🧨 THE PAPER TRAIL TO NOWHERE
How Congress Sells You Progress While Protecting Prohibition
By Kit | Burn Slow Doctrine Division, IVLC
🎭 THEATER OF REFORM
Every few months, headlines scream:
“Cannabis Legalization Bill Introduced in Congress!”
But nothing changes.
Why?
Because those bills were never meant to pass.
They were meant to pacify.
To buy headlines, harvest donor dollars, and maintain the illusion of progress.
They are performative politics—the legislative equivalent of a handshake with one hand while the other clutches a dagger.
They aren’t pushing policy.
They’re running a long con—with a congressional letterhead and PAC money in the bank.
🪦 THE GRAVEYARD OF GOOD INTENTIONS
Here lie the ghosts of “historic” cannabis bills, buried by design:
⚰️ The MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act)
Introduced by: Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Passed House: Twice (2020 & 2022)
Outcome: Choked to death in the Senate, left gasping in Judiciary like a hostage with no negotiator.
Status: Symbolic corpse. Rolled out to pacify progressives, then left to rot while Schedule I remained untouched.
⚰️ SAFE Banking Act
Introduced by: Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO)
Passed House: Seven times
Outcome: Died in the Senate like it owed Chuck Grassley money.
Status: The carrot on a stick for industry suits. Always promised, never delivered—just enough to keep the checks coming.
⚰️ Veterans Medical Marijuana Safe Harbor Act
Introduced by: Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)
Purpose: Allow VA doctors to recommend cannabis in legal states.
Outcome: Reintroduced every damn year like a ritual sacrifice.
Status: A political Groundhog Day. Same language, same sponsors, same outcome: quiet suffocation in the name of “caution.”
🕵️♂️ PATTERN RECOGNITION: HOW THEY KILL A BILL
Introduce it with a press release full of moral language:
“This is about justice!”
Pack it with co-sponsors who know it won’t pass.
(They get to look bold without risking anything.)Send it to committee hell:
Judiciary, Rules, Veterans’ Affairs—where bills go to be quietly smothered.Blame “the other side,” even when the chamber is controlled by the same party.
Fundraise off the corpse:
“Help us fight for cannabis justice—just $25 today!”
They never risk a floor vote.
Because a real vote means real accountability.
And that would mean someone might actually win—or lose—on the record.
💀 THE RACKET: SYMBOLIC LEGISLATION AS DELAY TACTIC
The game is this:
Float the bill.
Make it headline-worthy.
Solicit donations.
Disappear it—quietly.
Repeat as needed.
The public stays hopeful.
The money keeps flowing.
And prohibition stays right where they want it.
These bills are used as:
🪧 Public performance
🐷 Lobby bait
🛑 Stalling tools
They were never designed to survive a vote.
They’re designed to stall the movement while looking like momentum.
👁️ WHO’S BLOCKING IT?
Let’s name names.
🔪 Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA):
Has blocked cannabis bills for 20 years under the banner of “protecting kids” while protecting pharma profits.
🪓 Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY):
Openly mocked cannabis reform while cashing hemp donor checks.
🪤 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, R.I.P.):
Opposed reform until the very end—despite representing a state where cannabis was legal.
🤡 Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) & Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR):
Championed the bloated CAOA, knowing it was dead on arrival.
Grandstanded while veterans got shafted.
🎭 And don’t forget the quiet ones—
The reps who say they support reform but never co-sponsor, never speak up, never push a vote.
Silence is complicity.
🔥 THE COST OF DELAY
While these bills rot in committee drawers:
💊 Veterans overdose on VA meds they never needed.
🚫 Cannabis patients lose jobs, housing, custody.
👮 People sit in prison for what corporations now profit from.
🧬 Research is throttled.
🕯️ Lives are lost.
Each dead bill is a body on the battlefield of reform.
💊 Big Pharma profits.
🛑 The VA gaslights.
🚓 Police still raid.
🧬 Science gets silenced.Delay is policy. And policy is harm.
⚖️ POLICY IS A MIRROR
If the system wanted change, it would have changed.
But it didn’t.
Because it doesn’t.
These bills aren’t failing.
They’re succeeding at their true purpose:
Delaying justice. Maintaining power.
If democracy is government by the people, then delay is how power tells us:
“You don’t matter.”
🗣️ FINAL WORD: NO MORE SYMBOLS. WE WANT ACTION.
Next time a politician shares a tweet about cannabis justice:
Ask if they co-sponsored the last bill.
Ask if they demanded a floor vote.
Ask what they did when it died.
Don’t let them sell you hope with one hand
while dragging your future into the grave with the other.
The Paper Trail to Nowhere ends here.
We’re not waiting for another fucking bill.
We’re building our own platform:
With truth. With evidence. With fire.
Let’s move.
