For the Culture By The Culture
A billionaire’s media empire, a prohibitionist Congressman, and an op-ed full of fear. The Washington Examiner’s latest anti-cannabis rant exposes how profits and propaganda keep prohibition alive. With alcohol use falling and support for cannabis reform rising, fearmongering is their last defense and it is crumbling fast.
Five plus years after legalization, Canada has pulled most consumers into the legal cannabis market. A new Waterloo study shows 78% of users buy legally, with prices converging and Ontario leading sales past $2.1B. With over 3,000 stores nationwide, Canada’s retail footprint is crushing the illicit trade while the U.S. still lags.
A group of licensed dispensaries is suing New York State after regulators admitted they approved stores using the wrong buffer zone measurements. Over 150 cannabis businesses, most of them social equity operators, now face relocation or shutdown. The Office of Cannabis Management’s zoning blunder has triggered legal chaos, broken trust, and exposed the fragility of New York’s so called cannabis reform.
The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission is under fire after a scathing state audit uncovered over $1.7 million in uncollected fees, weak enforcement, and systemic mismanagement. From missing millions to delayed oversight and a major mold contamination scare, the findings expose a cannabis regulator in chaos as Massachusetts lawmakers weigh sweeping structural reforms to restore trust and accountability.
Thailand went from Asia’s most progressive cannabis market to pulling the plug in just three years. What began as a billion-dollar boom is now being dismantled by new laws, political shifts, and narcotic reclassification. Farmers, shop owners, and patients face an uncertain future as the government rewrites the rules and erases the promised era.
Politicians whisper “maybe,” the markets jump, and the cannabis community cheers for a win that never comes. The Great Cannabis Con Job exposes the bait-and-switch of rescheduling talk, revealing how it stalls real reform, distracts from federal prohibition, and leaves prisoners behind. This is not progress; it is political theater dressed as change
