Check out this tweet from the United Nations …
Fortunately, as a free citizen of the United States who regularly exercises personal sovereignty, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is of no concern to me. Nor should it be a concern to anyone else in any state that has legalized the recreational use of cannabis.
To clarify, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs classified cannabis as highly addictive and liable to abuse. Yet so is NyQuil, but I can pick that up at my local drugstore.
So is tequila, but I can pick that up at my local liquor store.
And so is sugar, and nearly every single packaged food in this country contains sugar – a highly addictive drug that is far more dangerous than cannabis could ever be.
So yes, it’s hard to take this 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs seriously.
The UN went on to note the following …
- Concern that the growing cannabis industry advertises products, particularly to young people, in ways that lower the perception of risk involved in using them.
False!
The legal market operates within strict regulatory guidelines that disallow advertising to children. But certainly there are other products containing drugs – in this case, sugar – that are regularly advertised to children …
In all fairness, Tony the Tiger is an icon.
- The impact of legalizing cannabis on society is difficult to measure because legislative models vary from country to country and data is still limited.
Data is still limited because cannabis has been prohibited for nearly a century – for no other reason than to persecute poor people and minorities.
- Many countries continue to have difficulties procuring enough controlled substances for medical treatment, including during emergency situations.
Many countries have difficulties procuring all kinds of drugs for medical treatment, yet the UN is suddenly concerned with supply restraints when it comes to cannabis?
What’s particularly confusing about this, though, is that the UN’s Office on Human Rights published the following comments just last year …
Data and experience accumulated by UN experts have shown that the “war on drugs” undermines health and social wellbeing and wastes public resources while failing to eradicate the demand for illegal drugs and the illegal drug market. Worse, this “war” has engendered narco-economies at the local, national and regional levels in several instances to the detriment of national development. Such policies have far-reaching negative implications for the widest range of human rights, including the right to personal liberty, freedom from forced labour, from ill-treatment and torture, fair trial rights, the rights to health, including palliative treatment and care, right to adequate housing, freedom from discrimination, right to clean and healthy environment, right to culture and freedoms of expression, religion, assembly and association and the right to equal treatment before the law.
Do these guys at the UN talk to each other?
Fortunately, the free market is proving to be the most important tool in the fight against the war on drugs. And it’s a tool that is far more important than the holier-than-thou narcs over at the UN.
With billions of dollars being generated every year from the cannabis industry, it is now too big to stop. And this is a good thing.
Little by little, the prohibition of cannabis is being chipped away, and what is taking its place is a vibrant market that is creating millions of jobs, bolstering local economies, and allowing law enforcement to focus on real crime – not innocent folks smoking joints on their front porches.
And of course, this reality continues to offer investors the opportunity to make a few bucks in the cannabis space. Although those waters are still a bit choppy.
I opined on this in a recent interview that you can watch here.
