What I Want You to Know About Cannabis

One day someone will pass you a joint, and you’ll have to decide what you think. Maybe that day has come and gone. I want you to hear about this plant from me, not from a poster at school. I helped build a business around it, so keep that in mind.

I stayed away from it for a long time, mostly out of fear. When I finally tried it as a grown man, I was with people who were nothing like the stoner on TV. It didn’t turn me into someone else, and I didn’t expect that.

This is rule one. You’re not sealed off. In letter two, I told you about the part of you named after this plant. Your body has its own keys for that lock. The plant has keys that fit it too. You had that lock long before anyone lit a joint.

People have used it for thousands of years, for rope, cloth, paper, food and medicine. A hundred years ago, American doctors gave it for pain and sleep.

It is real medicine today, too. In 2017, the top science group in America read the research. It found strong proof that it helps with pain that won’t go away, with the sick stomach cancer care can bring, and with tight muscles from MS. In 2018, the FDA said yes to a medicine made from CBD, a part of the plant that doesn’t get you high. It helps with two rare and terrible kinds of seizures that start in childhood. Before that, a little girl named Charlotte Figi let the country see what CBD could do. Her seizures nearly stopped, and her story led state after state to change the law.

For millions of people, it’s just a good thing. It helps them laugh, rest, eat, make art and feel close to the people they love. That counts too.

So why did you grow up hearing that it was dangerous? Why was I so scared? That story has an author.

In 1930, Harry Anslinger took over a new government drug office. He made his name on fear. He used that fear against Mexican people and Black jazz players. He told wild stories that tied the plant to crime. Many were not true. The news ran them anyway. In 1937, Congress passed a law that made the plant almost impossible to grow or sell. Doctors spoke against it. Congress passed it anyway.

In 1970, the government put cannabis on its worst list, called Schedule I. That list means “no medical use.” Heroin is on it too. Two years later, a group mostly picked by President Nixon said people with a little for themselves shouldn’t be arrested. The government paid no attention for fifty years.

In 1988, a DEA judge called the plant “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” His bosses threw out his ruling.

For more than fifty years, American scientists could only study cannabis from one farm in Mississippi. One of them called it a weak green powder. Then the same government said there wasn’t enough research.

The worst harm was to people. Between 2010 and 2018, police here arrested people for it more than six million times. Black and white people use it at about the same rate. Black people were almost four times as likely to be arrested. Being arrested can follow you for life. It can cost you a job, a home, money for school, or time with your kids. That is the real harm, and it never came from the plant.

This is rule two. You see your map, not the world. Anslinger drew a map out of fear, and a whole country spent almost ninety years inside it. Rule five says the world gets the last word, and the world has made itself clear. More than half of the people in America now live in a state where it’s legal for adults. In 2024, Germany made it legal too. In 2026, the government finally put the medical cannabis that states allow on a lower list. The rest of the plant is still on the list with heroin.

Love the plant, and treat it like a good wine. Start low and go slow. Anything you eat can take two hours to kick in.