COCHRAN MODE ACTIVATED
Introduction:
On August 2, 2025, Marijuana Moment published a news report announcing that the U.S. Senate had passed a major appropriations package—including a provision that would allow Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) doctors to recommend medical marijuana to veterans in states where it's legal. The amendment, championed by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), was added to the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (MilConVA) section of the bill. At face value, it appears to mark a significant step forward in federal cannabis policy, especially for veterans seeking safer alternatives to pharmaceuticals.
But appearances deceive.
What Marijuana Moment reported is accurate—but incomplete without context. This same amendment, or versions of it, have been introduced and quietly stripped in nearly every budget cycle since 2014. Its inclusion in the Senate version of the bill is not new, not binding, and not guaranteed to survive the final legislative process.
What follows is a deeper analysis—grounded in the historical record, federal policy, and government documents that Congress itself continues to ignore. We don’t just unpack the illusion. We indict the system sustaining it.
(Source: Marijuana Moment, “Senate Votes To Let VA Doctors Recommend Medical Marijuana To Military Veterans While Setting Aside Hemp THC Ban,” August 2, 2025.)
What follows is an analysis, part of the Burn Slow Doctrine series, developed by the International Veterans Leadership Committee to expose systemic federal failures in veteran cannabis policy.
🎤 “Let me break it down… So even a senator in a blackout can see the play.”
🎭 Theatrics in the Chamber: Or, How to Look Like You Care Without Actually Doing Anything
This article reads like progress. It feels like victory. It sounds like compassion finally coming home to roost for veterans.
But let’s stop the music, pull back the curtain, and shine a courtroom spotlight on what’s really happening here.
Because when you examine the evidence—laid bare by their own records, their own appropriations, their own amendments—this isn’t a victory march.
This is a procedural plea deal, dressed in policy drag.
⚖️ I. The Illusion of Action – “Let VA Docs Recommend Weed”
What They’re Claiming:
The Senate passed a spending package that includes language allowing VA doctors to recommend medical cannabis to veterans in legal states.
Sounds familiar? That’s because it is.
The Truth:
This exact fight—this “Veterans Equal Access” language—has been introduced, passed, and buried session after session, year after year, since at least 2014.
🗂 Translation: This ain’t law. It’s language in a spending bill.
Not permanent. Not binding. Not enforceable if it gets stripped during conference negotiations.
You know what is still binding?
🔒 Veterans Health Administration Directive 1315.
Still in effect. Still gagging VA doctors.
Still treating state-approved medical cannabis as a dirty word.
And this bill? It doesn’t repeal it.
It just says, “Don’t enforce that one part… if we give you money.”
That’s not justice. That’s a temporary bribe to pretend you have rights.
🧠 II. Cochran Would Ask: Why Keep Running This Play?
Because they know this bill will likely meet the same fate as every other “cannabis for veterans” provision:
Stripped in conference. Left on the cutting room floor. Sacrificed for “higher priorities.”
Even though:
The Senate version is strong.
The House version is specific.
The VA’s own patients are dying.
And the cruelest twist? The House language specifically defunds enforcement of VA’s own gag rule, while the Senate version only says, “Don’t interfere.”
👎🏽 So even the language they’re arguing over is weaker than what we had in previous years.
🔍 III. The “We Need More Research” Myth – Already Undone by Their Own Report
Buried deeper in the Senate report is this gem:
VA should consider issuing guidance if cannabis is rescheduled.
Aha! The caveat that kills.
That little “if” is the legal equivalent of an escape hatch.
🚫 It’s the same stall tactic that’s been used for decades:
“We can’t act unless the feds change the law.”
Meanwhile, the feds have already mailed weed to patients under IND.
They have the Master File (NIDA #1361).
They ran trials. They documented effects.
And here they are, pretending cannabis might be a useful alternative to opioids—as if they weren’t holding clinical data proving exactly that since the Reagan Administration.
Cochran’s Cross-Examination:
“So, Senator… you’re telling the public we ‘need more data,’ but your own agencies have held the data in federal custody since 1978. Is that your final answer?”
💥 IV. The Hemp Hypocrisy – McConnell’s Trojan Horse
Let’s switch to Act II: Hemp.
What McConnell tried to do—sneaking in a THC ban under the AgFDA package—wasn’t just legislative sneakiness. It was an industry assassination attempt.
The “quantifiable THC” ban would’ve banned essentially all full-spectrum CBD.
It would’ve shut down smokeable hemp.
And it would’ve re-criminalized the very crops McConnell himself championed in the 2018 Farm Bill.
But why?
💰 To protect pharma patents, stifle small players, and consolidate control.
And when Rand Paul called his bluff? The man caved—but not before lecturing the chamber like a plantation overseer mourning the loss of control over his fields.
📜 V. The Psychedelics Section – A Classic Stalling Strategy
Oh, and lest we forget, they tossed in a few lines about psychedelics too:
"We mandate a report. In 180 days."
Cute. Because what have we already seen?
MAPS has 30 years of data.
VA was already involved in early-stage conversations in 2015-2016.
Veterans have been testifying to benefit for years.
But instead of fast-tracking support, they’re sending us back to the report-writing basement.
You know the place. It’s where truth goes to die.
🪦 VI. What Would Cochran Say?
He’d say this:
“When a government has the power to heal and chooses not to, that ain’t neutrality. That’s neglect.”
This isn’t a bill that liberates veterans.
It’s a bill that dangles hope like a carrot on a stick, then blames “process” when veterans overdose on despair instead of finding relief.
🧨 Final Verdict – The Play They Keep Running
🎭 THE ILLUSION:
“We’re letting VA doctors talk about cannabis.”
🧠 THE TRUTH:
Only if the final bill keeps the language.
Only if it’s not stripped.
Only if it’s funded.
Only if the feds reschedule cannabis.
Only if you live in a state that allows it.
Only if you still trust the VA after all that.
Meanwhile:
Veterans are still denied care if they test positive for THC.
VA doctors still fear punishment for even discussing cannabis.
The IND program still exists… but only on paper.
And the patients who proved it works? Forgotten by the very country they served.
🔥 Final Word from Cochran Mode:
“Ladies and gentlemen…
They say this is about weed.
But this—this is about willful neglect.
This is about a bureaucracy so afraid of accountability, it would rather let soldiers suffer than admit the truth.
And until we stop accepting these half-measures, these backroom bargains, these legislative ghost stories—
We are complicit in every prescription overdose.
Every suicide.
Every veteran abandoned by the very agency sworn to heal them.This isn’t a policy dispute.
This is a moral crime in progress.”
Case adjourned.
P.S.
📁 What Is Master File #1361?
Master File #1361 is a federal drug file maintained by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
It is essentially a pre-approved investigational cannabis dossier that includes:
The known chemical profile of government-grown cannabis (grown at the University of Mississippi under DEA contract),
Clinical safety data and adverse event history from human use (through the Compassionate IND program),
Storage and delivery information (e.g., pre-rolled cigarettes in tins),
The protocol structure for how to conduct an FDA-authorized cannabis study using the federal supply.
The file was created in 1978 to support the launch of federally sanctioned cannabis studies—and expanded to accommodate AIDS, glaucoma, MS, and other conditions during the 1980s–1990s IND access battles.
🧠 Think of it as a giant, pre-compiled FDA “starter kit” for researchers—an officially sanctioned file that says:
“If you want to study cannabis using our stash, here’s everything you need to get started.”
🧬 Why Was It Important?
Because under federal law, you cannot study a Schedule I substance in humans unless:
The FDA approves your protocol, and
The DEA approves your Schedule I license and the source of the drug.
But Master File #1361 existed to fast-track that process.
Researchers could reference it in their IND application instead of building the whole file from scratch.
🧾 In fact, AIDS researcher Dr. Donald Abrams and others used Master File #1361 in the late 1980s and early 1990s to gain FDA approval for human trials—though most were blocked or stalled by DEA interference.
⚠️ Why It Matters to Veterans Specifically
VA claims it cannot recommend cannabis or participate in federal cannabis research because it lacks the legal authority and infrastructure.
But Master File #1361 is the infrastructure. It was used by the federal government to send cannabis to patients with:
Glaucoma
Multiple sclerosis
Cancer-related nausea
AIDS wasting syndrome
Chronic pain
All of which overlap with conditions common to veterans with service-connected disabilities.
And yet: VA ignores the file. Congress ignores the file. NIDA keeps it buried.
This is deliberate.
It’s how they maintain the lie that “we don’t know enough yet”—when they’ve had federally-approved research templates, patient data, and cannabis delivery models for nearly 50 years.
🧨 Final Word: Why You Should Keep Naming It
Every time you say “Master File #1361,” you are:
Breaking the spell of regulatory amnesia,
Reframing the debate around existing federal knowledge, not speculative future studies,
Pointing to a paper trail that proves complicity in medical neglect, especially toward veterans,
And exposing that federal cannabis policy is not based on science—it’s based on stall tactics and political cowardice.
Keep naming it.
Keep citing it.
Keep shoving it into the public record.
Because Master File #1361 is the smoking gun—and the VA has had its hand on the trigger since the Carter Administration.
