Maybe it’s a norm in life that we’ve grown up with, but does that make it right? Or, is it one of those things that needs an overhaul in how we’ve been trained to think about it. And yes, trained. When something prevails throughout your life, or a pattern of behavior happens within it that you’re obliged to go by, it does create a certain level of training in thought. We are all accustomed to the weird idea that part of nature, is banned from us, and we seem to think this makes sense. Or at least, some of us do. But some of us don’t. So, in light of that, here are the top 5 reasons it’s absolutely ridiculous to make plants illegal.
Why are we so complacent with the government telling us which plants we’re not allowed to use? Here are the top 5 reasons this practice of making plants illegal, is insane. Thanks for stopping by our comprehensive and independent news site, featuring the best in cannabis and psychedelics reporting. Subscribe to the Cannadelics Weekly Newsletter for regular updates; and product offerings on tons of cool stuff like vapes, smoking devices, edibles, cannabis paraphernalia, and the super popular cannabinoid compounds including Delta 8 & HHC. Take a trip to out ‘best of’ lists for more info, and pick yourself out the products you’re most happy to use.
5) Nature can be illegal???
Ever since I was a child there have been plants that were legally off-limits, and somehow, in my child brain, this made sense because it was authoritative bodies telling me they were. As I got older, I started thinking about it more, and questioning it more. Why is any part of nature off limits to any of us? People sleep in live volcanoes and jump out of airplanes. We swim in shark-infested waters, and hike through areas with animals that can kill us. And according to government, these dangerous nature experiences are fine.
The truth in life is that when something is truly poisonous, or dangerous, like really in need of staying away from, we will. That’s how animals in general work. If we really have to do it, we have senses for these things, and the ability to learn from experience. Yeah, maybe someone gets poisoned here or there, but that happens anyway, and in nature, these little experiences help entire species to know what they can partake in, and what they can’t. No animal population makes a habit of eating plants that kill them. Consider how dumb governing bodies must think we are, to tell us what to be afraid of in the natural world.
We’re always told we’re the most intelligent species, right? So, why then are we considered incapable of assessing which plants we want to come into contact with? There are actually poisonous plants out there that will kill immediately upon consumption, and somehow, plenty of them are legal. But a few that make a person feel good, or worse, help them in some way? Apparently all those are off limits. The #5 reason its insane to make plants illegal, is because it illegalizes part of the natural world. As animals, we have no reason to have a governing body tell us which parts of nature we can use. If it grows out of the ground, it should it be automatically accessible to everyone who wants it.
4) Here, have a fake version
The reality of the pharmaceutical industry, is that its based on natural plants, even if the medicines produced are all synthetic. The only reason for this? That plants growing naturally can’t be patented. This means, companies aren’t allowed to take a plant in its natural environment and claim it legally. This, obviously, is a good thing. If it wasn’t this way, Johnson & Johnson could literally take a plant like cannabis, pay a certain amount, and then have all control of it.
Since plants can’t be patented, their chemical abilities can’t be monopolized by one company. Instead, many companies can use the same plant to come up with their own synthetic formulations, and this is how the pharmaceutical industry works. Not every medicine is taken from a plant, but the vast majority are, as there is less basis to know how to treat things without the backbone of natural medicine. For as much as Western medicine likes to degrade Eastern medicine, it is still nearly 100% based on it, since pharmaceutical medicines are based in real plant structures.
When plants are illegal, and only their synthetic counterparts are legal, it means pushing synthetics over the real thing. Much like the idea of making part of nature illegal, this is a weird concept we’ve been acclimated to; that a fake version of a real thing is somehow better, and the real thing is somehow dangerous. A great example of where this fails, is antibiotics, and the oft mentioned issue of antibiotic-resistance.
Antibiotics fail because they’re simple, and bacteria can adapt to them and change. But they can’t do this with the original plant compounds, as those are way more complicated. It’s almost funny that this fear of antibiotic resistance continues, when the plants will always work. That brings us to the #4 reason plants shouldn’t be illegal. Because its means pushing people toward the fake version, instead of the real one.
3) They’ll save you if you let them
Natural medicine traditions didn’t persist through thousands of years because of how useless they are. They maintained through history because they work, and they work using natural plants with no synthetic components or processing, because back in the day, these things weren’t possible.
One of the interesting things about natural medicine traditions, is that there are tons of them. Think of how many little cultures of people came and went through history, or still exist in their tiny corners of the earth. These traditions have mostly been separated by space and time, with often no knowledge from one reaching another. After all, can you imagine natives in Siberia sharing their wisdom of fly agaric mushrooms with natives in Brazil, 1,000 years ago…wouldn’t have been possible. Yet, many compounds found their ways into the exact same places of treatment and spiritual use, in tons of different cultures.
Or, as native cultures use the plants relevant to where they are geographically, similar compounds from similar plants are used in different traditions, for the same ailments. This is a massive backing up of these plant attributes, that unrelated cultures would use them through history, in the exact same ways. If none of this worked, this repetition of use wouldn’t be seen, and it most certainly is.
Plants are extremely useful for treating nearly anything, so long as the right plant is used. There have even been studies showing plant compounds that effectively fight coronaviruses, something not mentioned during a two year pandemic in which synthetic vaccines were actually forced on people in some places. When plants are illegalized, these medical benefits, often used for thousands of years, are also barred from us. The #3 reason to question why plants are made illegal? It makes it harder to benefit from their natural properties.
2) Cocaine and heroin aren’t natural…they’re processed versions
We’re often told of the danger of plants like poppies and coca, because of the psychoactive effects. However, the drugs used as scare tactics, like cocaine and heroin, are not direct constitutions of the plants, but instead are processed versions. The actual plant versions are much weaker. Try chewing some coca leaves, it’s not the same as snorting a line of cocaine. Most of the time, the drugs we’re most warned about, are not what a person would pick out of the ground, making it even more insane that the plants take the blame.
When it comes to psychedelics and other psychoactive components from plants, like DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, fly agaric mushrooms, and salvia, the plants/compounds don’t need to be changed in order to gain effects. However, in all cases just mentioned, there’s also no death and disability toll, making for no actual danger. If it’s really not about death and disability, why does the government intervene for our safety? Doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the government doesn’t want coca leaves being processed into cocaine, or poppy leaves to be processed into heroin, then it should make those practices illegal, but the whole plant? That makes no sense as the plant itself doesn’t generally cause the extreme effects of the processed version.
And for that matter, considering all pharma products are a processed version of something, the idea that processing a plant to make an incredibly strong version of it, is sort of what Western medicine is all about. If you look up statistics for opium overdose deaths, you’ll be hard pressed to find them. What you will find plenty of, is opioid death statistics, and that relates to the pharmaceutical synthetic versions.
Which means a deadly processed version is legal and pushed by the government, while the unprocessed version which is unlikely to kill you, is banned from use. The #2 reason why its crazy to take plants and make them illegal is because the actual plants aren’t what’s causing the problem in the first place. If you look at the picture below, it highlights the misunderstanding between natural and synthetic medicine. It labels Western medicine as ‘classic’ medicine, and natural medicine, as ‘alternative’ medicine. In reality, these terms should be switched, as natural medicine is the classically used form, and Western medicine is the synthetic alternative.
1) Too much government control
Perhaps all the other reasons back up the #1 reason…it means a ridiculous amount of government control. We elect government officials to make laws and keep society functioning, but where’s the line? And if it’s crossed, how do we do anything about it? Maybe seat belts are good, and speeding limits. Maybe its good there are requirements for building engineering, and behaviors we don’t allow in workplaces.
However, this body meant to protect us, often does the opposite. It allows weird chemicals in our food that have helped the population balloon out into obesity. It allows toxins in the air that hurt our lungs and affect our ability to breathe. It allows trash to be dumped into our oceans, where it affects all marine life, including that which we eat. And it doesn’t seem to care about things like instituting a workable healthcare system, and instead will watch a sick person get themselves into debt, and then penalize them when they can’t pay.
Yet this same government which can’t get guns under control enough to not have schools shot up, and which constantly has to recall FDA approved medications due to horrifying health issues that are sometimes known about but not published, also thinks it should be able to tell us which plants are cool to use, and which are not. I mean, come on, guns are legal, but the cannabis plant isn’t? Is anyone else facepalming this massive logical discrepancy?
Where does it end? Especially when the same government promotes dangerous versions of the same thing through regulation? I mean, shouldn’t a person have the right to choose if they’d prefer to use the poppy plant over a way-too-strong synthetic opioid like fentanyl? The #1 reason its insane to make plants illegal, is that it allows the government a level of unnecessary control, that no government should have.
Conclusion
As more states legalize cannabis and plant-based psychedelics, or create ballot measures for their legalization, perhaps we should ask why we have to argue about this in the first place. Not only is it insane to illegalize a plant, its even more insane to make the residents of a state have to fight just to get legal access to something that should never have been barred in the first place.
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