Word Soup

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.

I feel like we are caught in a big bowl of word soup.  Medicine is at the core of our beliefs.  Medicine is what we believe the people need during these turbulent times.  Medicine comes in all forms.  Word Medicine is good.  Word soup is not.  

He said he understood my position and he was a very nice man, that inspector at the USPS.  But I hung up the phone shaking my head.