Cannabis, Racism & The Tokyo Olympics
Yep, We're Still On This!
In a recent interview with Forbes, Olympic athlete Megan Rapinoe discussed how her long-term, daily use of CBD products has improved her athletic performance.
MEANWHILE—Sha'Carri Richardson is suspended from competing in the Tokyo games for using cannabis....one. time.
This whole debate is undeniably fueled by racial discrimination, as well as ignorance about what separates hemp and cannabis plants (*spoiler* they're the same damn plant!).
Let’s clear this up, shall we…
First, it’s important to establish that the term “hemp” is a legal term and a legal term only.
Now, the CBD supplements that Megan Rapinoe has been taking are hemp-derived, so some are arguing that this distinction makes her usage okay.
And that line of thinking just shows that they don’t know what “hemp” actually is.
There’s regular hemp, which is a sativa plant, that grows really tall and its fibers are super useful for manufacturing goods like rope, cloth, paper, and also CBD products.
And then there’s the Indian hemp, which is the medicine variety—the one that people like to smoke.
The biggest difference? A hemp plant is just a sativa plant that contains 0.3% or less THC!
At the end of the day, hemp and cannabis are virtually the same plant.
So then we have to look at it from this perspective….
The difference between CBD and THC, which are both cannabinoids, is nothing but discrimination.
Here’s an analogy—think of THC like melanin. A plant that doesn’t have much “melanin” is considered hemp, and a plant that has a lot of melanin is considered (the dangerous & demonized) marijuana.
And, sidebar, the M word has racist roots. It entered our lexicon in a very negative way. I wrote a blog post on this if you want to educate yourself on the history.
So, hemp gets to be legal while cannabis is still a Schedule 1 substance, even though they’re essentially THE SAME DAMN PLANT!
Anyone that says otherwise, simply does not know shit. To prove it, here’s a little experiment you can do.
Go get a drug-sniffing dog. Put a hemp plant in front of it, and put a cannabis plant in front it—and guess what…
It’s going to bark at both plants because THC doesn’t have a scent!!
So at the end of the day, what’s essentially going on here is a white woman is allowed to use CBD multiple times daily—and still compete in the Olympics—but a black woman can’t use cannabis once without being benched.
Yes, I get that one technically “broke the rules,” but that is exactly the point. These rules are not only outdated and scientifically inaccurate, they also lend themselves to further racial discrimination. And that, is not by mistake my friends.
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