Chuck Schumer Hastens To Legalize Cannabis

by Daniel Platt and Denise Bouchard Ham

[Print version of this article]

Nov. 8—Very soon after the November election, the Democratic Party, led by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), intends to pass an act for Federal marijuana rescheduling and legalization. They must do this now because many Democrats will lose their seats in January. One of the chief effects of the Senate campaign of Diane Sare, one of Schumer’s two opponents, has been to sound the alarm on this national threat.

On July 21 of this year, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (S-4591) was introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). It is similar to the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which passed in the House by a 220-204 vote in 2020. The trio of Schumer, Booker and Wyden had met in February of 2021 with a plethora of pro-legalization lobbyists, including representatives of The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and other organizations affiliated with the Marijuana Justice Coalition, as well as commercial interests such as the National Cannabis Industry Association and Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA).

Schumer’s bill is 296 pages long, and contains a lot of material. It is too long to review in detail, but certain parts of it provide the poisonous flavor. The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act proclaims that its intention is to “decriminalize cannabis for reinvestment in certain persons adversely impacted by the War on Drugs, and to provide expungement of certain cannabis offenses, and for other purposes.” [emphasis ours]

In several parts of the bill, Schumer seeks to equate cannabis with alcohol; often implying that beer and liquor are more harmful than cannabis. The medical community disagrees. Why? While the human body reacts to all of the above as toxins to be eliminated, alcohol leaves the body within 3 to 24 hours of consumption, whereas THC, the principal active ingredient in cannabis, is absorbed into the fatty tissues of the body (including the brain) and stays there for 2 to 4 weeks. Women who are regular cannabis users can pass THC to their infants, either in utero or by breastfeeding.

What is THC?

THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) is the chemical that gives you the “high” and can impair judgment.

A study published in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging found that,

[C]hronic marijuana use is associated with deficits in decision-making that impair the ability to make advantageous decisions over time, [because it may impair] processing of positive and negative information, and using this information to guide future decisions towards achieving a goal.

A study published in Clinical Chemistry found that,

Those involved in vehicle crashes with THC in their blood, particularly higher levels, are three to seven times more likely to be responsible for the incident than drivers who had not used drugs or alcohol. The risk associated with marijuana in combination with alcohol appears to be greater than that for either drug by itself.

And a third study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that,

[T]he most persistent adolescent-onset cannabis users evidenced an average 8-point IQ decline from childhood to adulthood.

The THC content in cannabis has risen significantly over the years due to selective breeding of the plants. The Schumer bill doesn’t address THC at all.

Why Legalize Cannabis?

Schumer represents the Wall Street and City of London gang, whose centuries-old speculative system is imploding right now. The financial community is gripped by the fearful certainty that its bubble of trillions of dollars (mostly from what are called financial derivatives) is about to collapse. In an interview conducted by EIR in 2012, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (2002-2010), stated that dope money has directly supported their monetarist system over the past decades. But even the vast amounts of liquidity from the narcotics trade cannot save it now.

Nonetheless, as the financial Titanic goes down, investment bankers and fund managers are still clawing at any remaining reservoirs of cash.

And on October 12 of this year, London’s The Economist, the preeminent propaganda organ of the British Empire, went beyond Chuck Schumer with the publication of an article titled, “Joe Biden is Too Timid. It is Time to Legalise Cocaine.” It argues that this would “allow non-criminals to supply a strictly regulated, highly taxed product, just as whisky- and cigarette-makers do.”

There may be other, darker motives behind the drug legalization offensive. In response to a question from a person who had viewed his September 11, 2002 presidential campaign broadcast, Lyndon LaRouche had the following to say:

The post-1930 promotion and use of cannabis and ergotamine/LSD, was launched from London by the self-described “utopian” circles of followers of the 19th-Century Thomas Huxley—associated with H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Satan-cultist Aleister Crowley, and a younger generation including Aldous and Julian Huxley, and George Orwell. The practice of mass-indoctrination in use of cannabis, and synthetic ergotamine LSD, was launched, with the British psychological warfare organization known as the London Tavistock Clinic and associated circles in a leading role. The popularization of cannabinol, LSD, and other strongly psychotropic drugs, including the highly destructive use of Ritalin among primary and secondary students, are intended to replicate the fictional role of “soma” depicted in Aldous Huxley’s cult-novel, Brave New World.

So, from the standpoint of the financial oligarchy, “recreational drugs” are not merely a deliciously lucrative aspect of international organized crime, but they are also an important tool in the broader project for what is called “social engineering,” the process by which a dominant faction reshapes the culture to better suit its needs. In Huxley’s dystopian novel, the drug called “Soma” provides the economically oppressed lower classes with a fantasy-escape from harsh reality, and serves to keep them docile.

During what were called the Church Committee hearings of 1975 (officially the United States Senate Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), one of the secret projects that was partially exposed to public scrutiny was a CIA program called MK-ULTRA, which had begun in the late 1950s. The program experimented heavily with so-called “psychedelic” drugs such as LSD, and as part of the project, millions of doses were distributed to young Americans by their government, directly or indirectly.

The ostensible purpose of the program was to investigate the potential military use of these drugs for brainwashing and interrogation, but the massive distribution of LSD and other psychedelics to civilians suggests that the CIA was more interested in manipulating the culture. Within years, many young people who had been energized by the Civil Rights Movement of Dr. Martin Luther King had retreated from politics, in favor of egoistically “exploring inner space.”

One individual who helped direct the MK-ULTRA project was British Intelligence operative Aldous Huxley, referenced in LaRouche’s statement above. Readers of Brave New World may mistakenly conclude that Huxley was warning about a dystopian future. In fact, he was advocating it, and even went so far as to have his wife administer LSD to him when he was on his deathbed.

This period in U.S. history marks the beginning of a precipitous decline in literacy and general cultural standards, to the point where Americans today lack the basic competence to understand history and current trends, and are easily manipulated into jingoistic support for whatever the latest neoconservative “regime change” war may be, despite the catastrophic consequences of all the previous wars of this type. It is helpful to remember, in this regard, that a study found that chronic marijuana use can impair “processing of positive and negative information, and using this information to guide future decisions towards achieving a goal.”

The financial community will attempt to save its doomed bubble of speculation by demanding an accelerated transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, or what is called “austerity” in economics parlance. In order to manipulate the public into accepting this, Wall Street has exploited the impaired judgment of a population that increasingly habitually uses drugs. The most effective propaganda technique has been to characterize basic human requirements such as health care, food, and the heating and cooling of homes, as leading causes of climate change.

Schumer’s Crocodile Tears

It would be fair to ask Chuck Schumer whether he played a role in this social engineering, since he prides himself on his close relationship to the CIA and the “intel community.” He famously said in 2017 on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show that Donald Trump was “being really dumb” in trying to take on the intelligence agencies. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” he said.

Schumer’s pitch is that Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans need his help. Possession of one marijuana cigarette has meant jail time for many people who were unable to hire lawyers that cared about them. These people now have a permanent criminal record. On April 20, 2021 (April 20 is considered an unofficial holiday for marijuana aficionados and is also the birthday of Adolf Hitler) Schumer gave a press conference in which he asserted that the “War on Drugs” as “too often been a war on people, particularly people of color.”

However, since Schumer’s constituency is Wall Street and big money, the welfare of lower income people who have run afoul of the law is not his primary concern. He is writing this bill for the bankers.

Who Finances Chuck?

Just look at Schumer’s Federal Election Commission Report from 2016 to 2022, published by Open Secrets. The top five “industries” behind Schumer are classified as Securities & Investments, followed by Lawyers/Law Firms; Retired; Real Estate, and Electronics Manufacturing & Equipment. It is difficult to differentiate one from other; this is largely Wall Street.

Schumer’s Opponent Denounces His Bill

LaRouche supporter Diane Sare, who qualified for ballot status in New York State to oppose Schumer in the Senate race, released a statement July 15, 2021 opposing the Schumer/Booker/Wyden cannabis legalization bill, in which she said,

Deliberately blurring the distinction between decriminalization, to eliminate mass incarceration and lengthy sentences for marijuana possession, and promotion of all-out recreational use and sale of marijuana, they used words like “prohibition” and “justice for minorities” to disguise their evil intention, which is to enslave Americans to a dangerous drug, which is much more potent than the pot of the 1960s and which, contrary to Schumer’s lies, has been shown to have devastating effects in states where it has been fully legalized.

For example, Missouri Medicine, the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association, published an article in its September 2019 issue titled, “The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact.” Colorado was the first state to legalize cannabis, in 2013. During the six years that followed legalization, here are a few of the reported consequences:

• Since recreational marijuana was legalized, traffic deaths in which drivers tested positive for marijuana increased 109%, while all Colorado traffic deaths increased 31%.

• Adult marijuana use increased 94% and is 96% higher than the national average, and currently ranked fourth in the nation.

Legalization is often promoted as a way of mitigating the social problems associated with cannabis use. However, the experience of Colorado seems to suggest that the opposite is true.