Trump may have started a war that didn’t need to be fought but at least he’s winding down the ridiculous, decades’ old war on pot. More finely, Trump’s Justice Department has announced the effective decriminalization of pot by downgrading its federal classification from Schedule I – which put pot in the same class as heroin and cocaine – to Schedule III, which puts it in the same class as currently legal over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol.
Pot is actually less dangerous than Tylenol, which can cause organ damage if you take too much. Pot will temporarily render you “stoned” – but the effects are temporary and the consequences, typically, are the munchies. Pot is by any reasonable, facts-based standard far less dangerous than alcohol, which can be fatal if you drink too much, too quickly.
But never mind all that.
Inadvertently, Trump has opened the door to a conversation that ought to be had about this very strange business of government telling any free adult what they are not free to decide to put into their own body. It raises the question: Who is the owner of your body? If it is you, then only you have dominion over your own body. On the other hand, if busybodies have the power to control your body – which encompasses what you choose to put into it – then it is self-evident you are something like a tenant in a body that really belongs to a landlord of sorts. A landlord being the person who can tell you, among other things, what you’re allowed to put in what is only “your” apartment in the sense that you’re allowed to live in it, provided you abide by the terms and conditions and of course, pay the rent. This is not the same thing as being the owner – who has the right to do whatever he wants to do with his property, even if others don’t approve.
This latter thing is important. It is the bulwark against busybodyism and it has been breached for decades. It got so bad – back during the era known to history as Prohibition – that busybodies were sicced on people for the “crime” of having (or serving) a drink. This proved to be too much, even for a country saturated with the poison of busybodyism. Prohibition – of alcohol – was relaxed. It’s a shame it never went away altogether. Adults – including adults with gray hair and wrinkles – are still subjected to the degrading ritual of having to show a teenage cashier their ID to be allowed to buy alcohol. In some states, the state still controls the sale of alcohol – liquor. You can only buy it at “ABC” stores. It’s a kind of low-rent outpatient clinic for addicts scene, if you’ve ever been inside of one of these joints.
Well, it appears pot is going to be treated the same, henceforth. Meaning, people who wish to buy it will be treated as vaguely disreputable supplicants, seeking the state’s permission to buy pot for their own use. The protocol will probably be similar to the degrading procedure one must submit to in order to buy cough syrup; i.e., you must present identification to a person behind a counter, much in the manner of an addict getting his meds at an outpatient clinic. It’s a measure of the extent to which Americans have been reduced that they mostly accept this treatment as just something they’re obliged to do. A manlier generation of Americans took umbrage at such indignities but that was generations ago. Americans of today defeatedly produce “ID” upon demand and will even spread their legs to facilitate having their private areas “patted” by a complete stranger because he has a blue shirt on and says so.
“The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information.”
Note the faux benevolence. The government is going to help us.
How about just leaving us alone?
Imagine being able to just have a drink, if someone wanted to serve you. Or buy cough medicines, without having to produce “ID” and have your purchase recorded. The same as regards pot. It being no one else’s business that you want to smoke some. But, the children! If the government weren’t looking out for them, they might get booze or cough meds or pot – as if they didn’t get these things anyhow. Maybe parents ought to be looking out for their kids rather than demanding the government parent us all, as if we were kids?
Heaven forfend. The busybodies’ panties are very much in a bunch.
Last August, more than 50 organizations, including CatholicVote, Family Research Council, the National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, the Drug Enforcement Association of Federal Narcotics Agents, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and Eagle Forum, signed an open letter to the president saying that marijuana itself “has not been approved for any medical use by the FDA” and “likely never will” for the simple reason that “No smokeable (combustible) substance would ever receive approval by the FDA, for example, because of its inherent carcinogenic harm.”
Never mind that you don’t have to smoke pot to enjoy pot.
But at least people will no longer face serious criminal charges for “manufacturing, “possessing” or “distributing” pot – which “offenses” have sent millions of people to prison over the past several generations. And it’s a Republican president who’s dialing it all back.
Now if only he’d dial back the other war.
. . .
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And then there is *this*.
Maybe my vote was not completely wasted after all.
https://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2026/04/29/atf-director-robert-cekada-takes-jackhammer-biden-era-gun-regs/
“but the effects are temporary and the consequences, typically, are the munchies”
Back when I was younger and dumber, I went through a phase where I smoked a little bit of pot here and there. I had to stop because it would give my crazy bouts of heartburn like you wouldn’t believe.
Beginning in the 1990s, states effectively nullified the US fedgov’s absurd war on cannabis. Through legal, medical or black markets, weed has been freely available everywhere since we were kids. Thirty years later, the idiot, irrelevant fedgov is the shambolic caboose on the back of the train.
Long run, Trump’s authorization of psychedelic research ten days ago will be farther reaching. Only a handful of states and localities have decriminalized these substances. Yet psychedelics — which provoked a harsh crackdown in 1970 when they were associated with the ‘counterculture’ — show intriguing promise in treating PTSD and alcoholism, a condition which cuts a wide swath through society and always has.
Both the alcohol industry and the rehab industry like the status quo, in which 30% of adults drink to excess and 10% are flat-out addicted. Stories abound of people returning from a single-session ibogaine treatment in Mexico and ditching the bottle completely. Important interests are threatened by this. But people get their lives back.
I think the plant should be legal. All plants and “drugs” should be legal. Full stop. However, echoing others on here, the minute OF “rescheduled” cannabis at the Federal level, the horrible Dem gov here in NC issued a press release regarding a state level advisory board pushing for a recommendation of full legal recreational use by year end. Each of his local Dem minions, the newly elected black sheriff, the public health commissar, and some other county functionary immediately stepped up with accompanying full throated written endorsements. Lock step Dem priority. Lots of talk about revenues. Perhaps the liquor monopoly isn’t bringing in what it used to. I do wonder what else might be motivating them, though. The folks involved in moving this forward quickly NEVER count liberty or individual empowerment as one of their goals. They also reflexively oppose everything OF does (hey, judging by his actions since 2/28, they may have been right on that score), except this.
Just had to show ID and provide a digital signature to buy allergy meds. $5 worth of psudeoephedrine.
You can buy all manner of pot online now. Just search for THCa. The farm bill left open a silly loophole and it is being exploited.
If the criminals in juiberment WANT us to smoke pot..
It’s seriously time to quit.
..just say’in
Yes indeed.
“Good Deltas take their Soma.”
— Aldous Huxley, _Brave New World_ (1935?)
‘ “Rich folks smoke Dokes” [fully legal *marijuana* cigarettes] is a recurring phrase in Stephen King’s 1982 dystopian novel The Running Man, written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym.
It highlights the extreme economic disparity and corporate-controlled society of the future, where “Dokes” (cigarettes) are provided to the wealthy.
Contextual Details in The Running Man:
The Phrase: The full line, often repeated, is “Real blokes may toke dokes, but rich folks smoke dokes”.
Significance: It serves as propaganda or a slogan in a society where public entertainment and consumer products are strictly controlled by the Games Network, emphasizing the divide between the elite and the poor.
The Setting: The book is set in a dystopian 2025 where citizens live in poverty, while popular “free-vee” programming shows elite areas and games.
The Plot: The story follows Ben Richards, who becomes a contestant on a deadly game show to pay for his daughter’s medical care.
The quote is a staple of the book’s nihilistic, gritty atmosphere, setting it apart from the 1987 movie adaptation.’
Bingo.. many a time I’ve witnessed otherwise very intelligent humans engaging in hours long smoke sessions, planning their days around it, getting nothing else done, becoming less and less motivated as time went on.. ain’t good for the brain, gov knows it, there’s far better forms of both escapism and pain relief out there, ones that don’t actively impair people or cloud and hinder their personal agenda
I’m sure that the Orange Asshole’s motivations are purely in the interests of the pharma co.s, who want to get in on the lucrative medicinal and other health & beauty aspects of the market which pot being classified as schedule 1 was keeping them from.
You should know by now that Trump’s actions are never motivated by sanity or liberty- but rather always by an ulterior motive. This prick who wanted to execute drug dealers (Pusher heal thyself!) and who commits piracy on the open seas because some vessel “may be” carrying some substance which is illegal in his country, is in no way concerned with actually doing a favor to cannabis users or the cause of liberty.
Like a sleazy lying used-car salesmen, when he appears to be acting like your friend and doing the right thing or something good for you, THAT is the time to watch him even closer because you know you’re going to get reamed.
Hi Arthur,
Certainly. Among other things, they want to control – and tax – the pot. In my state, you have to get a $100 “prescription” from a quack and then you can only buy at “dispensaries” where the prices are outrageous and the product likely no longer natural.
My understanding is that the legal weed growers in places like California are begging for state aid to stay solvent. They — and the state they collect taxes for — are getting undercut by the legalization of weed because there is no way to tell if a guy with a bag of weed on him bought it from a “legal” grower and paid the taxes, if he grew it himself, or if he bought it from and unlicensed dealer.
So people are growing their own stash and not paying the taxes.
What I found hilarious, Eric, is that in these parts, the state (and possibly borough) were counting the amount of tax dollars they were going to receive by taxing pot. Hell, they had the money spent! Whoops, they figured out if you know a neighbour who grows the stuff, no tax! Never underestimate the stupidity of greedy politicians.
Indeed, Shadow!
I also think there is something to the worry expressed here by another poster about using “drug use” as a disqualification to buy/possess guns. Many people use pot to help with body aches and to get a good night’s sleep. They are not “druggies.” Unless you also think anyone who has a drink before bedtime is a “drunk.” The thing to always keep in mind is that whatever motivates whatever the government does, it is never a good motivation.
Of course when you tax it at 30% or more, there is plenty of incentive to grow it yourself, or just continue to buy it from the “illegal” street dealer where you bought it before. The street dealer isn’t going to ask for ID either………
Very good points. I am sure that once the likes of Pfizer get there dirty hands into the legal marijuana industry it will become toxic poison that will kill you instead of heal you.
Speaking of the pharma Death Star, they are going full on promoting “early detection” and all in on “screenings” for cancer (that they likely had a hand in causing). This “early screening” BS is seriously troubling as it will inevitably detect minor abnormalities that they will “treat”.with immune system destroying “therapies” that will line their pockets and disable or kill their “patients”. They were running these continuously during the recent NFL draft.
You can’t hate the pharmaceutical industry enough.
Indeed, Metal Queen. Big Pharma can then turn around and say “SEE! We told you marijuana was bad for you”!. When really, it was all the other crap they threw in there that made it a killer product.
At one time, the government was spraying paraquat, a cancer causing poison, on the cannabis fields in Mexico. Cannabis is so bad for your health that, should you choose to use it, you deserve to get cancer and die. This is how the government demonstrates just how much it cares about protecting your health.
The government used to do something analogous — add poison to alcohol back during alcohol prohibition.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=regional_documents
I agree for the most part, but “back in the day” the most ardent “follower” types were mostly Repuglicans from my experience. My mom is an absolute perfect example as she was offended by those “Question Authority” bumper stickers and she has never pulled the lever for a “D” candidate in her life.
The “War on Terror” and the support of ICE jackboots more than revealed the inner tyrant of those on the right just as the COVID psyop conformity exposed the inner tyrant of those on the left. More and more people are identifying as “none of the above” and that gives some small reason for hope..
This was intended as a response to swamprat.
I was offended by those “Question Authority” bumper stickers, because I knew the people who had them were full of shit NPCs supporting the current thing, and don’t actually question anything.
People on the Left who had “Question Authority” bumper stickers flipped the past several years when it came to cliiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change, Tony Fauci, COVID, face diapers, Big Pharma, Joe Biden, the 2020 presidential election, the BS “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative, etc. During COVID, they routinely smeared anyone who questioned the establishment narrative as “Purveyors of dangerous mis/disinformation”.
They criticized Big Pharma once upon a time for its criminality (e.g., Pfizer), but effectively acted like Pharma’s biggest shills over the past 6 years. Remember their cries of “Don’t do your own research!”? Many of them even plastered on social media “Disinformation is deadly. Vaccines save lives!” and virtue signaled how they “Followed science by getting vaxxed”, despite actual experts (Geert Vanden Bossche, Robert Malone, etc.) saying that mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic was A TERRIBLE IDEA.
These same people even LOVED RFK Jr when he was an environmental lawyer, but after he became Trump’s HHS Secretary, they routinely call him a QUACK and THE WORST THING EVER TO HAPPEN TO HEALTH.
Making that assumption makes you no different from the people you dislike. Just because the person with the sticker may be a hypocrite does not mean the message is not valid. Both left and right are full of authoritarian assholes.
A doped-up, sedated, and compliant population is much easier for authorities to control, as compared to a righteously angry and justifiably furious population motivated to clean house….
I’m just saying, y’know????
And even sadder, the Goyims thinking they “got over on the man” by using some recently made “legal products” that’ve been around for centuries…SMDH.
YMMV….Oy Vey!!!
Yep Saxon, that’s my take on legalizing Pot also.
Yes indeed.
“Good Deltas take their Soma.”
— Aldous Huxley, _Brave New World_ (1935?)
Sadly, the decades of persecution of the plant by the government have given rise to an awful ‘pothead’ subculture. Not the plant’s fault, per se, but stoner and potheads are some of the most obnoxious people on Earth.
Yes, they are.
Most of my life I was socially shunned and ostracized and even menaced, threatened, and attacked, for *not* smoking pot.
I even tried to make up a little song about it. To the tune, more or less, of “Hooray For Hollywood.”
o/`Potheads are paranoid
You ought to see them when they’re getting low
They’re on the phone to everyone they know
They’ve got to go
And rush all over town to get some more dope
They think their phones are bugged
And that you’re working for the FBI
Or maybe it’s the DEA
Bur either way
If you do not get high you must be narcing … o/`
We used to be a nation a men that would tell the busy bodies and the government (one in the same if you ask me) to fuck off.
As far as us owning our own bodies, we men don’t as long as we have to sign up for selective service at the age of 18 or face heavy fines and penalties like jail time if we choose not to; which is a violation of our 8th Amendment protection right.
As far as the children, the government has shown time and time again that they really don’t care about the children. They push sexual perversions onto the kids, and will mutilate their bodies because they think the child should be transgender; often against the child’s parents will and consent.
And show me where in the Constitution that gives the authority for a FDA. There is none.
“As far as us owning our own bodies, we men don’t as long as we have to sign up for selective service at the age of 18 or face heavy fines and penalties like jail time if we choose not to; which is a violation of our 8th Amendment protection right.”
It’s a violation of the 13th Amendment as well, which prohibits involuntary servitude. And, coming later this year, men won’t even have to sign up for the draft anymore. They will be automatically registered when they turn 18.
Something that has been written out of the history textbooks: many immigrants from Europe came here to escape compulsory military service.
Thanks for reminding me about the 13th Amendment. We are slaves.
Interstate commerce clause, Art. 1 Sec. 8.
Simply put, the drug war is a miserable failure, which has cost the country a whole lot of liberty and many trillions of dollars. If 90% of the tactics have been directed at keeping a prolific natural weed illegal and persecuting users and sellers, this is a way to slash costs and concentrate efforts.
Simply put this is a change of tactics rather than admission of defeat in a wrongful war.
I personally don’t care for drugs, even prescription, though my across town weed enthusiast neighbor gave me some cream for my increasingly arthritic knees and it seems to help.
Hi Ernie,
I sometimes take a gummy to help me sleep and to tamp down body aches. I see no reason why this ought to be anyone else’s concern – just as it is no concern of mine what others take to make them feel better. I loathe busybody/puritan types.
Sorry, Ernie, you’re wrong. The War on (some) Drugs is a fabulous success.
Oh, you thought its goal was to “eliminate” these substances from society…hardly.
Drug laws are nothing but Criminal Justice [sic] System Full Employment Bills. Period.
When alcohol prohibition ended there were legions of Feds that had no “law” to enforce. PRESTO CHANGE-O, meet the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937!
Do you wonder why cops & courts want to keep drugs prohibited? They’re just protecting their phony baloney jobs. Harumph, harumph, harumph…
Per the federal firearm form you fill out when buying a gun, weed smokers cannot own guns. This is the main reason the establishment suddenly wants everyone to smoke weed.
Hi KM,
Do you feel any moral obligation to tell the government the truth about anything?
But, what about databases, and AI? If you buy pot from a legal state-sanctioned dispensary, it’s likely they will keep records of their sales.
Buy a gun from a private individual.
Or roll your own. As the tyrants’ rules multiply and gain viciousness, i suspect that a nascent cottage industry is going to bloom.
> providing “patients” with better care and doctors with more reliable information.
Pay close attention to the terminology here.
Compulsive “medicalization” of ordinary, and mostly harmless, human behavior, means that all, or nearly all, citizens are defined to be “sick”, and require “care” from a licensed physician, a.k.a. Doctor-God.
I say, “Kiss my ass.”
Precisely. Until this plant is completely DECLASSIFIED like ZERO schedule, its a beyond Musk level grift vector.
Yea, verily.
Yes. Trump is not ALL bad.
Another good thing he has done is to indict the Jewish-controlled Southern Poverty Law Center. I have observed for YEARS that every time the FBI issued a press release about alleged “white supremacy” in conjunction with the SPLC, and parroted by the Regime propaganda outlets in the media, it seemed to be transparently bogus and manufactured. There hasn’t been true white supremacy in this country since the 1950s, and even then it was waning.
I was right. These people were creating imaginary bogeymen to keep the donations flowing and to justify increased police powers over free speech and free assembly.
The founder of the SPLC was booted several yeas ago for being a dirty old perv.
Typical of his kind.
About time they got their comeuppance.
X, in a free country of free men with guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, “white supremacy” and “racism” are protected rights. The line gets crossed only by action, crimes by violent bigots.
This, “white supremacist” and “racist” may be epithets, but they are simply name calling by people who want to gain power over you.
I had great uncles who were Bundsmen. I used to cringe at that association. Now that I’m older and more experienced, I understand and approve. They stood for what was important to them. That is a virtue.
Yes.
I was personally threatened with physical violence by the SPLC’s Morris Dees and his private army of ex-spec-op bodyguards/goons about the middle of April of 1997, when he was on a speaking tour to pimp his book “Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat.”
It would make quite a tale (there was an outdoor foot chase in the dark) but I can’t touch-type and it would take a long time to hunt-and-peck it out with two fingers.
Then he (Dees) tried to claim that *I* threatened *him*, by asking the question, “What’s the difference between what you do and McCarthyism?” on a card he’d handed out, and then standing up to say in a loud voice, “I wrote that.”
But he/they couldn’t make it stick, because the whole thing occurred openly in public, in a packed auditorium. So there were hundreds of witnesses to the contrary.
It was soon after this that my (landline) phone started making funny noises, and I started getting really strange phone calls from strangers asking many nosy questions, and my mail was being clumsily opened and resealed, and my home was being clumsily and obviously surveilled, and I was being clumsily and obviously tailed in traffic and genuinely weird MIB-like characters started showing up at my door frequently, wanting to chat me up, wanting to come in and look around.
Not one of them ever gave a name or showed any kind of identification or credentials or said what agency they worked for.
It was like I was living in an extended “X-Files” episode.
4/2/26. Congratulations AG Blanche. Now you have 30 days to release the rest of the files before becoming criminally liable for failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. repthomasmassie
https://www.instagram.com/p/DWpmeU4DH9k/
Hi Eric, et al,
There are advantages to making access to pot a non revenue enhancing situation. For users, edibles are much easier on the body and it’s easier to titrate dosages for desired effect. IMO, the other side of the coin is that widespread pot usage makes the populace much easier to control…think Soma from Brave New World. The so-called war on drugs was simply a horrible idea from the getgo but it’s all in the pattern of control….the 21st century has been a horrible time for Americans.
Yeah, without getting too far into partisan show politics, in the 1970’s the majority of pot smokers I knew were Democrats. Rank and file Democrats are usually followers not leaders, so it makes sense. They usually follow the latest thing and mimic eachothers positions without questinining anything. The whole “question authority” movement from the late 1960’s to the late 1970s were people who were largely told to question only certain authority while conforming to environmentalist, pro drug, gay rights and some anti-war sentiment.
By contrast, Republithugs are authoritarians, but they didn’t like drugs, preferring authority being administered without lube.
It has been interesting that beginning during the last 10 years, many states began experimenting with relaxing their pot laws, many in unison.
Something is afoot.
Yeah, a drugged, complaint populace is easier to control and herd around.