Search results for ""Author Joseph R. Pietri""

In the United States, cannabis is currently illegal, but this book investigates how big pharmaceutical companies are looking at an end-game of legality—controlled by them. It examines how the Amsterdam scene has been transformed; how home growers have been manipulated into using inferior techniques; and how companies, with help from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and “big pharma,” are patenting cannabis strains for control and profit. The leadership of the cannabis industry want to legalize marijuana with taxation and regulation, but the pharmaceutical industry cannot take over medical cannabis without first shutting down the scene today. The book predicts that legalized production will be tightly controlled by major players, using the IRS and DEA as a means of removing other growers. Regulation will also control the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in each marijuana cigarette, forcing stronger cannabis to be available to medical patients by prescription only. A black market will still exist, so people will still go to jail, and the drug war will go on. With history and explosive, behind-the-scenes looks at big pharma collusion, this book is both an exposé and an in-depth look at the arc of freedom and probable control through use of pharmaceutical patents for marijuana.

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From the halcyon days of easily accessible drugs to years of government intervention and a surging black market, this tale chronicles a former drug smuggler’s 50-year career in the drug trade, its evolution into a multibillion-dollar business, and the characters he met along the way. The journey begins with the infamous Hippie Hash trail that led from London and Amsterdam overland to Nepal where, prior to the early1970s, hashish was legal and smoked freely in Nepal, India, Afghanistan, and Laos; marijuana and opium were sold openly in Hindu temples in India and much of Asia; and cannabis was widely cultivated in Nepal and Afghanistan for use in food, medicine, and cloth. In documenting the stark contrasts of the ensuing years, the narrative examines the impact of the financial incentives awarded by international institutions such as the U.S. government to outlaw the cultivation of cannabis in Nepal and Afghanistan and to make hashish and opium illegal in Turkey—the demise of the U.S. “good old boy” dope network, the eruption of a violent criminal society, and the birth of a global black market for hard drugs—as well as the schemes smugglers employed to get around customs agents and various regulations.

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