The Next Generation of Anti-Cannabis Propaganda

Cannabis usage (for adults) is now legal in Canada. A century of cannabis Prohibition is now over: criminalizing conduct without the slightest justification for doing so. However, just because cannabis is now legal, don’t expect either our governments or the mainstream media to start telling the truth about cannabis.

It is these entities who produced and propagated a century of anti-cannabis fiction. As cannabis laws are now normalized, these same entities are now attempting to cover up their previous decades of anti-cannabis fiction with new anti-cannabis propaganda.

To understand this new, insidious propaganda campaign requires separating cannabis facts from cannabis mythology.

Facts

Cannabis is non-toxic.
Cannabis is non-addictive.
Cannabinoid molecules are fat-soluble.

Alcohol is toxic. Alcohol “intoxication” is a euphemism for alcohol poisoning. The sensations of inebriation and motor function impairment that result from consuming alcohol are simply the earliest symptoms of alcohol poisoning.

However, unlike cannabis, alcohol molecules are water-soluble. Water-soluble molecules are metabolized and passed from our bodies quickly, within roughly a day, depending on the concentration consumed. This means that impairment from alcohol use roughly corresponds with the time in which alcohol remains in our bloodstream.

None of this applies to cannabis – at all.

Being non-toxic, it is impossible to become “intoxicated” from cannabis, i.e. there is no such thing as cannabis poisoning. Cannabis does not produce motor skill impairment. No one slurs their speech or staggers around from consuming cannabis.

Conversely, cannabinoid molecules are fat-soluble. This means that they are automatically stored in our fatty tissue. As a result, it requires at least four weeks to completely metabolize cannabinoids from our bodies after even moderate levels of consumption. Until then, cannabinoids (in small quantities) remain in our bloodstream.

This does not mean that people get “high” for a month after consuming cannabis. In fact, the only way to extend the mildly psychoactive effects of THC for even several hours is by ingesting cannabis (rather than smoking it), as the digestive process delays and extends the onset of this mild euphoria.

After that, there is absolutely zero residual effects of cannabis consumption, apart from (perhaps) being a little extra-sleepy the next morning, since cannabis is a known sleep aid. Those are the facts. But you would never know this from the massive volumes of Next-Generation Cannabis Propaganda being produced and spewed by our government and the mainstream media.

Currently, Canadians are being bombarded by commercials from the federal government that cynically ask the question: “how can people use cannabis safely?” Pure propaganda.

Cannabis is completely safe, unlike (toxic/addictive) alcohol and (toxic/addictive) nicotine. No one has ever died from cannabis use. Even caffeine has real and significant medical dangers associated with its (ab)use.

You can die from a “caffeine overdose” (i.e. the consumption of caffeine pills). More relevantly, there are growing numbers of deaths that are being connected with excessive caffeine (and stimulant) use via the consumption of so-called “energy drinks”, especially in combination with other drugs.

These beverages (drugs) are sold to children – without restrictions. Why isn’t our government bombarding us with commercials “warning us” how to consume these beverages safely? Why are these beverages being sold to children, at all? Unlike the new anti-cannabis propaganda, the risks here are real, not fictional.

Naturally, federal government institutions are perpetuating cannabis mythology as well. One example is the RCMP.



Cannabis use is legal for RCMP officers, but if they do use cannabis, they effectively lose their jobs. According to the RCMP’s new anti-cannabis policy, members are not allowed to work for 28 days after consuming even small amounts of cannabis – the amount of time before all cannabinoids are metabolized from their fatty tissue.

This policy is entirely arbitrary. It is not supported by any kind of medical science.

…Rielle Capler, a researcher with the B.C. Centre On Substance Use, considers such lengthy periods of pre-work abstinence unreasonable based on how long the active psychoactive component of cannabis and breakdown products known as metabolites can affect the brain.

"While the metabolites might still be present in the urine or blood that long, there is no connection to actual impairment," she said Friday from Vancouver. [emphasis mine]

The policy is also almost certainly unconstitutional. Cannabis is now recognized as a legitimate medicine – for literally thousands of medical conditions. Indeed, it is increasingly being regarded as superior medicine, in that it produces strong efficacious effects, but without any of the health hazards associated with many traditional pharmaceutical products.

An RCMP officer who has been prescribed cannabis for the treatment of a bona fide medical condition can bring in a note from his/her physician and simply ignore this irrational, arbitrary, and discriminatory policy. The RCMP has no legal authority to either:

1. Deny its officers access to necessary medicine
2. Take away their employment (without any scientific justification) because they have legally consumed medicine

So medicinal cannabis users will quickly be exempted from this arbitrary anti-cannabis policy. And after it has been established that the medicinal use of cannabis has had no detrimental impact in terms of RCMP performance or safety issues, other members of the RCMP will quickly take this institution to court – to get this policy thrown out entirely.

This anti-cannabis propaganda and paranoia also infects the private sector. A CBC article illustrates the extreme position taken by Air North.

Air North employees in safety-sensitive positions mostly likely will not be able to consume cannabis within 60 days of any shift, says the head of the Yukon-based airline.

The ban is part of Air North's existing zero-tolerance policy for drug and alcohol impairment, says president and CEO Joe Sparling.

In an email to CBC News, Sparling said the science is still "coming in" on the effects of cannabis usage.

Again, we see an employer adopting an anti-cannabis policy without any scientific/evidentiary basis to support it. And note the last line of this excerpt.

…Sparling said the science is still "coming in" on the effects of cannabis usage.

Cannabis wasn’t recently invented. During the century of cannabis Prohibition, all sorts of “science” was supposedly produced by our governments, which (they claimed) justified Prohibition. Implicitly, Air North is acknowledging that all this anti-cannabis pseudo-science previously produced by our governments over a span of decades has no validity. Yet based upon this old propaganda, Air North has adopted an extreme “zero tolerance” policy with respect to cannabis use.

Unlike the example of the RCMP, the issue is more complex here. Setting high safety standards for its pilots is generally deemed to be laudable behavior for an airline. But such precautions still need to be reasonable/rational.

As already noted, there is no scientific evidence of any kind that cannabis “impairment” can last for even a span of days – let alone months. There is abundant empirical evidence (via documented medicinal use) that the effects of cannabis last no more than a matter of hours.

Banning the use of cannabis by pilots and other “safety-sensitive” positions for two months prior to working is based upon no existing science of any kind. And it seems unlikely (impossible?) that any legitimate science could ever emerge that would validate such an extreme position for a benign and mild recreational drug.

In fact, the only real justification cited by Air North CEO Joe Spalding is that Air North’s policy is not radically different from that of other airlines or the military. But most of us were told by our mother’s (as young children) that the argument that “if everyone does it, it’s OK” doesn’t measure up as a logical position.



Cannabis use is now legal in Canada. But for the better part of a century, Canadians were denied access to this safe and potent medicine. For nearly a century, adult Canadians were prohibited from using this safe and benign recreational drug – while alcohol and tobacco use have taken a tremendous health/economic toll on our society. Yet now that cannabis is legal, instead of our government apologizing for its past injustices regarding cannabis Prohibition, it continues to attempt to validate this shameful era through manufacturing new anti-cannabis propaganda.