Cannabis Science Inc (fka CBIS)

[Monksdream]

Something to ponder...

In his 2001 book, The Botany of Desire, author Michael Pollan recounts an experience with an underground marijuana grower living in Holland. After promising him complete anonymity, the grower took Pollan to an apartment where he raised female Cannabis plants. His particular method was hydroponic propagation taken entirely from cuttings.

The result was a room full of identical plants with blossoms producing cannabis resins well beyond the three percent of a wild plant. Through selective breeding that would impress any professional horticulturalist, the psychoactive content, Pollan learned, had approached twenty percent.

My association with marijuana ended in 1984. I haven't given much thought to illicit drug use since then until I read Pollan's book. I wasn't at all surprised to learn that world class gardeners were producing high-powered pot in secret growing rooms all over Europe.

I've since learned it also takes place throughout the continental United States. Occasionally the local media will report a bust involving one or more persons who set up an indoor growing operation in a rented house in some quiet residential neighborhood.

I could digress further, as could many others, on the issue of legalization, decriminalization, medical usage, etc. of this peculiar plant that has managed to find its way from the wilds into the realm of human domestication. As such, it has, as Pollan points out, found a way to ensure that its genes are passed on through successive generations.

Time tends to obscure one's ability to recollect about the way it was. Interestingly, the Volstead Act, which soon followed the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, allowed physicians to prescribe limited quantities of alcohol to patients. The labels on the bottles of brand name booze specifically stated the contents were for intended only for medicinal purpose.

Al Capone has become the icon of the criminal bootlegger during the Roaring Twenties era of American history. By the time Franklin Roosevelt assumed the Oval Office in 1933, the nation had come to despise the unanticipated effects of what was commonly known as Prohibition. FDR steered its repeal with the adoption of the 21st Amendment that same year.

Repeal also allowed for individual states and municipalities to impose prohibitions on alcohol sales. Like the Volstead Act, it didn't restrict or prohibit an individual's use. The result was some counties chose to remain “dry” while others opted for control over its distribution.

Control also provided the opportunity for governments to tax the sale of alcohol. Taxation wasn't a 20th Century phenomenon. Governments had been taxing alcohol sales since the early 19th Century.

When one ponders it, the gangs that fought for control of thedistribution of illegal booze in the large American cities weren't much different than today's Mexican drug cartels. The methodology is the same: murder, mass violence, extortion, bribery, corruption of law enforcement and government officials.

The debate will continue long after Nov. 2.

Tout de Sol
Monksdream