Can You Trust Cannabis Experts?

Can you trust cannabis experts?

A lot depends on who these “experts” are. A cannabis farmer with decades of experience? A budtender with extensive knowledge of cannabis goods?

Those people are experts.

What about doctors and other healthcare workers? Many presume them to be experts in all fields related to medicine and nutrition.

But is this extending their expertise too far? For example, during the covid hysteria of 2020-21, many healthcare professionals advocated for lockdowns and domestic passports.

This was “science,” and opposition to it was misinformation. But covid restrictions were normative statements, not indisputable facts.

Of course, the is/ought distinction has been lost on a generation of scientists who see no value in philosophy.

So with this in mind, it’s crucial to differentiate between real cannabis experts and the pseudo-experts of “public health.”

I only bring it up because of a recent paper published in Public Health Nutrition.

Regarding the “experts” who decide US Government Dietary Guidelines, they found “95% of the committee members had Conflicts Of Interest with the food, and/or pharmaceutical industries.”

Can You Trust Cannabis Experts?

Generally, you can trust your local cannabis experts, whether budtenders, growers, or extractors. Even when “illegal” or “unregulated,” these people consume the product they’re producing. They have zero incentives to harm themselves or others.

But what about so-called public health experts on boards and member committees? In the study referenced above, 95% of these so-called experts had financial ties to lobbying groups and large corporations.

Companies like Abbott, Cargill, Dannon, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Mead Johnson, McDonald’s, Nestle, Pepsi, and Syngenta.

The people dictating the optimal American diet are in bed with corporations selling ultra-processed junk food and pesticides. Is it any wonder that American obesity rates have tripled over the last sixty years?

Likewise, 75% of the Food & Drug Administration’s funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry. Should we be surprised that reefer madness is making a comeback? A non-toxic flower Pharma cannot patent does not bode well for their profiteering scams.

Consider what Robert F. Kennedy Jr told Joe Rogan,

I realized during these conversations [with vaccine regulators] that none of these people had read any of the science; they just repeated things that they had been told about the science. And they kept saying to me, ‘Well, I can’t answer that detailed question. You need to talk to Paul Offit.’ Well, Paul Offit is a vaccine developer who made a $186 million deal with Merck on the rotavirus vaccine. It was odd to me that government regulators were saying, ‘You should talk to someone in the industry.’ It’s like, you know, I used to talk to EPA people all the time. Asking them, what does this provision mean in the permit? Why did you put it in there? And if they said to me, ‘I don’t know, why don’t you go talk to the coal industry, or this lobbyist for the coal industry, and he will tell you what we’re doing,’ I would have been very, you know, puzzled and indigent. It was weird to me that the top regulators in the country were telling me go talk to somebody who’s an industry insider because we don’t understand the science.

Cui Bono?

Can you trust cannabis experts? Some yes, others not at all. The corporate press will claim certain facts are “misinformation” without explanation.

But it’s up to you to determine what is accurate. And you can only do this when presented with all the available information, whether factual or not.

But we’re in a world where “doing your own research” has negative connotations. Which is telling. It’s similar to the Bill Hicks joke. “What are you reading for?” Not what are you reading, but what are you reading for?

Don’t you know the experts have already established the correct opinions?

Never mind that the “experts” crafting the government’s diet and medicine guidelines have clear conflicts of interest. These people are not, nor will ever be, cannabis experts.

It’s little wonder RFK Jr. is condemned as an “anti-vaxxer,” that saturated fat is associated with heart disease, or that cannabis “causes” psychosis and schizophrenia.

Who benefits from your trust? Are they worthy of it? Is it in your best interests to listen to them? Or should you do your own research?