What makes you healthy, happy?

Our modern world is fast-paced, and technology-driven.

This is true of our banking and economic systems, our medical care, the commercial food supply, and our sociopolitical structure.

It’s a fact of our daily lives. There are different levels to the rat race, but we are all caught up in it at least a little bit, some of us a little bit too much.

It is often said you need money to live, and our daily lives revolve around pursuit of dollars so we can exchange them for food, water, shelter, and the things we truly need.

In a world with no dollars, there would still be some system to trade your day’s work for your daily bread and meet your needs. I suggest that based on this logic, money is not what you need to live. Our financial system is headed more and more to being electronic and traceable.

Our allopathic medical care is similarly at odds with its stated goals. It can’t be argued that what we can do with pharmaceuticals and surgical interventions is a feat of modern science and engineering, but like all great and powerful things, too much is, well, too much.

When a medication’s side effects are worse than the symptoms of the original imbalance or injury, or when a pill only treats symptoms of a disease, I believe we can do better.

Natural healing methods and functional medicine seek to treat the core imbalance at its root cause. The goal is to aid the body in operating optimally and healing itself completely where no further intervention is warranted.

Our commercial food supply and the stated government dietary recommendations and guidelines are adequate to achieve a minimum level of nutrition and are insufficient to maintain optimal health, balance and brain function.

In fact, good nutrition and a full spectrum of micronutrients are difficult to achieve with our commercial food supply because of the different catalyst and combinations required.

It’s a tragedy that we feed our schoolchildren this way. The government claims it solves food insecurity and promotes good health and learning with subsidized food.

Our two-party government is divisive and corrupt. If we circle back around to the money for a minute, we can see that it is unimaginable power to be able to distribute the tax dollars collected.

Politicians’ main job seems to be ensuring reelection and playing the game of tit for tat to promote their agendas and nepotism. The result of such corruption and ineffective governance under this system is that we are divided. Most of us are fairly centrist, but we are forced to pledge allegiance to one side or another and then get lumped in with the extremist viewpoint.

All this creates a competition for resources and a mistrust of our neighbors that is not natural. We are a tribe, or perhaps a handful of tribes, but we no longer live like one. Cannabis restores balance to so many of these issues. Perhaps that’s why it was subject to prohibition that exists to this day. It seems odd that cannabis is federally illegal, despite 30-year-old state laws that make it legal medically. It is also notable that, despite the legal status, the government is happy to tax state legal cannabis businesses heavily.

So how does cannabis resolve such a diverse set of modern issues?

In our fast-paced, divided modern world, it is of immeasurable value to sit and relax and share a joint with a few of our comrades.

This experience will show us how similar we are and allow us to experience people’s unique talents and share their interests. This pause also allows the mind and body to catch up and recover from the stress we put it through running from one place and activity to the next. By pausing to have these conversations about our life and liberty and government, we are able to not feel so alone in our views or fear those that may side with a different party. It breaks down the fear of what is unknown.

Cannabis restores a basic nutritional deficiency that was caused by prohibition.

That is why we see such profound healing effect in mammals suffering from a wide range of conditions. You see, this nutrient deficiency manifests differently in each of us. Typically, a system that is weak or vulnerable will show the signs first and most strongly. When we supplement with phytocannabinoids, our endocannabinoid system more effectively communicates with other body systems to heal. Cannabinoids also have a very important antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect, all while being safe and nontoxic. When you use cannabinoids to treat inflammation, there is no wear and tear on your liver.

Cannabis production is good for other crops and the rest of our food supply and nutrition in another way as well. It is an accumulator plant and will pull heavy metals out of soil and help farmland maintain balance and productivity.

All these benefits and more can come from cannabis production. I haven’t spoken here of industrial uses of hemp and clean green sustainable fuel sources, of sustainable carbon neutral building materials; on and on the potentials go. Perhaps the most important thing is it gets people engaged, gets them talking about these and other important issues. To have such open conversations and share these ideas can only benefit our tribe and local communities.

This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2023.