The Kush

Hi! Welcome to the 3rd edition of The Kush, our newsletter written and published specifically for Mondays and Tuesdays. Not because Mondays and Tuesdays need a burst of newsletter-driven dopamine, but because we think Mondays and Tuesdays deserve a special flavor of writing and reporting stuff that matters in our world while we were busy blazing ourselves out of our minds over the weekend.

Cannabis Fight on Indian Campuses

A first year law student studying at the Kirit Mehta School of Law College run by Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, fought against her rustication order from college and petitioned the High Court to stay her rustication order. She was rusticated on the grounds that she was caught smoking cannabis inside college campus.

According to Times of India:

“Her advocate Mohit Bharadwaj argued she was denied a hearing and falsely implicated based on third-party material. The college’s advocate, Manorama Mohanty countered saying the college has relied on social media posts and specifically an Instagram post that allegedly showed the student smoking cannabis not only on college premises but actually in a classroom. She said due to the lockdown and closure of the college, she cannot provide an internal an internal report and pictures relied upon for rustication”

“The judge questioned the authenticity of the material and wondered how the college came by the material in the first place. “There must be some degree of formality. You are dealing with rustication. Your processes have to be open and transparent,” remarked Justice Patel”

Cannabis has always been consumed inside college campuses for decades (if not centuries) and will continue being used inside college campuses for many decades more, make no mistake of this. As long as there are young students, and as long as cannabis continues to exist, this will continue to happen. A college campus provides fertile ground for minds to wander and experiment, unlike the mind-numbing education system we’ve been exposed to in India for generations now.

Our un-creative education system has killed students, whereas cannabis has not. Cannabis smoking inside the campus is a feature of this mind-numbing boredom, which many youngsters today especially feel. And we will not achieve anything by blaming them. Rather, we just have to talk to them. But then, the oldies won’t do that. They want to of course, as usual continue to be harsh, which will not solve anything.

Let’s keep blazing.

Medical Cannabis Heating Up in India

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again.

Medical cannabis will cause a huge disruption in the Indian healthcare market, for both preventive and chronic health. And it’s all because of the plant’s wonderful wellness properties inherent in its suite of compounds, and the ability of researchers and entrepreneurs to finance a venture together to reach market as soon as possible, without compromising the quality of their products.

According to Inc42:

“New Delhi-based cannabis healthtech startup HempStreet is among the slew of startups focussing on pain management and chronic pain relief through cannabis. It claims to be India’s first research to retail ayurvedic cannabis venture”

“With the Indian government’s clearance of usage of cannabis for medical purposes, a slew of new brands have popped up in India. Slowly, the sector is unfolding and a lot of startups are emerging in the space, including HempStreet, Bombay Hemp Company, Be.Hemp, Awega Green, Namrata Hemp Company, Hemis, Its Hemp and Vedi Herbals among others”

Odisha-based HempCann Solutions (Vedi Herbals) caused a stir in February, 2020 when it inaugurated India’s first medical cannabis store in Bengaluru under the ‘Vedi Wellness’ name. The medical cannabis market will be completely R&D driven since medicine requires pooling in the efforts of plant-scientists, formulists, researchers and manufacturing processes to work in tandem with each other. On the other hand, most Indian cannabis companies will go on to focus on the consumer market, and use cannabis to make clothes, protein-powders, beauty products, edible oils and other food and beverage cannabis infusions, like chocolate for example.

It’s a good time.

And Finally………the Energy of India’s Youth

According to the New Indian Express:

“A college dropout and his friend rode on a bike for 600 km amid the lockdown from Hyderabad to Chhattisgarh. They travelled up to Bhadrachalam and then crossed over to the neighbouring State. However, this wasn’t for any emergency. It was because one of the youths, Yashwanth Kumar, wanted to procure cannabis flowers from the agency area on the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border”

“He did procure two kilograms of cannabis and started back for Hyderabad with his friend Ganesh. Rachakonda police who were conducting vehicle checks nabbed Yashwanth at the Pantangi toll plaza late on Saturday but Ganesh escaped”

It goes without saying that this episode was almost the classic case of ‘buy low from another area and sell high at another area”, but obviously the police had other plans. It will be interesting to note and see if the newspaper in question would bother to educate its readers as to what exactly happened after a day or two. Would the cops extort money and let the men go? It would be the likely scenario. Because the cops have no use in keeping two men in custody for cannabis possession, unless they are in the dock for more serious crimes, which in this case is related to bike-theft. It is safe to say that unless our cannabis policies change, such incidents will continue to occupy the time of our police who are already understaffed.

Keep Blazing. Have a great day 🙂