Weed Should Be Legal — but Not Because "It's Medicine" [Steemit Exclusive]

This article was written exclusively for Steemit!

Many people say cannabis should be decriminalized or legalized because it's medicine. I disagree.

I've personally seen it help people with everything from pharmaceutical drug withdrawal to back pain to nausea to anxiety and debilitating headaches caused by man-made environmental disasters. Mounting research shows it can help with even more serious ailments, including Crohn’s disease and severe forms of epilepsy, including in children.

It can also ease psychological struggles, including post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. This is why a twelve-year-old girl who suffers from seizures is joining a veteran with PTSD and other cannabis patients to sue Attorney General Jeff Sessions for their right to use the plant as medicine.

But that's still not why prohibition needs to end.

It needs to end because it is not the government's right to dictate what we can put in our own bodies as long as we are not hurting others. We need to evolve past the mentality that the nanny state gets to decide what we can and cannot nonviolently do, whether with our bodies or our consciousness (for example: the mentality that we must justify our choices by proving weed is medicine).

Alcohol is legal despite its link to violence and fatal disease. Cigarettes are legal despite long standing knowledge that they cause death. Painkillers are legal in the face of the ongoing epidemic of addiction and overdose. And they should remain legal (though those who harm others and commit crimes that have victims while using these drugs should obviously be held accountable — as should people who do these things sober).

Of course, special interests and profit and lobbying help maintain the pervasiveness of these legal drugs, and this same dynamic is also a main reason why cannabis remains illegal (but why the FDA is moving to approve a cannabis treatment produced by a major pharmaceutical company while remaining sluggish on actual cannabis).

But at a more fundamental level, these substances are legal because of the basic philosophical premise that people should be able to control their own bodies and consciousness (incidentally, alcohol is legal because prohibition was a complete failure, has has been the war on drugs). This should be applied to all drugs, many of which are far less damaging to health but remain illegal.

Regardless, I'm all about using this little green plant medicinally (and ending the cruel policy of forcibly preventing people from doing so), but the fight for cannabis freedom isn't about begging an ignorant, oppressive government to let us treat ourselves however we like.

We shouldn’t be free to use cannabis because it has been used since ancient times, because public opinion now favors it, because it’s a boon to the economy, or because it can rack up tax revenue for governments that have spent decades brutalizing and caging people for it and now wants to profit from it.

It's because we should be able to freely make all decisions for ourselves as long as we are peaceful.

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