Yesterday,
I spoke with an inspector at America’s largest weed-delivery service (the
United States Postal Service), and he advised me to get a label lawyer. I only call it ‘weed-delivery’ to be
provocative. They are also,
coincidentally, the largest deliverer of pharmaceuticals. Just saying.
The
medicine in the cannabis known as CBD actually does come from a weed plant
whose proper name is cannabis. The
CBD in the plant is known for pain relief and healing. It’s science. Ask the American Cancer Society.
Two
years ago, if one googled ‘buy cbd oil’, there were twelve entries. One year ago, same search phrase, and
the results are twelve thousand entries. Do it now and you get over three million
results. That’s how many
options people now have in purchasing CBD.
So
why do the Sisters need a label lawyer?
“Because
you use the word ‘medicine’ on your web-site,” explained the inspector.
We
make no claims, we are as transparent and reach-able as possible, we refer
everyone to www.projectcbd.org, and tell them to do homework on dosages and
what doctors and experts are saying. We are a resource center, in a way,
teaching people to take ownership of their illnesses and learn, and research,
and be their own doctors. I explained all this to the inspector, but he
said we use the word 'medicine' on our website.
"It's
what we do! We make medicines by ancient wisdom custom and ritual, or
best we can guess at what that might have been, so, yes, probably, somewhere,
but we make no claims. We present it all as a grand human experiment
after seventy-five years of mother earth's finest medicine being maligned and
misrepresented!"
"I
understand." said the inspector.
"And
the right to grow is granted us under ‘medical marijuana’ laws," I
continued. "So how can I not use the word ‘medicine’, when it comes
from a plant that the government regulates as ‘medical’?"
“Your
products are not FDA approved,” I was told.
“We
say that, right in our product ads, on ETSY, the world’s largest platform for
selling home-made and hand-made goods, by the way.”
“That’s
not protection,” he said. “That’s
not enough.”
“So
you are advising me to get FDA approval of my products? We were planning to get that started
this year anyway, and I don’t know this for sure, but I have to guess that the
FDA might be an agency that played a significant role in keeping this medicine
out of the hands of the people for the past three quarters of a century. And so you are advising me to ask an
anti-cannabis organization to bless my cannabis products?”
The
Sisters could use another courier service, he said, because its only illegal to
use the post office, it only violates federal post office rules. In other words, we can call ourselves
medicine and our work medicine-work, but just not call ourselves that and use
the post office to ship our goods.
Hmmmmm.
I
then explained to the inspector that It is in the core of the beliefs of the
sisterhood that women heal women with words. Can I say that, you know, and still
use your postal service?, I asked. And won a chuckle.
I
explained that it is not an option for the Sisters to use an alternate courier
service, because the cost of using another service is double or more, and then,
suffering people would have to suffer additional cost, which is silly. The Sisters have always been advocates
of the United States Post Office. I
lived in Holland where the Post Office is the banking system of the people, a
non-profit, self-sustaining, bank of the people. It works. I think we should just give the
banking function to the post office, raise the cost of a piece of post to
one dollar, give all postal employees raises, and make the valley town offices
stay open on Saturdays, just like they do on the coast.
And
now, I need the post office to have my back. I want them to have my back –
which was, after all, the purpose of that call to that inspector,
yesterday.
In
summary, we the sisters are making and selling home-made goods on the worlds’ largest home-made,
hand-made sales portal. And
we consider ourselves to be a sisterhood that honors both Mother Earth and
Creator God. We follow
ancient wisdom, where the women make the medicines, and our sustainability
comes from medicinal cannabis. But
we can’t use the word medicine, without the FDA, the agency that has rejected
the health benefits of cannabis for three quarters of a century.
“That’s
my advice, ma’am.”
“Then
how do you explain the vast amount of CBD traveling around America, how do you
explain the three million ways one can access CBD over the internet and
the fact that the vast majority of deliveries pass through the post office?”
“Federal
law is sometimes slow to catch up with the will of the people,” he said
succinctly.
So
I compared this to the laws on the books that remain to this day, the silly
ones, like it still being illegal to tie your horse up on main street. It’s an irrelevant law that no one
cares about, but it’s a thing. And
this thing – this calling a spade a spade, it makes the Sisters potentially
unable to avail ourselves of post office services. It makes the cost of that, a new cost to the
patients of CBD.
