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 The FBI, ACLU, and DOJ data expose how outdated laws, racial disparities, and political hypocrisy keep the drug war alive under new names.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.
Michigan’s new 24 percent wholesale tax lit up outrage across the cannabis industry, while New York regulators faced a courtroom map lesson and Massachusetts tried to reboot its commission. Pennsylvania found compassion in hospital reform, and Germany slowed progress with new rules. Reefer Report Card Vol. 18 grades a week of taxes, lawsuits, and bureaucratic burnout.
Michigan’s new 24% wholesale cannabis tax has ignited outrage across the state. Pitched as a fix for crumbling roads, the law instead cripples small growers and pushes the market back underground. With lawsuits already filed and jobs on the line, the move exposes how easily lawmakers can rewrite voter-approved legalization into a state-sponsored shakedown for profit.
Reefer Report Card Vol. 17 grades the latest moves in cannabis policy. California brings intoxicating hemp under regulated sales, Nebraska misses its medical deadline, a Florida court curbs police search powers, Oregon challenges the interstate commerce ban, and the FDA starts tracking hemp events. Thailand offers a rare global bright spot. Better than last week but still a mess.
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.
