The Marijuana Emperor Wears No Clothes

By Cannabis Activist

Part 5: Journey of a Budtender. Read Part 1Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

Like everyone else, the Marijuana Emperor duped me into becoming a participant in the “medical” marijuana industry sham.  When I woke up, people ignored or discounted my revelations.   My name for this last section is a play on Jack Herer’s book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, which had convinced me the US government is wrong.

How the industry duped me and others

I am not popular.  What I have to say threatens the appealing, mesmerizing façade of the “medical” marijuana industry.

However, I was a cannabis purist for decades. I believed that marijuana as medicine had great potential and would therefore be grown with great care.  But the relentless drive of the marijuana industrialists is to maximize profits.  Since day one “medical” marijuana was not a “medicine” but a commodity geared towards recreational drug use.

The marijuana industrialists purposefully make marijuana unnatural, harmful and addicting.  Why do you think Colorado sells more than 50% of its marijuana in high-THC concentrates like edibles and dabs?

Large scale industrial grows make it difficult to prevent mold that can quickly ruin a cash crop.  The cultivators don’t care about the mold. It doesn’t matter if the marijuana is chock full of mold, because whatever is moldy is made into oil.  So much of the crop will be made into concentrated oil, because it offers the greatest profit.  Of the “Big Three” (flower, concentrates, edibles) in the Colorado marijuana market, concentrates have the highest growth.  Why do you think that is?  It is because concentrates are the most addicting.

Also, concentrated products can go incognito.  Users consume an edible or puff on a vape pen that resembles a USB port.  Pop and edibles give the high which lasts for hours.

It’s ubiquitous, because everyone has bought into the lies that marijuana is neither addicting nor harmful. Users can get high anytime, anywhere. Patients would tell me that they vaped sitting at a restaurant booth, in a hospital room, at a funeral parlor.   It has become a new civil right, the right to get high wherever, whenever.  Promoters care about acceptance and advertising, but don’t care about what marijuana is doing to youth.

Our short-sightedness is dangerous

Parents claim they’d prefer their teens to use marijuana over alcohol or other drugs, which shows their ignorance.  When I was 16 years old, the marijuana flower I was consuming contained about 5% THC. I shudder to think of the harm to my brain if I had initiated on high potency flower of 15-25% THC, or the concentrates (dabs) that go over 90% THC.  PopPot educates about today’s marijuana causing increased rates of psychosis and suicide for our youth. I can tell you that after dabbing high potency THC concentrates for 9 months, it indeed causes psychotic and suicidal thoughts.

Marijuana strategists with a crafty PR campaign created public acceptance of the Marijuana Emperor.  Today’s Press has bought into delusion, too.  When I was contacting state authorities, I also wrote the Boston Globe and other mainstream press. They chose not to write about it.  Only one pro-cannabis journalist published an online article about my experience.

The game plan began almost 40 years ago with the founder of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law), Keith Stroup, said, “We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically.  If we do that, we’ll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.” Bit by bit, they succeeded.

The words of my Corporation’s Human Resource Director to a harvest manager are in complete sync with Stroup’s: “I know it’s difficult, but you have seen behind the curtain and this is the way things are. You are looking at it from a patient perspective and we were always meant for commercial.”

The Emperor has no clothes

marijuana-dangers

The bloated Marijuana Emperor is exceedingly wealthy, powerful and majestic in appearance.  It has everyone fawning, fooled, transfixed, particularly true marijuana believers, who like me longingly awaited legalization — ushering in a benevolent force of health and freedom.

The Marijuana Emperor is surrounded by enabling courtesans such as its public relations, press, lobbyists, politicians and state officials who are spreading the false reality and profiting.  The unpopular and unspoken reality is that the narcissistic Marijuana Emperor doesn’t possess a shred of compassion, care, and goodness. It is completely indecent.  It will harm and addict millions to make a buck, as addiction-for-profit industries have always done.

One day the damage from the Marijuana Emperor will become too great for our nation to continue living in denial. It’s very sad that it will take untold numbers of individuals addicted, maimed and killed to at long last wake up to the true reality.  What we thought was supposed to be a “medicine” never was the intention.  Instead, a very powerful and slick addiction-for-profit industry deluded, conned and took advantage of us.

Take it from me, once a true believer through and through. Years ago Jack Herer’s book convinced me the US government is wrong . After working as a dedicated budtender for one and half years in the “medical” marijuana industry, a light bulb went on in my head. I was very fortunate to wake up out of the delusional spell of the Marijuana Emperor, to see the reality that marijuana is very harmful and addicting.