A Budding Cannabis Cottage-Industry has set the stage for an Impending Public Health Crisis

Abstract

There is only one legally-competent authority in the United States (US) that can determine what is and what isn’t medicine – the Food & Drug Administration. In 2018, under US and International statutes, marijuana is not medicine. Individual states have approved the cultivation, sale, and distribution of a Schedule I controlled substance in direct violation of International and U.S. drug control statutes. The current administration of the US allows the daily violation and nullification of 3 International United Nation treaties as well as the US Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act (1970). In a search for nirvana, a growing subculture has emerged that has taken the hallucinogen, Δ9- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), of the 1960s to “infinity and beyond”. Techniques to “boost” or potentiate the actual THC content of marijuana by agricultural refinement, fertilization, and hybrid cultivation of “home grown” or medical advocate suppliers for the “medicinal marijuana” market has dramatically changed the subjective experience of smoked product. More disturbing is the intentional adulteration of bulk harvested materials (spicing), the development of “kitchen-based” extraction techniques (dabbing), and the processes of dose administrations that have grown almost exponentially over the last decade that sets the stage for a new chimera to drug safety in the US. These cottage industries are poised and waiting for national drug control policies to be further weakened to the point of a public health crisis. While legislators debate the drug control issue, a whole subliminal industry has developed in anticipation of free farming of cannabis, with the intent of delivering hybrid dosing of THC concentrations not believed to be possible just a few years ago.