step in the right direction” arguments, the majority of the legacy industry seems to have reacted with anger and frustration at the President’s anticlimactic proclamation.
To survive the ongoing global medicalization of cannabis and cannabinoids, the legacy cannabis culture is going to have to decide which horse it’s going to back. Whether to support further corporate capture under ‘legalisation’ or to ubiquitously deschedule the plant and decriminalise all cannabis-related offences for the individual. Even then, does the nascent industry have enough capital and support to challenge the behemoths of ‘big pharma’ and the emergent ‘medical cannabis industrial complex’? Only time will tell
