Three Signs of Reduced Cannabis Stigma – Cannabis | weed | marijuana

What are three signs of reduced cannabis stigma? Don’t get us wrong – the cannabis stigma is still alive and well. But over the past week, we’ve noticed three new stories that suggest the needle is moving in the right direction.

From British Columbia declaring cannabis retail stores don’t need to cover their windows to Switzerland expanding its legal cannabis pilot. Progress may be a snail’s pace, but it’s something.

What is cannabis stigma?

We cannot see reduced cannabis stigma without asking: what is cannabis stigma? What is stigma?

Earlier this year, Dr. Julian Somers told CLN that stigma is like a scarlet letter. “There is a sign about you,” he said. “Maybe you sound less educated, or you look a little malnourished, maybe you’ve got some piercings and ink on your neck or something. Stuff like this.”

while dr Somers spoke about the drug and homelessness problems in all major Canadian cities, the same could be said about the stigma attached to cannabis.

In fact, there is a stigma associated with reggae music, bongs, cheech and chong, and other 20th-century stereotypes about cannabis users.

Non-cannabis users tend to view cannabis users as dumber or less intelligent than the more “sophisticated” types who prefer after-work cocktails.

Smell comes with a stigma: it affects too many medicinal cannabis patients. Especially during the “sobriety checks” that the police like to set up.

When Canada legalized cannabis, it certainly didn’t reduce the stigma attached to cannabis. If anything, cops and hardworking health officials have upped the drug war propaganda to eleven.

#3 Reduced Cannabis Stigma: Window Covers

A significant cannabis stigma in Canada is window coverings. Although cannabis is legal and hidden behind opaque, child-resistant plastic containers, governments require retailers to lock their storefronts so no one can see inside.

After a series of robberies and burglaries, the British Columbia government finally acquiesced to the cannabis retailers. These opaque window films are more harmful than helpful.

The most obvious example is a robbery in Vancouver earlier this year. Security footage showed the criminal attempting to steal from the store.

When attempting to rob a store in broad daylight, bystanders are typically witnesses and may call for help. But with opaque window coverings?

Who knows what’s going on in there?

Notably, window coverings are not required in British Columbia’s many public and private liquor stores.

#2 Reduced cannabis stigma: Switzerland expands cannabis trials to more cities

Ideally, Switzerland would legalize cannabis completely. If someone fines you or puts you in a cell for using a non-poisonous herb, that person is the criminal.

The law of governments is not the be-all and end-all of what is right and wrong. One might think that this point would be known. But decades of state schooling and the erosion of religious values ​​have lost us in the wilderness.

Separately, Switzerland’s move to expand its tightly controlled cannabis industry aims to reduce cannabis stigma.

In the long run, this could prove to be more beneficial. While many US jurisdictions legalize in ways more consistent with values ​​of individual liberty and private property, Switzerland’s top-down approach brings a key benefit.

Cannabis trials in Switzerland are decentralized and conducted by different universities. Several research findings will eliminate bias and be limited to the objective observations found across all studies.

In other words, the legalization of cannabis in Switzerland is the result of several researchers in different cities and not of bureaucrats implementing a unified system based on their definition of “best practices”.

While legalizing it in this way still suggests that the stigma surrounding cannabis is alive and well, the mere fact that the Swiss started this program (followed by the Netherlands and a non-profit German model) shows that there is a reduction in stigma of cannabis is becoming the norm.

#1 Reduced Cannabis Stigma: Doctors Don’t Drink Koolaid

Last week researchers published a study suggesting that a “cannabis use disorder” causes schizophrenia. Many media repeated the results of this study without pointing out the numerous methodological problems.

We’ve covered it here, but you might be skeptical that a site calling itself “Cannabis Life Network” would provide an unbiased report.

So here is an article from a real doctor. He too comes to the same conclusion.

The study states: “Assuming causality, approximately 15% of recent cases of schizophrenia in men in 2021 would have been prevented without CUD.” [cannabis use disorder].”

But like Dr. Chuck Dinerstein wrote:

“I’m not ready to take that leap. There’s more science to consider. I’m willing to consider both cannabis and alcohol as gateways to mental illness, but I think it might be more important to recognize that the gateway goes both ways—that is, schizophrenia in this case is a gateway to substance abuse … The narrative can go either way.”

Can cannabis trigger schizophrenia in people who are predisposed to the disease? Yes, all studies indicate that. The same goes for any substance, and alcohol seems to be the worst of them all.

Is 15% of schizophrenia cannabis related?

But will cannabis cause schizophrenia in otherwise healthy young adult men? “Not likely,” says Dr. dinner stone

And for us, this is the number one sign of reduced cannabis stigma. As cannabis legalization becomes a force that governments and pharmaceutical lobbyists can no longer stop, they are stepping up anti-cannabis propaganda to protect their investments.

The way they give children hormone blockers (or give free opioids to homeless addicts, or criticize the Covid regime), many doctors are too scared to speak out. We have returned to the pre-Christian values ​​of public humiliation.

So when an actual doctor reads this Danish study and publicly states that the researchers took “the leap of faith” in the link between cannabis use and schizophrenia, that’s a breath of fresh air.

It’s a sign of reduced cannabis stigma.

The future of cannabis

We’re not over the hill yet. The cannabis stigma is alive and well. But these three recent stories suggest that trends are moving in a positive direction.

Public health can complain and cry like children all they want. The fact is, people are forgoing medication and alcohol in favor of cannabinoid therapy.

The treatment of the cannabis retail trade like a Depression-era bookstore selling “Tijuana Bibles” is coming to an end. Even the most conservative European countries (and US states) are aspiring to legalize cannabis.

And doctors aren’t afraid to shout drug war propaganda when they see it.

Hopefully ten years from now we’ll be looking back at this as Reefer Madness 2.0. The era when the people demanded legal cannabis and those in power did everything they could to prevent it.

But as the saying goes: Facts don’t care about feelings. Nobody says you have to use cannabis, so it’s time to stop worrying about what other people are doing with their lives.

That means you need to reduce your cannabis stigma.