Cannabis is not a drug

cleanslate;2348013 said:

This court case is yet another example of the futility of the debate over cannabis being a "good drug" vs "bad drug." When the cannabis plant was labeled as a drug -- and a dangerous narcotic at that -- in the early 20th century the framing of the discussion was dictated by the prohibitionists giving them the initiative to continue passing increasingly severe laws against the plant and those who use it.

Laws are notoriously ambiguous and often sloppily crafted and this of course leads to appeals to courts to interpret the law. Laws written to prohibit cannabis are especially imprecise. The 1937 Hemp Stamp Act defined "marihuana: as all parts of the Cannabis Sativa L. specifically. Cannabis Indica was not mentioned in the act, yet Cannabis Indica (very commonly used in medicines up till then) was also prohibited. This same definition is carried over into the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. Even though Cannabis Indica is not specifically named in the law it has effectively become defined as "marihuana" by many court interpretations.

What this goes to show is that from their inception the anti cannabis laws are based on profound botanical ignorance about the nature of the cannabis plant. There is no really scientifically precise and consistent definition of what a drug is vs. a herbal/dietary supplement within the Federal government.

This is the FDA definition of a drug:

A substance recognized by an official pharmacopoeia or formulary.
A substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.
A substance (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body.
A substance intended for use as a component of a medicine but not a device or a
component, part or accessory of a device.
Biological products are included within this definition and are generally covered by
the same laws and regulations, but differences exist regarding their manufacturing
processes (chemical process versus biological process.
Drugs@FDA Glossary of Terms

Cannabis last appeared in the United States Pharmacopeia in 1942. So it doesn't meet that first criteria of the FDA definition of a drug. It does in fact meet the second definition as a substance intended for curing and treatment of disease, although the federal government insist that it doesn't -- being more like snake oil medicine at best and highly addictive and detrimental to health at worst.

If cannabis is an awkward fit into the drug "shoe" then what is it? Food does not fall within the FDA definition of a drug. Cannabis is first and foremost an important and highly nutritious food for humans going back at least 10,000 years. Cannabis was one of the first cultivated food crops--perhaps the first according to Carl Sagan. We then discovered that is was an excellent fiber and of course a very powerful medicine for all sorts of maladies and conditions. At some point during the long, evolving, relationship with the plant someone discovered that heated or burned cannabis imparted wonderfully enlivening and conscious altering effects. So for thousands of years humans considered cannabis to be a food, fiber and medicine; not a drug, but a herbal medicine.

Entheobotanist Christian Ratsch writes "No other plant has been with humans as long as hemp. It is most certainly one of humanity's oldest cultural objects. Wherever it was known, it was considered a functional, healing, inebriating, and aphrodisiac plant.Through the centuries, myths have arisen about this mysterious plant and its divine powers. Entire generations have revered it as sacred.... The power of hemp has been praised in hymns and prayers."(Ratsch 1997).

In 2013 The American Herbal Pharmacopoeia added two monographs on cannabis to the pharmacopoeia.
American Herbal Pharmacopoeia
This is the authoritative standards for medicinal herbs, the equivalent to the American Pharmacopeia for drugs. The AHP considers cannabis to be a herb and not a drug. Cannabis is and always has been used by humans as a medicinal herb, in truth it is the herb of herbs: the quintessential medicine and supplement for the critically important endocannabinoid system.

Cannabis should be governed by DSHEA of 1994. Congress defined the term "dietary supplement" in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. A dietary supplement is a product taken by mouth that contains a "dietary ingredient" intended to supplement the diet. The "dietary ingredients" in these products may include: vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, and substances such as enzymes, organ tissues, glandulars, and metabolites. Dietary supplements can also be extracts or concentrates, and may be found in many forms such as tablets, capsules, softgels, gelcaps, liquids, or powders. They can also be in other forms, such as a bar, but if they are, information on their label must not represent the product as a conventional food or a sole item of a meal or diet. Whatever their form may be, DSHEA places dietary supplements in a special category under the general umbrella of "foods," not drugs, and requires that every supplement be labeled a dietary supplement.

If cannabis was governed by DSHEA instead of the CSA it would be as available as any other herbal medicine. Under DSHEA a herb doesn't have to go through FDA drug trials. The herb is considered innocent (causing no harm) until proven guilty (harmful). Herbs, and cannabis in particular, are much more complex than simple compound Big Pharma drugs. They are not well suited for randomized, placebo, blind trials that the FDA requires for drugs. There are common, regularly used, herbs/plants such as borage (Borago officinalis) - euphoria and
fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) - highly hallucinogenic, that are psychoactive and not even on the FDA's radar as being potentially dangerous.

Herbal medicines, and food plants, have proven their benefit and safety through millennia of use by countless numbers of people. No FDA drug trial can even come close to that standard. Cannabis, most of all, has passed that test of time with flying colors. Cannabis has been incredibly generous to us: giving us food, fiber, medicine and even making us more human (empathetic and tolerant towards others). In gratitude, we were inspired to take it from its point of origin in central Asia and spread its seeds throughout the Earth -- a true symbiotic relationship.

The question is why are pro-cannabis activists hoping and begging for a rescheduling of cannabis on the CSA schedule? Arguing that it is safer than other drugs, playing into the prohibitionists' trap of endless circular arguments of, is it a "good drug" or "bad drug." It is a rigged game setup by the powerful to serve their sociopathic agenda. We must opt out of that game. That is the tangled web that the early 20th century prohibitionists spun to rupture the relationship we had with cannabis for thousands of years. A long, beneficial, and symbiotic relationship that developed long before there were any governments on the face of the Earth. It is an unalienable right of humans to continue that relationship with the healing, herb, cannabis. Cannabis is not a drug, it is a plant; the healing "herb of herbs."

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