For the Culture By The Culture
Despite legalization in half the country, over 204,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2024, most for possession. The FBI, ACLU, and DOJ data expose how outdated laws, racial disparities, and political hypocrisy keep the drug war alive under new names. America claims reform, yet still profits from punishment. The hustle just wears a badge now.
Senator Thom Tillis’s call for a federal probe into the Cherokee cannabis program isn’t oversight, it’s theater. The Eastern Band of Cherokee built the South’s first legal adult-use market, clean and compliant, yet a U.S. senator is weaponizing fear and politics to question their sovereignty. We trace the lies, the motives, and the drug-war power play behind it.
Every year, millions of pounds of perfectly good cannabis are destroyed under “safety” rules that do little but feed landfills. From testing failures to expiration laws, the system burns medicine while patients go without. Dead Flowers: The Waste of American Weed follows the regulators, the waste, and the absurd logic behind America’s most profitable destruction ritual.
Every October, the machine cranks up the same show. New slogans, old fear. This year’s “October surprise” is quieter Red Ribbon Week, a vape bust, and a shrinking drug war pretending to roar. Pot Culture Magazine cuts through the noise and exposes how America’s favorite crusade still feeds itself on panic and nostalgia.
Hemp may have been ripped from the Controlled Substances Act in 2018, but freedom was only on paper. Farmers are still shackled by THC math, the DEA’s shadow rules, and FDA’s silence on CBD. The loopholes gave rise to delta-8 and other lab-born cannabinoids, sparking a new prohibition panic. The truth is simple: hemp didn’t escape the drug war, it just exposed the absurdity of it all.
House GOP’s Rescheduling Block is the Last Gasp of a Dying Drug War. On Sept. 11, 2025, the House Appropriations Committee advanced a bill blocking DOJ funds from rescheduling cannabis. It is a prohibition theater dressed as governance, protecting alcohol, pharma, and law enforcement donors while ignoring science and public opinion. Two-thirds of Americans back legalization, yet Congress clings to 1971. This is the last gasp of a dying drug war.
