| The government has no obligation to protect people from themselves; only to resolve disputes and determine whether a party actually violated the rights of another or the state. Public health is a worthwhile expenditure intended to help people make good decisions about their health and safety As a community, we require standards with which to resolve disputes brought before the court: trade disputes, liability disputes; disputes over loss and infringed rights. In the status quo, such disputes involving illicit substances are resolved by the parties themselves: in the streets. Consumers are very unlikely to implicate themselves or their suppliers in order to bring safety to the market: child-safe packaging and labelling, liability insurance. Should we require (1) legislation-justifying research to be held and made available for further review; (2) bills which intend to achieve a particular objective to be achieving that objective within a predefined amount of time according to an agreed-upon set of criteria before we continue to throw money at a failing approach? Does Strict Scrutiny - developed to resolve 14th Amendment Equal Protection cases - implicitly require a bill which is transgressing literally our highest law ("Equal Justice Under Law") to be achieving the public safety interest it intended to solve? For precedent, In Korematsu (1944) the court ruled that Equal Protection could be set aside in order to send Japanese-looking people to internment camps. The age-old claim that CBD is not medically useful for any person with any condition is now disproven by the FDA's clearance to market Epidiolex; we should be asking how such an invalid assertion remained on the books; and whether it's ever been legal to differentially prosecute on the basis of disability. THC is already recognized as on-label medically useful for AIDS and Cancer wasting. THC and other cannabinoids and terpenes may counteract some of the side-effects of just CBD. |