We used cannabis as a medicine for millennia… Then a Deep State cover-up began in Washington, D.C… In the mailbag: “People should be able to decide what to put in their own bodies”…
As regular readers know, one of the biggest profit opportunities we’ve been tracking for you here at the Daily Cut is the wave of cannabis legalization sweeping North America… and the globe.
In the U.S., cannabis is illegal at the federal level. But 33 states, along with Washington, D.C., have legalized the plant in some form.
Meanwhile in Canada, cannabis has been legal for recreational use nationwide since last June. And in late October, the Mexican supreme court ruled that anti-cannabis laws there are unconstitutional.
Mexico joins Belize… Costa Rica… Jamaica… Argentina… Colombia… Ecuador… Belgium… Portugal… and Switzerland as places where the police won’t bust you for personal possession.
That’s the story we know. But how cannabis became illegal in the first place remains a mystery for most folks.
So, today, we’re going to try to figure out what happened…
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You see, the feds’ pot ban had nothing to do with genuine health or public safety concerns over cannabis. (In fact, before they made it illegal, cannabis was widely used as a medicine.)
Instead, it had everything to do with Swamp politics. And it’s led to the biggest medical cover-up in history.
But as we’ll make clear at the end of today’s dispatch, pot’s tortured legal status in the U.S. points to potentially massive gains in a specific type of cannabis.
It’s a type of cannabis colleague Teeka Tiwari believes could deliver the same kind of gains he’s helped folks achieve in the cryptocurrency market.
Cannabis was one of the first plants we cultivated. And we have lots of evidence that ancient civilizations used it widely as a medicine.
There are records from 2nd-century China that physicians there used cannabis as an anesthetic. And the Ebers Papyrus, from about 1550 B.C., describes medical cannabis use in Ancient Egypt.
The ancient Greeks dressed wounds with it. The ancient Indians used it to treat headaches and insomnia. And from the 8th to the 18th centuries, Arab physicians used it to treat everything from inflammation, to pain, to seizures.
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O’Shaughnessy was born in Limerick in Ireland in 1809. He studied medicine at Trinity College… which also happens to be my alma mater.
And he went on to become a brilliant medical researcher and inventor.
His research led to the introduction of life-saving intravenous fluid electrolyte therapy in the treatment of cholera.
He also developed breakthrough forensic methods for detecting arsenic poisoning… worked on early battery development… experimented with early forms of color photography… and was knighted by Queen Victoria for his work on telegraphy.
After joining a British cavalry regiment in 1835, he ended up in India (which Britain colonized). And he noticed how often people there used cannabis to treat a range of ailments.
Like any good researcher, this piqued O’Shaughnessy’s interest. He started doing medical trials with the plant. And he found cannabis was effective against not only epileptic seizures in children… but also rheumatism and spasms caused by tetanus.
After he completed his research, O’Shaughnessy published a treatise on cannabis. It dealt with all the evidence he’d compiled on medical benefits of cannabis.
It sparked widespread interest among British doctors in its medical potential. This practice then spread to the U.S.
And by the late 1800s, doctors in Britain and America regularly prescribed cannabis to treat the ailments O’Shaughnessy had researched.
The cannabis ancient physicians used… and O’Shaughnessy described in his treatise… wasn’t a national security threat, or a public safety issue, or a health emergency.
In fact, the medical establishment regarded it as a wonder drug that could treat life-threatening conditions.
So why did governments drive it underground?
As you’ll recall, that’s the Prohibition era.
With the country in the grip of a moral panic, Washington banned all forms of alcohol.
Meanwhile, the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 was triggering another form of panic – this time, over the waves of Mexican immigrants fleeing the war and entering the U.S.
And Mexicans changed the way folks consumed cannabis. Most Americans ingested cannabis as a tincture. But Mexican immigrants smoked it in joints.
This gave the feds an opportunity too good to pass up.
You see, when Prohibition ended in 1933, there was an entire federal bureaucracy, the Bureau of Prohibition, left with nothing to do. With alcohol now legal again… the feds needed a new enemy.
After Prohibition ended, war-on-drugs warriors inside the Deep State of the time began associating “marijuana” with Mexican immigrants.
Leading the charge was former Bureau of Prohibition assistant commissioner – and founding commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics – Harry Anslinger.
During Prohibition, Anslinger said cannabis did no harm. But after Prohibition ended… he changed his tune.
Here’s a snippet from a public campaign he waged against pot…
By the tons it is coming into this country – the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms. […]
Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters.
I could go on. But you get the point.
In a 1929 survey, 29 out of 30 American Medical Association members disagreed with claims that cannabis was dangerous.
But that didn’t stop Congress from reacting to Anslinger’s new moral panic over pot by passing the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.
It effectively made the possession or sale of cannabis illegal at a federal level. And it laid the groundwork for President Nixon – four decades later – to make cannabis a Schedule 1 substance… along with heroin, LSD (“acid”), and MDMA (“ecstasy”).
As we showed you here, this was Tricky Dicky’s way at hitting out at two groups he didn’t like – the anti-war left and African Americans. Or as his domestic policy advisor at the time, John Ehrlichman, later put it…
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
But finally, the cover-up is over. Like we mentioned up top, cannabis is legal in the majority of U.S. states now.
Colleague Nick Giambruno was one of the first analysts at Legacy to put this wave of cannabis legalization on readers’ radars.
Here’s what he told our Crisis Investing readers back in June 2017…
Marijuana is still illegal in most places. That’s made it virtually impossible for everyday investors to cash in on the lucrative marijuana trade (unless you prefer the outlaw lifestyle).
Prohibition has funneled billions of dollars in profits to drug lords, corrupt government officials, and thugs.
But those days are numbered… A legal global marijuana industry is springing to life before our eyes. In the coming months, investors in the right positions will make life-changing fortunes as the marijuana market emerges from the shadows.
Legalization is inevitable… And it’s going to unleash a $150 billion market that was previously underground. Those profits are up for grabs.
And when Nick weighs in on the pot industry… our ears always prick up.
Nick recommended his first legal pot stock in that June 2017 issue. Since then, open pot stocks in the Crisis Investing model portfolio are up 64%… 506%… and even 638%.
And the average gain across 10 open pot stock recommendations is 115%.
And while we wait for full legalization in the U.S. of the cannabis that gets you “high”… there’s another type of cannabis that’s already 100% legal.
It doesn’t get you high… like regular cannabis. And its medical potential is possibly even bigger.
Next Wednesday, you can find out more about this 100% legal type of cannabis… and why Teeka believes it will deliver crypto-like gains.
As you’ll see, he’s found a unique way to play the cannabis legalization trend. It’s a little-known strategy Wall Street has used for years to make millions. And Teeka has been using it for years to explode his own wealth higher.
Now, you can join him. Click here to reserve your seat.
In tomorrow’s Cut, you’ll be hearing from Teeka directly. If you find the cannabis industry confusing, what Teeka’s covering tomorrow is a must-read.
He’ll show you what to look for in the industry… and clear up some of the confusion a lot of investors have… so you don’t pour your hard-earned money into the wrong kind of cannabis investments.
As regular readers know, the pot legalization debate ran for months. (Catch up on some of the back and forth here.) Readers pitched in passionately on both sides.
For instance, a lot of you think the feds have no right to tell us what to put into our bodies. Take this comment from reader Karen W.:
I find it very interesting that people are so passionate about telling other people what to do “for their own good.” People should be able to decide what to put in their own bodies. Of course, with freedom comes responsibility – people would have to be held accountable for their actions if they were given the freedom to choose.
As an adult, I am both responsible and accountable for myself and my children while they are minors. It should be up to me to decide what is appropriate for me and for my family, not up to the government or anyone else who believes that they know better than me.
Of course, this would mean that anyone who injured themselves or someone else while under the influence of drugs would have to be accountable and make reparations. Otherwise, the cost would have to be borne by taxpayers, which I certainly don’t agree with.
But a lot of you, like reader Nasir I. below, think cannabis is harmful… and therefore the government was right in making it illegal…
We are moving in a wrong direction with legalizing pot. Haven’t we learned anything from alcohol? So many drunk-driving deaths, so many families uprooted, and the cost to the society resulting from that.
For me, Legacy Research cofounder Doug Casey summed it up best in his classic essay, “The Only Answer to the War on Drugs.” You can read it here… and join the conversation.
Were the feds right to ban pot? Or has it just pushed a valuable medicine underground? Write us at [email protected].
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
June 19, 2019
Lisbon, Portugal
P.S. I know that drug legalization is a hot topic. And some fear it will lead to all sorts of social problems.
But here in Portugal, it’s the other way around. The country had a lot of social problems due to drugs when the cops were busting users. But as I wrote here, since the government decriminalized drugs, those social problems have dramatically improved.
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