Cannabis News
The Cannabis Nuns of Mexico
Symbols hold power – to bring tribes together, spark movements or flip scripts. The cannabis leaf shows this; beyond botany, it instantly signals counterculture affiliations and values. Despite growing mainstream, it retains outlaw edge, coding freedom beyond current laws.
The leaf remains subversive even sold at malls or hung in bedrooms. Just a glimpse, and we intuit entire off-grid lifestyles – we know who’s down to clown. That’s symbolic efficiency, volumes spoken through imagery. Marketers drool for branding clawing such instant clarity.
And this brings us to a news story that caught my eye about Cannabis Nuns in Mexico. This symbol sends a powerful message, mainly due to the matriarchal nature of Mexico’s religious system as well as their deep sense of conservatism – the paradoxical clash of ideas are bound to stir some internal structures of the mind, and maybe that’s what is needed to get Mexico on board with the new paradigm.
Who are the cannabis nuns of Mexico? Called Sisters of the Valley, this controversial sisterhood utilizes traditional nun persona and overt marijuana symbolism advocating medicinal/spiritual use in a nation still ravaged by Drug War violence and religiosity. But despite convent costumes, they claim no formal religious affiliation, instead styling themselves a lay women’s movement updating medieval medicinal herb traditions uprooted elsewhere by modern prohibition.
According to co-founder Sister Kate, the group formed in 2014 to empower uncloistered women as equals nurturing nature’s progressive potential. This liberation framework modernizes the Beguine tradition of scholarly, autonomous sisterhoods relying on charity sustaining their productivity durch goodwill donations alone. Thus Sisters of the Valley adopt cannabis—long used curatively across Americas before criminalization—as their unique sacramental mascot bridging ancient trust in botanicals with rational science confirming efficacy treating modern ailments. They pledge spreading sustainable “gospel of Ganja” against solely commercial motivations.
And the message resonates loudly through imagery in a highly religious country still resistant toward legalization. Supporters point continuing violence from cartel cannabis channels proving policy failures. And Mexico’s medical marijuana rollouts still severely limit patient access, forcing reliance on grey market herb sources like the Sisters’, not yet corporate dispensaries. They argue safe access availability depends not on restrictions but better regulations linked to public education on balancing rights with risks. Thus the eye-catching nun symbolism spotlights core philosophical contentions on health freedom.
Currently operating quietly in rural safehouses to avoid potential dangerous attention, the tiny order estimates assisting hundreds locally accessing medicine, uplifted spirits and guidance on self-directed wellbeing. Their remedy repertoire adapts with need, spanning cannabis oils, smokables, edibles etc custom prescribed by their resident homoeopath. And their defiant civil disobedience wins growing positive publicity, particularly among progressive women galvanized by images of independent, politically active herbalist sisters.
The contrast against machismo cartel culture proves stark, revealing alternative outcomes respecting plant potentials beyond imported militarism or misogyny onto communities. And the results compellingly model radical healing metaphors with nun pot puns catching global headlines. Mexico’s proximity to US legalization successes keep arguments urgent and momentum rising. The cannabis nuns ensure visibility until the tide turns federally.
To comprehend contexts surrounding calls to cease prohibitionist policies, we must highlight on-the-ground realities still terrorizing regions like Mexico, epicenters of drug war devastations. Because beyond the nun’s potent imagery coding nonviolent resistance lies overwhelming violence and corrosion targeting civilians in perpetuity. For these women, the stakes exceed symbolism alone.
Since 2006 when Mexico intensified narcotics enforcement at America’s behest, consequences proved predictably severe, unchecked and unending. With over 450,000 military and federal agents unleashed largely against cartels trafficking highly demanded drugs northward, conflicts ravaged land and people constituting mere background scenery to policy.
Over 340,000 lives perished amidst unspeakable cruelty through battles protecting illicit billion dollar sectors. Forever grafting atrocity onto communities, the institutional chaos fortified cartels more than dismantled them. For each kingpin captured through endless US anti-crime funding, dozens of splinter cells emerged fighting for territory in bloody succession. Impunity reigned.
With limited global coverage on the crisis, these statistics summarize broad scale disorder still victimizing citizens in prohibited environments. Yet we must also hold space recognizing individual stories and traumas behind the numbers. Each data point reflects unique living beings surviving amidst extremes of human extinction. This truth dignifies rather than detracts from arguments to change course.
Because until we address root causes of risky underground economics through wiser regulations, vulnerable groups shoulder fallout. And Americans remain complicit financing both sides through black market demand meeting cartel supply chains. These relationships persist not by natural order but laws. Engineering illegal revenue models without viable alternatives.
So the sisters serve the suffering by simply demonstrating better ways embracing plants as allies instead of escalating Vendettas against them. They revive Latin America’s pre-Columbian earth wisdom so callously shunned and suppressed elsewhere, reawakening cultural memory that peace comes through cooperation not coercion, harm reduction instead of harm creation. Where violence breeds chaos, love answers back through community care.
This is the example groups like cannabis nuns courageously model at their own peril in conflict zones transforming any pride in ideology into graveyards for the innocent. Their acts symbolize highest moral guidance by envisioning futures based on compassion for all people, not judgments dividing them into narrow militarized hierarchies. They lead hearts by returning first to humanity’s roots.
While the nun persona proved controversial, its selection reveals undertones of shifting paradigms between old religion and new earth-rooted spirituality facilitated by plant bonds. As legalization sentiment expands, cannabis provides a bridge marrying ancient indigenous wisdom, feminine intuitive approaches and empirical verification into holistic ethical emerging worldviews. The Sisters signify first fruits in functions formerly dividing camps.
And the visual juxtapositions shock by design: Like radical healers synthesizing best aspects from seeming opposites into emancipatory hybrids promising salvation more political and collective than merely personal. They shock to awaken, wearing spiritual symbolism familiar enough to give pause while utilizing the still-demonized cannabis as numinous ally toward restoration, not judgment. The contrasts jar loose inertia around change.
Their aims appear reclaiming conceptions of theological virtue from sterile institutions to orbit again around compassionate community caregiving. Like ascetic nuns as social workers not removed behind cloisters, engaging tears in the societal fabric hands-on through wisdom and outreach. Service nurturing full human dignity beyond saving just selves. This recasting reflects the groups paganophile leanings as herbalists empowering health inside the hidden chairity of secret gardens.
And they rightly note cannabis flower and psychoactive use interlinks through most ancient cultures with both healing and sacramental rites binding people, plants and supernatural in reciprocal relationships until modern prohibitions severed such covenants with nature. We banished beloved plant teachers, they argue, and sickness, separation and disenchantment followed suit. We abandoned the village global heart.
So groups like the Sisters necessitate commingling images and symbols from divergent erased histories alongside futurist scientific reliance for legitimation working collaboratively under holism. No single institution holds total truth any longer in post-modern pluralism and puzzle-piecing vying perspectives focused on activism, not debates. The goal proves values renaissance, the means interdisciplinary.
And the public response signals hunger for reframing forgiveness and aspirational virtue to align with clear visions for societal reconciliation and progress. Outreach beyond rareified codes and hierarchies. The people no longer separate humanitarianism from human rights or temperance from transcendence. We step gingerly into synthesis midwifing compassion. And the Sisters guide gently as wounded healers themselves transforming, transparent equally in struggles as joy. Their burgeoning movement maps the territory in real-time.
Mexico’s “Weed Nuns” movingly showcase social evolution converging estranged philosophies and healing divides where entrenched interests prefer discord more profitable. Beyond daring demonstrative imagery, their fusionism models reconciliation – incarnating a fetal cooperative future awaiting nourishment after prolonged unnecessary polarization of families, faiths and fellowships. Like green shoots cracking through cement, the movement breathes life where we let visions atrophy.
And the Sisters symbolize no end unto themselves, but invitation toward personal and cultural soul reclamation stewarding suppressed wisdom traditions forward responsibly. They hold space for outcasts, tending even demonized herbs’ gilded forgotten gifts nurturing community continuity against individualism’s anti-social siege. Few now escape disconnection’s damage insecurity and gripping hyper-order demand. The Sisters subtly beckon back from meaningless mazes to meaning’s source – people, not policies.
So may provocative groups like these multiply in 2024, as change makers guiding courageous cultural innovation beyond obstinate obsolete constraints invented by obsolete risk-averse minds. When all works of power corrupt – both states and cartels equally – the grassroots must unite empowering flowering insight and vision. And may their motley seeds birth reconciliation in hearts and halls cementing reason and responsibility, not control, as society’s cornerstones.
The truth persists that plants and fungi interface human/nature relationships beneficially more often than adversarially across history and geography, despite exceptions cherrypicked recently by sheltered bureaucrats to weaponize enforcement reinforcing their necessity. Yet our teachers await behind their gates regardless. And the Sisters signal their day dawning, on humble terms transparently rebuilding trust in structured service to each other; to all people and peaceful beings who disciple goodwill by outdoing harm. The rest will align in time as old noise dies for lack of signal. But first ears must retune to long muted harmony now resounding again sweetly to all who would hear.
CANNABIS FROM NUNS ON ETSY, READ ON…
Cannabis News
US Court Rules Delta-8 THC Derived from Hemp is 100% Legal, Slamming the DEA in Embarrassing Court Case
In a groundbreaking decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-8 THC) derived from legal hemp sources is not classified as a controlled substance under federal law, directly contradicting the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) position that all synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols, including Delta-8 THC, fall under Schedule I controlled substances. This landmark ruling emerged from a case brought forward by several key players in the hemp industry who challenged the DEA’s interpretation of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp and its derivatives. The court’s decision not only rejects the DEA’s restrictive stance but also provides much-needed clarity regarding the legal status of Delta-8 THC, allowing for its continued production and sale from legally sourced hemp. This ruling is significant as it has the potential to reshape the regulatory landscape for cannabinoids, encouraging further exploration and commercialization of hemp-derived products while also highlighting the ongoing tensions between federal regulations and the rapidly evolving hemp industry.
Delta-8 THC: A Naturally Occurring Cannabinoid
Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-8 THC) is a naturally occurring cannabinoid found in trace amounts in hemp and cannabis plants that shares a similar molecular structure to Delta-9 THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, but is known to produce significantly milder intoxicating effects; the 2018 Farm Bill’s legalization of hemp and its derivatives containing no more than 0.3% Delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis created a legal gray area for Delta-8 THC, which has proliferated in the form of various products derived from legal hemp sources and sold in a largely unregulated market, as they are not explicitly classified as controlled substances by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) despite the agency’s stance that all synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols should be treated as Schedule I drugs regardless of their origin or potency, a position that has been challenged by hemp industry players arguing that Delta-8 THC from legal hemp should be exempt from the same restrictions as Delta-9 THC.
The DEA’s Stance and Industry Challenges
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has taken a firm stance that all synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols, including Delta-8 THC, are classified as Schedule I controlled substances under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), regardless of their source or concentration. This position has faced considerable resistance from various stakeholders within the hemp industry, who argue that Delta-8 THC derived from legal hemp should not be subjected to the same stringent restrictions as Delta-9 THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana. Proponents contend that the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp and its derivatives, should extend to include Delta-8 THC, allowing it to be treated as a legal product when sourced from hemp that contains less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC. They emphasize that while Delta-8 THC may occur naturally in small amounts in hemp, the majority of Delta-8 products on the market are produced through a chemical conversion process from CBD, which the DEA argues renders them synthetic and thus illegal. This conflict has led to ongoing legal challenges, with some courts ruling in favor of the hemp industry, asserting that Delta-8 THC should not be classified as a controlled substance when derived from legal hemp. As the debate continues, the tension between the DEA’s regulatory framework and the evolving hemp market raises critical questions about the future of cannabinoid regulation in the United States.
The Court’s Ruling and Its Implications
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Delta-8 THC derived from legal hemp sources is not controlled substance.
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The court found the DEA’s interpretation of the law was “arbitrary and capricious” and lacked a reasoned explanation.
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This ruling effectively removes Delta-8 THC from the DEA’s list of controlled substances, provided it is derived from hemp containing less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC.
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The decision provides legal protection for businesses and consumers involved in Delta-8 THC products derived from legal hemp sources.
Opportunities for the Hemp and Cannabis Industries
The recent court ruling represents a significant victory for the hemp and cannabis industries, paving the way for new possibilities in product development and research.
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Therapeutic Potential: Delta-8 THC has been recognized for its potential therapeutic benefits, which could attract more consumers seeking alternative treatments.
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Increased Investment: The legalization of Delta-8 THC may lead to heightened investment and innovation within the sector, encouraging the development of new products and formulations.
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Regulatory Concerns: Despite the positive implications, the ruling also raises important concerns regarding the regulation and quality control of Delta-8 THC products, necessitating careful oversight.
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Need for Standards: As the market for Delta-8 THC expands, there will be a pressing need for clear guidelines and standards to ensure consumer safety and product consistency, helping to build trust in these emerging products.
Broader Implications for Cannabis Legalization
The court’s ruling underscores the ongoing conflict between federal and state laws concerning the regulation of cannabis and its derivatives.
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Increasing State Legalization: As more states advance toward the legalization of both recreational and medical marijuana, the pressure on the federal government to revise its policies and align them with shifting public opinion is likely to intensify.
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Step Forward for Delta-8 THC: The ruling regarding Delta-8 THC may be viewed as a positive development in the broader context of cannabis legalization, yet significant challenges remain.
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Path to Comprehensive Legalization: There is still a considerable distance to cover before achieving comprehensive federal legalization of cannabis, highlighting the complexities of navigating cannabis policy in the United States.
Conclusion
The court’s ruling underscores the ongoing conflict between federal and state laws concerning the regulation of cannabis and its derivatives. As more states advance toward the legalization of both recreational and medical marijuana, the pressure on the federal government to revise its policies and align them with shifting public opinion is likely to intensify. The ruling regarding Delta-8 THC may be viewed as a positive development in the broader context of cannabis legalization; however, significant challenges remain, and there is still a considerable distance to cover before achieving comprehensive federal legalization of cannabis, highlighting the complexities of navigating cannabis policy in the United States.
DELTA-8 THC IS LEGAL, READ MORE…
Metabolic syndrome is an umbrella term referring to several conditions that negatively impact how the body metabolizes carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
It occurs when there are unusual, abnormal chemical processes in the body which affect otherwise healthy metabolic functions. The primary symptoms of metabolic syndrome include abdominal fat, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, and low levels of LDL (good) cholesterol. These conditions all greatly increase the risk of stroke, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and other severe health issues that are difficult or near impossible to reverse.
The most telling symptom, though, is a large waist circumference – and you don’t need to take any kind of medical test to tell you this because it’s completely visible.
That’s why prevention is key when it comes to metabolic syndrome. However, the choices you make on a daily basis in your lifestyle can determine your risk for metabolic syndrome of not. We know that an unhealthy diet that is high in sugar, salt, and processed food can contribute to the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. A sedentary lifestyle, obesity, poor sleep hygiene, and exposure to chronic stress can also make the risk much worse. Smoking tobacco and alcohol are even worse – don’t even think about it.
But cannabis? That can actually help!
What Studies Say
A recent study that was published in the American Journal of Open Medicine found that young adults with a habit of consuming cannabis had a significantly lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome. For the study, investigators from the University of Miami analyzed a cohort of almost 4,000 individuals whose ages ranged from 18 to 25. They specifically zoned in on the young adults’ cannabis use.
They found that current cannabis users were 42% less likely to have metabolic syndrome. They also found that Non-Hispanic Blacks, who were consuming more weed than the other subjects, were found to be the least likely of all to have metabolic syndrome. “Current cannabis users had a lower prevalence of MetS, predominantly noted among NHB (non-Hispanic Blacks], the group with the highest prevalence of current cannabis use,” said the study’s authors. “Future prospective studies are warranted to examine the role of specific cannabinoids on MetS by race/ethnicity,” they said.
A Smaller Waist Circumference: Why You Should Pay Attention, And How Weed Can Help
Having a large waist circumference or a visibly fatty belly has been associated with numerous health conditions. Of course, this includes a heightened risk of metabolic disease. It also increases the risk of inflammation, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease incidence, and cancer among others.
That is why it’s critical to pay attention to the size of your stomach. A smaller waist means you have a smaller amount of visceral fat, which is necessary for better health and an improved quality of life.
There are many steps you can take to reduce your visceral fat. These include:
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Sticking to a low carbohydrate and low sugar diet
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Having a diet high in good protein sources
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Reduce consumption of trans fat and saturated fats
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Engage in strength training and cardiovascular exercises
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Manage stress effectively
Last but not the least: did you know that consuming cannabis has been shown to be associated with smaller waistlines and a reduced risk for obesity?
In 2020, a study out of Quebec in Canada revealed that cannabis consumption was linked to a smaller waist and reduced triglyceride levels. For this study, the investigator in Canada analyzed subjects who either never consumed marijuana in the past, used it sometime in the past but had no recent use, had some infrequent use, or consume it infrequently. They specifically measured the participants’ waist circumference and triglycerides.
They found out that the subjects who consumed certain marijuana strains for metabolic syndrome for at least 4 days per week were found to have smaller waistlines as well as less triglycerides compared to the other participants in the study.
Another study from 2015, also out of Quebec, was conducted by researchers from the Conference of Quebec University Health Centers. They analyzed cannabis consumption patterns of 786 Arctic aboriginal adults, the Inuits. The investigators also analyzed their body mass index to search for any links between cannabis use and BMI.
They found that study participants who consumed marijuana within the last year were more likely to have a lower body mass index, as well as reduced fasting insulin and better insulin resistance (using the HOMA-IR indicator) compared to those who did not.
“In this large cross-sectional adult survey with high prevalence of both substance use and obesity, cannabis use in the past year was associated with lower BMI, lower percentage fat mass, lower fasting insulin, and HOMA-IR,” said the researchers. In other words, they observed a relationship between cannabis use and BMI that led them to conclude that cannabis and cannabinoid use can help consumers reduce the likelihood of obesity and diabetes.
Meanwhile, an older study from 2013 also had similar results. Research data from The American Journal of Medicine taken from more than 4,600 patients yielded interesting findings. Almost 45% of patients never consumed marijuana in their lives, while 43% of them smoked in the past though no longer do currently. And 12% of them were regular cannabis users.
Researchers discovered that cannabis users who consumed marijuana within the past month had 16% less fasting insulin levels compared to those who never consumed weed. In addition, they even add reduced HOMA-IR levels and higher high-density lipoprotein. Furthermore, the investigators found that regular cannabis users who usually consume more calories, they also had lower BMI’s.
Conclusion
Staying fit and healthy is much more than vanity: science and medical research makes it clear that there is a strong link between obesity and body mass index, to overall health and wellness. Metabolic syndrome further emphasizes the importance of keeping one’s BMI normal, and based on these studies, that’s something cannabis can help with. Integrating responsible cannabis use into your lifestyle is one tool out of many that can help you stay healthy and reduce the risks of developing metabolic syndrome.
MORE ON METABOLIC SYNDROME AND WEED, READ ON…
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