GOVERNMENT ISSUED

MEDICAL MARIHUANA TODAY:











Government Issued - Medical marihuana Today:



Government issued Medical Cannabis is nothing new. The Federal Government, through the Department of Agriculture, has been maintaining, experimental drug farms, since long before the passage of the anti-Medical Marihuana laws.



And after the passage of these laws these farms were than used to provide governmentally approved experimental as well as medical supplies. However, all of that was to change in 1970 with the passage of the Control substances Act under than President Richard Nixon.



The Act itself created three very ugly and imposing situations:



First, it actually outlawed Medical Cannabis, once and for all. Prior to than, contrary to what most people think, Cannabis was still legal, ---so long as you paid an impossible tax on it.



Second, it reclassified Cannabis as a Controlled or Schedule 1 Drug, which is defined as follows: (A) The drug is highly addictive

(B) The drug has no currently accepted U.S. medical use

(C) Safety wise, it's very dangerous to use Third, and here talk about the fox guarding the hen house, it actually gave away the whole store. Believe it or not, the Act actually gave the Narcotics police the power, via its licensing privilege, to veto any and all future medical Cannabis research in the Country. If you wanted to "Legally" do research on Medical Marihuana, you first had to get a license from them. AND, needless to say, if it was for Medical research they simply didn't give out any. In fact from the very passage of the act all the way until the passage of Proposition 215 (California State Medical Marihuana Initiative), which finally forced the issue, NO Medical research studies were allowed. ONLY SAFETY studies were allowed during this time period, and then only under extremely controlled conditions.



As one doctor so well put it: "If you wanted to procure marijuana for testing, [you could] however, you had to promise that the research would show that marijuana was somehow harmful. I quit." [5] But maybe I'm getting a little too much into politics, let's get back to the subject of antiques and their prices.



Because some medical Cannabis studies were already underway, when the Control Substances Act was passed, these studies were thus grandfathered in and had to be allowed to continue. However because some of the patients in the studies needed to use Cannabis for the rest of their lives, a very humorous thing happened, the government itself was now forced to supply these fortunate few with legal and FREE Medical Cannabis for life. One could say that the Federal Government was in fact, the Medical Marihuana Drug Lord. Thus the creation of these [in my opinion] somewhat ugly looking Cannabis containers, which are now selling for big, big bucks.



And while the containers the government farm [somewhere in Mississippi] sends them in are far from Antiques, they are quickly becoming collectors items on their own right. No antique Cannabis collection is complete without one of these.



Unfortunately those lucky few (or unlucky because of their illnesses) constitute only a small handful of patients, and so their aren't very many of these containers around. In fact some of them have been going for the $800 dollar mark, but being philosophical, many of them are being donated to none profits, who sell them to raise money for their causes. So at least we can all feel good about the high prices.









FOOTNOTES:

[5] Info taken from "Cannabis Culture Magazine" - Jun 25, 2001









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