There is optimism among some marijuana executives that the federal government’s potential reclassification of cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 could open the door for interstate commerce in marijuana products. However, legal experts in the marijuana industry caution that this optimism is only partially warranted.
Schedule 3, along with Schedules 4 and 5, currently allows interstate commerce only for drugs that have received approval from the FDA. This approval includes drugs such as testosterone, ketamine, anabolic steroids and certain formulations of THC, such as Syndros, Marinol and dronabinol.
The crucial factor, according to Bianchi and Brandt attorney Justin Brandt, is FDA approval. Only cannabis products approved by the FDA would be eligible for interstate commerce under Schedule 3. However, the legalization of medical marijuana at the state level does not automatically grant it Schedule 3 status. It remains separate from FDA approval and the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), making it technically federally illegal.
While non-FDA-approved cannabis products would remain federally illegal, the prevailing belief is that rescheduling will deter federal authorities from interfering with state-law-compliant cannabis enterprises.
Over the past decade, Congress has consistently passed budget legislation preventing the use of federal funds to crack down on state-regulated marijuana businesses. This legislative trend has contributed to the federal government largely leaving marijuana companies alone, despite the substance’s Schedule 1 classification.
The potential move to Schedule 3 is expected to further reduce federal interference with compliant businesses that adhere to state laws. Moreover, if states have established agreements allowing for interstate commerce under specific conditions, as seen in Washington, Oregon and California, federal intervention could be even less probable.
Hawaii is also testing federal cannabis enforcement boundaries with legislation allowing state-licensed companies to sell wholesale marijuana to businesses on other islands. However, the legislation acknowledges that state law does not override federal marijuana prohibitions, emphasizing the inherent risks involved in such activities.
Jaclyn Moore, CEO of Big Island Grown, who completed the first interisland transport under these regulations, underscores the importance of compliance. She recognizes the uncertainty regarding federal interference and advises businesses to prioritize compliance, particularly given the greater need for enforcement against the illicit market.
Eric Berlin from global law company Dentons suggests that FDA approval for marijuana products would facilitate full engagement in interstate commerce, potentially opening avenues for states to enact certain levels of interstate trade. Nabis CEO Vince Ning acknowledges that while rescheduling may not change the legal landscape for state-regulated cannabis products, it could influence federal law enforcement policies and attitudes toward interstate commerce.
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Johns Hopkins University recently held a congressional briefing series that was attended by experts from different fields, including policymakers as well as members of the public. During the briefings, associate professor Matthew Eisenberg posited that treatment with psychedelic substances in the long-term could save millions in dollars for the healthcare system while also transforming it.
Eisenberg cited data showing that one in twenty-five individuals in America suffered from a severe mental illness while one in five adults had a mental illness. He explained that the standard of care treatment for mental conditions involved cognitive therapy and the long-term use of drugs that were expensive. Given that psychedelics had demonstrated effectiveness in shorter periods during clinical trials, Eisenberg theorized that their use could possibly save the healthcare system millions or even billions through reduced need for inpatient care, decreased drug costs and reduced reliance on long-term disability benefits.
At the moment, however, there exist obstacles that prevent psychedelics from being considered as ethically, scientifically and financially beneficial to the general public. Assistant professor Sandeep Nayak of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, stated that while psychedelics were illegal, they were regulated.
Nayak added that with legitimate scientific reasons to carry out research, one could acquire approvals from different government agencies that allowed them to study the drugs legally. He also acknowledged that it could take some time between when one received approval to study the drugs and when trials commenced, noting that including safeguards against misuse of psychedelic drugs was essential.
Another obstacle to the scientific process, as stated by Frederick S. Barrett, the director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, was the inability to study specific substances because of current regulations. Barrett gave the example of ketamine and psilocybin, noting that the scientific community knew more about the former drug in comparison to the latter one because of their classifications.
Currently, psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, which means it is restricted for clinical purposes and prescriptions of the drug are not permitted. On the other hand, ketamine is classified as a Schedule II drug, despite the fact that ketamine is more potent that psilocybin.
Barrett asserted that most studies focused on psychedelics that had been used outside a controlled context and not enough data had been gathered to warrant a trial involving humans. To solve this, he proposed that safety and toxicology trials for psychedelics that were expressly prohibited for research be conducted after which results could be compared to drugs that are already permitted for research.
Despite the regulatory hurdles in the way of psychedelic research, enterprises such as atai Life Sciences N.V. (NASDAQ: ATAI) have robust drug-development programs underway, and the progress that they are making is laying the groundwork for making policy reform a near no-brainer.
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A Toronto city councillor wants to know why Ontario has not shared the additional promised tax revenue from cannabis sales with the city.
James Pasternak, Toronto city councillor for Ward 6 York Centre and the Chair of the North York Community Council, first tabled a letter in late September to the Toronto City manager asking about revenue from cannabis sales that the Ontario government had promised to cities like Toronto.
Although the province had fulfilled its initial promises to distribute $40 million over two years to municipalities who opted in to allowing private retail cannabis stores, Pasternak says the provincial government has yet to fulfil an additional promise to distribute half of any additional tax revenue the province receives from its portion of federal excise tax on cannabis sales that exceeds $100 million.
The city says it has not received any update on cannabis excise tax revenue sharing from the Ontario government.
Toronto has received just under $9 million as part of its share of this initial $40 million (Ontario distributed $30 million, setting aside another $10 for “unforeseen costs”) in four payments, with the majority of funds delivered in three payments in 2019, along with one smaller payment in 2021. All funds were received and contributed to Toronto’s Cannabis Reserve Fund.
In a letter to Councillor Pasternak, the Toronto City manager says that of the $8.97 million received in the City’s Cannabis Reserve Fund, $8 million has been withdrawn to support enforcement actions against illicit cannabis businesses, like cannabis retail owners and production facilities, and enforcement of cannabis laws like impaired driving and other cannabis-related penalties. The remaining funds are expected to be used within the next year.
Despite these initial payments, the Ontario government reported a total revenue of $310 million in Ontario’s portion of the Federal Cannabis Excise Duty during the 2022/2023 fiscal period, $210 million beyond the $100 million threshold set.
The Ontario Government has also budgeted another $269 million from its portion of the Federal Cannabis Excise Duty for the 2023- 2024 fiscal period.
On October 13, Toronto City Council sent a letter to the Ontario Board of Health requesting info on what the cannabis funds had been spent on and whether any such allocations included funds for addiction treatment or addressing mental health issues.
The Board of Health will be considering the question on November 27, which will then be considered by Toronto City Council on December 13, 2023, subject to the actions of the Board of Health.
Cities in other provinces have raised similar concerns about what they say is their share of the federal excise tax from cannabis. For years, cities in BC’s Lower Mainland have been raising the issue.
Earlier this year, municipalities in New Brunswick were asking for their share. In 2021, the Association of Manitoba Municipalities released a position paper that called on the province to share 25 percent of its cannabis tax revenue with its municipalities. More recently, the provincial government in Manitoba said there were few “societal costs” associated with legalization.
The same issues were raised in the association’s pre-budget plan. The report notes that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) says that municipal administration and local policing costs related to legalization will total $3-4.75 million per 500,000 residents, representing a range of approximately $210-335 million per year in costs incurred by municipalities across Canada.
“According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), municipal administration and local policing costs linked to cannabis legalization will total $3-4.75 million per 500,000 residents on an annual basis,” wrote the AMM in an email to StratCann. “Since these costs should not be downloaded to municipalities, it is imperative that municipalities be included as meaningful participants in revenue-sharing conversations. We continue to urge the federal and provincial governments to co-develop a revenue-sharing model that respects municipal authority.”
We are all interested in love, I would say. Most, if not everyone, is searching for that perfect experience of love, unless they’ve already found it for themselves. Of course, this is just my opinion, but when you ask anyone, who is unhappy in one way or someway, ‘what are you looking for?’, the answer is probably some form of love.
The trick to this search, though, is willing to see how we are ‘not love’, so that all may become love. Not the doings of love, as in some action or inaction but the being of love, the expression of that which we all seek to know intimately.
Even in this video chat, when I looked at most, if not all, of the comments, there were ‘defined’ by people’s definitions of love, and not what main topic, the intent of this conversation, was about, “What is love telling you?”. Usually it is telling you how you are not, yet, fully love. What needs to change inside so your outside can match that!. Judgements, past perceptions, beliefs, limitations and all other expression of ‘what is love’ are useless, I would say, unless you are now, in your present moment, experiencing all the love you wish to experience.
If not, and this is most of us….well, something needs to change, and that something is always ‘us’….I have seen for myself. Love in it’s many forms, or love as the formless energy we can be are not the same thing. I’ve heard it said ‘That God is Love’, spirit, Buddha, whatever name you wish to give the force of life that gifted us all with love, with life, which is love….is just ‘being love’. Humans, though, have usually chosen to pick up so much ‘baggage’, so many beliefs, past regrets, shame, blame, parental upbringing, etc…all of which may ‘get in the way’ of the clear sight that love can offer.
Perhaps, if somehow, we are not happy with the love or loving experiences in our life, we can find those inner resources we all have access too, and use them to ‘accept’ personal responsibility to change ourselves. To see that the ‘not so nice’ things in our daze are simply reminders of what we can do different to allow for all the love to, first, blossom and then overwhelm and becomes us, as we can be, become, Love.
No, it ain’t easy, and I’m still working on it, daily, but hey, what is better that being love, even if the pains first hurt to help heal the meaning of my life, which is Love, which will allow me to say ‘My Happy Destiny is Unavoidable’, and yours can be too.
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The hubris of homo sapiens in claiming superiority over all other species has been the source of severe damage. Humanity is merely one spirit form among countless billions.
To disregard the problems facing the Earth and to proceed with business as usual in education would be a betrayal of trust. Our students want to know how to make a difference. They need hope. And it won’t come if all we can offer is another scientific theory or technological fix.
We must expand our vision to seek non-scientific alternatives. To make a difference, we must search for different understandings. Let us look to the wisdom of our ancestors. They believed that intelligence is not restricted to humans but is possessed by all creatures – plants as well as animals — and by the Earth itself.
They also believed in spirits. Human welfare was understood to depend on tapping into these wellsprings of wisdom, and all ancient societies (just like indigenous peoples today) had specialists skilled in communication with the natural world and with spirits.
These people we now call shamans, and this article argues for the inclusion of shamanic practice in the educational curriculum. Shamanism gives working access to an alternative technique of acquiring knowledge. Although a pragmatic, time-tested system, it makes no claim to be science. Its strengths and limitations are different from those of the sciences and thus complement them.
Being affective and subjective, shamanism offers another way of knowing.
Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would have us accept only the known – and that too with limitations – and live in a known framework, just as if we were sure how far life actually extends. . . . The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes. . . . Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism: under its dominion the individual is pauperised. – Carl Jung
Of course science will offer some valuable new directions, but at the same time we must expand our vision to seek non-scientific alternatives. To make a difference, we must search for different understandings. I am fortunate to live in a country, New Zealand, where many of my compatriots have an understanding of past and future that is fundamentally different from the prevailing ‘Western’ view.
Most in our civilisation consider it self-evident that we stand facing the future with the past behind us, but traditionally for New Zealand Maori it is the future that is behind them.
They stand facing the past and their ancestors, who are a living presence in spirit. It is the vision of the ancestors that guides the present generation into the unseen future, with one clear and overriding purpose: to prosper the generations yet to be born.
Nga wa o mua “The days of the past to which we are coming.” — Maori proverb
Let us take our cue from Maori and consider the vision of our own ancestors. No matter what our ethnic background, we will discover that our ancestors (except some of the most recent) believed, like Maori, in the existence of spirits. They also stood in awe of the rich diversity of life forms, and they believed there is mutual interdependency between these forms, humans included, given that everything that exists is alive and conscious.
They were of the opinion that intelligence is not restricted to humans but is possessed by all creatures – plants as well as animals — and, for that matter, by the Earth itself. Rock, soil, stream, ocean, wind, air, sky, the stars – all are imbued with consciousness.
Recognising that the Earth and many of its creatures vastly predate humanity and are therefore possessed of much older wisdom, our forebears honoured selected landforms, trees, plants, and animals as their ancestors. They understood that there is deep wisdom in the rhythms of the Earth and an infinite variety of life experience stored by our fellow creatures and by spirits.
Human health and welfare were understood to depend on tapping into this wellspring of wisdom. On a planet that is everywhere alive, conscious and inspirited, humans were believed to have many wise allies for counsel and aid.
What is the relevance of this to our current concern about the fate of the Earth? If the ‘star billing’ given by us moderns to our species is unwarranted – if sapiens (wisdom) is not exclusive to homo (humanity) – then could it be that the fate of the Earth is not exclusively or even primarily in our hands?
By our ancestors’ measure, we have grossly exaggerated our self-importance in the intricate web of life. Is it not conceivable that among our intelligent companions on this whirling voyage through space are some who may be capable of restoring the balance we humans have disturbed, of undoing the damage we have wrought? Possibly there are many more shoulders sharing this burden than we think.
Some of the strongest of those shoulders may be the smallest, as was demonstrated dramatically in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil well explosion. As millions of barrels of oil poured unchecked into the ocean from the uncapped well, there was a scramble to devise human technologies that would mitigate an environmental disaster of colossal scope. It took months before the flow was stopped, but in the meantime it was discovered that petroleum-eating bacteria had flourished in the oil plume and contained a vast amount of it.
The micro-organisms had not only multiplied at an astounding rate, they also had ramped up their own internal metabolism to digest the oil efficiently. They formed a natural clean-up crew capable of reducing the amount of oil in the undersea plume by half every three days.
We may take hope from the fact that this kind of help is available, but we must also start paying attention, as did our ancestors, to what our travelling companions have to say to us. Every ancient society developed communication with the natural world and with spirits, and they had specialists skilled in the techniques of that communication.
These women and men were held in high regard, but they were approached with trepidation, because they were perceived to be communing with mysterious and awesome forces.
In Old French they were called “sorcier,” those in touch with the “Source.” The Anglo-Saxons spoke of the “Ways of Wyrd” known to “wizards” and “witches.”
Shamanism is the term now applied to what has come to be recognised as a worldwide phenomenon, whose practice can be found as far back as we can go in human history. Given the association in the popular imagination of the term shamanism with ‘native, tribal’ cultures, it will come as a surprise to many to learn that their own ancestors practiced shamanism. We are all descendants of shamanic peoples.
Research over the past 150 years by scholars of comparative religion, pre-history and anthropology has revealed strikingly close similarities in the shamanic techniques employed in ancient cultures and in modern indigenous societies worldwide. The word shaman is borrowed from one of those contemporary indigenous societies, the Tungus of Siberia.
We are fortunate there are native shamans still at work, despite the sustained, and in many cases brutal, efforts of colonial governments, Christian churches, and medical authorities to suppress them. In the past forty years there has also been a Western revival of shamanic practice inspired by indigenous teachers and reinforced by the recognition that these ancient spiritual traditions are our shared inheritance.
The Role of Shamans
What do shamans do? They work to maintain or restore harmonious balance between humans and the rest of nature through powerful connections with spirit helpers. This requires a mastery of the techniques of journeying.
A shamanic journey is a trance state purposefully induced by a mind-altering activity such as rhythmic movement or repetitive sound, most often steady and sustained drumming. Less commonly, a psychotropic substance is ingested (although most Westerners today believe this to be the way.) In their altered state of consciousness, using disciplined techniques, individuals can experience visions of flying or entering into the Earth.
On their journeys, participants ask animal or guardian spirits to appear and help in finding the answer to a question about their life or about someone else who has requested aid. Healing is the primary shamanic work. This includes healing of the Earth and its plants and animals. It also includes human healing, both the healing of dissension in groups and of physical and emotional illness in individuals.
In the shamanic worldview, dis-ease is understood to result from loss of connection to the spirits of nature and consequent loss of soul – individual or collective. Shamanic journeys take us to places where we can recover fragments of lost soul.
Journeying is useful for a wide range of practical purposes, and the experience can be powerful, often surprising the beginner with the cogency and helpfulness of what is revealed.
People learn most forcefully from forms that engage more than their intellects. They remember best what they do, rather than what they read or are told. Effective education must have a large experiential component, and shamanic practice can be a totally engaging experience.
“Shamans are just the instruments through which the power of the universe works. Therefore, asking the spirits for help and trusting that they will be there is the basis of the shaman’s responsibilities. Remember, an instrument cannot play itself.” – Sandra Ingerman, Shamanic Counselor
Shared Consciousness
We have already observed that this perception of universal consciousness is the crux of the shamanic worldview. By entering the eagle’s keen eye, the bear’s great strength, the herb’s healing power, or the flame’s searing heat, the shaman shows us passageways to the spirit wisdom of natural forms. Shamans are shape-shifters, teaching that the boundaries between forms are not as impermeable as they may seem.
Dramatically, this ancient knowledge that “there is no wall between species,” rejected for three centuries by reductionist Cartesian science, has been rediscovered in this decade by molecular biologists. Lipton again:
Recent advances in genome science have revealed [that] living organisms … actually integrate their cellular communities by sharing their genes. It had been thought that genes are passed on only to progeny of an individual organism through reproduction. Now scientists realise that genes are shared not only among the individual members of a species, but also among members of different species. The sharing of genetic information via gene transfer speeds up evolution since organisms can acquire ‘learned’ experiences from other organisms. Given this sharing of genes, organisms can no longer be seen as disconnected entities; there is no wall between species.
“It seems that every process in the universe that one can observe objectively in the ordinary state of consciousness also has a subjective experiential counterpart” in altered states.
This observation by Stan Grof suggests an important reason for the inclusion of shamanic practice in the educational curriculum. Shamanism gives working access to an alternative technique of acquiring knowledge. Although a pragmatic, time-tested system, it makes no claim to be science.
Its strengths and limitations are different from those of the sciences and thus complement them. Being affective and subjective, shamanism offers another way of knowing.
On a planet that is everywhere alive, conscious and inspirited, humans have many wise allies for counsel and aid. We should lay to rest our exaggerated fears that we do not have the resources to keep this show going. Equally, we must learn humility. The hubris of homo sapiens in claiming superiority over all other species has been the source of severe damage. Humanity is merely one spirit form among countless billions.
The smallest indivisible reality is, to my mind, intelligent and is waiting there to be used by human spirits if we reach out and call them in. We rush too much with nervous hands and worried minds. We are impatient for results. What we need … is reinforcement of the soul by the invisible power waiting to be used… I know there are reservoirs of spiritual strength from which we human beings thoughtlessly cut ourselves off. — Henry Ford, Detroit News, 7 February 1926
John is a teacher, writer, educational consultant and leader of cross-cultural study tours and shamanic workshops. Former Professor of History at the University of Michigan and President of the California Institute of Integral Studies.
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“Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature… Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim.” ~C.G. Jung
Madness is a pathfinder. Without madness, without the crazy courage to do the taboo thing, the audacious thing, the insouciant thing, the eccentric thing, the unpopular thing, there would be no unique spark, no outside the box thought, no otherworldly imagination, no arguments with God, no crucifixion of the past.
Without madness we are left with dullness. Without madness we are left with the cruel cold entropy of monotony. Without madness, we are stuck living stifling comfort-based lifestyles over empowering courage-based lifestyles. Without madness, without chaos, drunkenness, and imagination, all we have is banal order, logic, sobriety, and reason.
It’s not that we don’t need order, logic, sobriety, and reason. It’s that we are drowning in them. It’s that our hands are tied by them. And madness gives us a release valve. Madness helps us come up for air. Madness forces us into the realization that life is short, that we are going to die, and that we only have from this moment until then to live the most authentic life we can manage. It puts into perspective the need to, as Dylan Thomas said, “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Too much comfort, safety, and security handicaps creativity, expansion, and potential. It hinders authenticity. It cripples next-level growth. It keeps us from fully confronting God. Healthy expansion requires a little discomfort and insecurity. It requires a leap of courage into the fire. It requires emancipation from comfortable fetters. It requires staring into the abyss. It requires risk.
As Nikos Kazantzakis said, “A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.”
There is a fine line between courage and foolishness. There’s a fine line between freedom and fetters. Our madness toes the line.
Integrating madness (balance):
“You should be a monster. An absolute monster. And then you should learn how to control it.” ~Jordan Peterson
Madness cuts both ways. Too much madness, we lose ourselves in chaos. Too little madness, we lose ourselves in order. There is a goldilocks zone regarding the madness we allow into our lives.
We should look at madness like we look at our shadow. We should integrate it. We should let it surface. Let it breathe. Let it have its fun. But then we should harness it. Control it. Master it.
We either integrate our madness and gain the potential for controlled chaos on our own terms, or our madness will come out at some unexpected time in the future as disintegrated, uncontrollable chaos. We either empower ourselves by integrating the madness, or the madness will swallow us whole, leaving us powerless. Authentic wholeness requires intimacy with both the madness that surrounds us and the madness within us.
As Edward Abbey said, “You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.” Indeed. You can’t tap into your drunken, frivolous, hunger by trapping it in a safe and secure comfort zone. Madness becomes a kind of escape hatch.
In our youth it was necessary to repress our madness to achieve discipline; in our maturity, it is vital that we integrate it to achieve wholeness (enlightenment). The alternative is bitterness. Madness has a way of planting seeds in the manure of our bitterness, from which imaginative, unexpected, otherworldly things might grow.
When we really get into the heart of our madness, our deep passion, our primordial frenzy, our unreasonable joy, we feel more alive than ever. We’re finally able to breathe. A primal orientation manifests. Authentic passion comes into sacred alignment with fate. The pieces of our puzzled Self paradoxically click together. We feel whole, actualized, aware. Most of all, we feel hungry, thirsty, ravenous, voracious for more courage, more adventure, more risk, more life.
Our lion appetite swallows our tiny sheep stomach whole. It’s finally time to eat—and eat well.
Harness the mystery (self-overcoming):
“I have always endowed madness with a sacred, poetic value, a mystical value. It seemed to me to be a denial of ordinary life, an effort to transcend it, to expand, to go far beyond the limitations of man’s fate.” ~Anais Nin
Madness gives us reach. It gives us breadth. It gives us poetic license. As Carl Jung said, “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
Our shadow reaches all the way into hell. Our madness gives us the courage to reach. When we reach into hell, we’re seeking the repressed part of ourselves, that place where all the pain, fear, and rage has been buried. We’re reaching out to the snarling beast inside us. It’s our job to transform its rage into poetry and art. Madness is a spark for the fire of courage. But it is foremost a vehicle for catharsis.
Paraphrasing Nikos Kazantzakis, “We are weak, ephemeral creatures made of mud and dreams.”
Madness sheds the weakness and takes the mud and the dreams and cooks them into an instrument ready for expansion and growth. Madness unearths us. It unburies us. It digs us out of ruts. It forces us to look beyond our petty conditioning. When we’re mad with purpose, we’re a force to be reckoned with. We are Nature incarnate. We are the beast unleashed, ready to subsume, to overcome, to transcend.
Such madness verges on magic, and we become unconquerable.
The Dionysian Reveler (sacred tomfoolery):
“These poor creatures have no idea how blighted and ghostly this so called ‘sanity’ of theirs sounds when the glowing life of a Dionysian reveler thunders past them.” ~Nietzsche
Dionysian divergence is a primal awakening. It’s the spearhead of Madness. It’s a sacred alignment with the Shadow aspect, which is projected like a blacklight into the too shiny world. It’s a drunken frenzy unleashed on a stuck society. It’s a fierceness inflicted on a meek and mild goody-two-shoes culture.
It’s a lion waking up from a nap surrounded by a herd of sheep pretending to be asleep.
Dionysian divergence is the dethroning of reason by imagination. Reason is important. But it will never be more important than imagination. For Reason, like the Apollonian, has the tendency to fall in upon itself. Given too much rope, Reason will hang itself by the hard-headedness and hard-heartedness of its own unwavering ideal. Reason will drown in its own reasoning. That is, unless imagination and madness can gain the upper hand and pull it out of deep water.
Under the blinding sun of the Apollonian ideal, the Dionysian dynamic is a much-needed eclipse. It’s a beacon of darkness that gives us creative hope despite artless faith. It’s a primal upheaval, an animal frenzy of passion, frivolity, and lightheartedness in the face of over-domestication, apathy, and hardheartedness. It’s the liberation of instinct and insight. It’s the transformation of boundaries into horizons.
Dionysian divergence dances through the mannequin culture. It thunders past the status quo junkies. It flies high above the steel walls of the Apollonian labyrinth. It sees how Goliath has become an idol, a golden cow, a parasitic icon which has blinded the people of the world from the knowledge of their own imagination, joy, and courage.
Foremost, the Dionysian reveler is a courage-enforcer, a mettle sharpener, a lion-awakener. Far too long has the culture lived a fear-based lifestyle under the comforting gaze of the Apollonian Goliath. It’s time to cultivate a courage-based lifestyle. It’s time to get mad, count coup, and wrestle with the gods. It’s time to balance the scales, to melt down the golden pedestals of idolatry, to burn down our uppity high horses, to upset parochial apple carts, and to continuously un-wash the brainwash of perfection from our imperfect minds.
It’s time to unleash our madness and assert our uniqueness. It’s time to let our Shadow shine. To fly over all the false gods. To crucify our past and push our beliefs off a cliff. To climb a mountain and reap the whirlwind. To rejoice in the folly of it all. To laugh and to learn how it’s all laughable. It’s time to get mad and revel in a new way of being human in the world.
Image source: Unknown by RAVI
About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (Madness and Mastery) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
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Four years after launching her retail cannabis store, Brooks Pries says her mom-and-pop operation in Strathmore is able to compete against the big players in the market.
Pries, who owns Strathmore’s The Garden Cannabis Co. along with husband Cole Bosnick, said the independent store has been able to hold its own since opening in January 2019. The store was the first to open in Stathmore, 50 kilometres east of Calgary, and five years after cannabis was legalized in Canada, the local market in the town of 14,000 now includes six stores
“We are able to compete against the bigger guys,” said Pries, who also runs the store with her husband.
Being owner-operators and having a small store have cut down on costs, and have allowed them to remain in business, said Pries.
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Less red tape would help the independent business stay afloat, said Pries, who has plans to expand.
“It’s obviously clear that some of those companies are not profitable,” she said. “I don’t want necessarily a minimum price set, but if it was a thing that you actually had to make some money, it would be a little more fair for people like us.”
Another southern Alberta retailer, with stores in six small towns as well as three in Lethbridge, says its rural southern Alberta stores do “quite well, but “many pieces” of red tape could be removed to make it easier to do business.
“It takes a little bit of time for (the cannabis industry) to normalize and then we’ll loosen the strings a little bit,” said Blaine Emelson, chief commercial officer for Bud Supply, which has stores in Coaldale, Claresholm, Fort Macleod, Pincher Creek, Taber, Vulcan and Lethbridge. “Five years in, it’s probably a good time for (government) to take a hard look at some things, like excise taxes.”
Bud Supply, which employs four to five employees in each of its nine locations, plans to expand into small markets without a cannabis store, in southern Alberta as well as possibly into B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba, said Emelson.
“2023 has been a good year, especially for small retailers,” he said. “The tide has been turning back in our favour. The big guys are starting to play a little nicer.”
One of Canada’s largest retail cannabis operators says changes are needed to help the industry as a whole.
Alberta’s markup on cannabis products under fire
Omar Khan, chief communications and public affairs officer for the publicly traded High Tide Inc., which has 78 retail stores in Alberta under its Canna Cabana brand, said the province should eliminate the six per cent wholesale markup on cannabis products that regulator Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) charges and which gets passed on to retailers.
“We feel it is an unnecessary cost burden on an industry that quite frankly is struggling to survive right now,” he said.
Alberta could also consider allowing retailers to cut out the middleman — the AGLC — and purchase their product directly from producers, which is the situation in Saskatchewan, said Khan. That would lead to lower prices for consumers, said Khan.
Khan is encouraged the Alberta government seems open to suggestions to reduce the red tape cannabis retailers and producers are currently faced with.
“We genuinely feel that, particularly the premier and (Dale Nally, minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction), want to see the industry success because it employs a lot of Albertans,” said Khan, adding High Tide alone employs roughly 600 Albertans. “And we want to keep that employment footprint, but to make this industry sustainable, we do need some further changes from the government.”
In a statement to Postmedia, a spokesperson for Nally said the minister is in discussion with the cannabis industry to hear their perspectives about what is working, and where there might be opportunities to reduce unnecessary red tape.
“We want cannabis businesses to have the tools they need to succeed and grow, and we want Albertans to continue to be able to responsibly and safely enjoy the products and services they offer,” said Nicky Gocuan, press secretary for the Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction ministry.
Alberta’s government has started making changes to reduce red tape in the cannabis industry, he said. Those changes include reducing the listing fee that licensed producers must pay to register their product to $250 from $1,500 per stock-keeping unit, changing the age verification procedure to align with the rest of Canada and amending cannabis signage to align with liquor.
“We will continue to make improvements while ensuring the health and safety of Albertans,” said Gocuan.
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