PET PROJECTS
🧾 The Indictment (What’s on Trial)
The Controlled Substances Act. Fifty years of legal fiction that cannabis has “no medical use.” A war built on lies, enforced disproportionately, devastating communities, veterans, immigrants, and the poor.
The MORE Act is not a gift — it’s a confession. Congress is admitting the law was wrong. Now they’re racing to mop up the evidence before history hands down its verdict.
📂 The Evidence (Breakdown by Section)
1. Legalization & Descheduling
Cannabis stripped from Schedule I.
No more federal criminal penalties for possession, distribution, cultivation.
Federal agencies barred from discrimination.
Exhibit A: Controlled Substances Act — rewritten to erase marijuana.
2. Tax & Trust Fund
5% excise tax on cannabis products.
Revenue flows into the Opportunity Trust Fund.
Cross-Exam: This is reparations in disguise. Government takes from prohibition, then taxes liberation — promising to “reinvest.” But they still keep the till.
3. Community Reinvestment
Grants for nonprofits: reentry, job training, expungement aid, health, youth.
Only 501(c)(3)s with track records qualify.
Question: Why should people who suffered under prohibition now have to beg through grant applications to get back what was stolen?
4. Small Business & Licensing Equity
SBA loans, microloans, disaster relief open to cannabis businesses.
Equitable Licensing Grants force states to waive fees, ignore past convictions, diversify boards.
Translation: The feds finally admit the game was rigged. But they only unrig it if states sign up to play fair.
5. Benefits, Clearances & Housing
Federal benefits, housing, SNAP, security clearances → can’t be denied for cannabis.
Note for the jury: Veterans, federal employees, poor families — all of them were second-class citizens under cannabis law. This restores rights that never should have been stripped.
6. Immigration
Cannabis use or conviction → no longer grounds for deportation. Retroactive.
This is a smoking gun. Immigrants were deported for conduct that Congress now admits should never have been a crime.
7. Expungement & Resentencing
Automatic expungement of non-violent cannabis convictions since 1971.
Sealed records.
Prisoners resentenced as if cannabis had never been illegal.
GAO mandated to study racial disparities.
Mic Drop: The government finally orders its own statistics clerk to admit what every defense attorney already knew — drug law was a tool of racial control.
8. Studies & Oversight
GAO: workplace, health, youth, crime, revenue.
DOT: cannabis impairment tests.
NIOSH: workplace safety.
DOE: student outcomes.
Cross-Exam: Decades of prohibition rested on “we don’t have enough studies.” Now legalization drags in the same alphabet soup to measure impacts after the damage is done. Too little, too late.
🧑⚖️ Closing Argument (Cohn Mode)
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the MORE Act isn’t radical. It’s remedial. It’s Congress entering a guilty plea to half a century of failed drug war.
Every section is an admission:
If cannabis was never a threat to national security, why restore clearances?
If it was never grounds for deportation, why erase it from immigration law?
If it was never a danger to the public, why automatically expunge convictions?
The Act proves what defendants, doctors, veterans, and communities screamed for decades: prohibition was fraud. And when the government admits fraud, the only proper remedy is restitution, not regulation.
🔨 Verdict
The MORE Act dismantles prohibition on paper. But don’t mistake paperwork for justice. Justice is when the people who lost years, families, jobs, homes, and freedom are restored fully, without conditions, without delay, without bureaucratic ransom.
Shapiro Mode initialized. 🎙️
Rapid-fire, fact-focused, surgical. Let’s cut straight through the spin.
🚨 The Problem
The MORE Act loves the word “equity.” It throws it around like confetti. Community reinvestment. Disadvantaged entrepreneurs. Minority-owned businesses. Immigration protections. Expungement programs. All of that is in there.
But notice who’s missing? Veterans.
Nowhere in this bill — not in the equity sections, not in the licensing, not in the grant programs — are veterans even mentioned as a protected or prioritized group. Not once.
📊 The Reality
Veterans make up 6% of the U.S. population, but nearly 15% of the homeless population.
The VA spends nearly $1 billion annually on substance use disorder treatment.
Suicide rates among veterans remain 57% higher than the general population.
And yes — veterans have been arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for cannabis possession at rates equal to or higher than the general population, often while already dealing with PTSD and combat-related injuries.
Yet the MORE Act’s “equity” framework — supposedly designed to redress harm from prohibition — has no carveout, no acknowledgment, and no prioritization for veterans.
🏛️ The Double Standard
The Act prioritizes:
Immigrants.
Formerly incarcerated individuals.
“Socially and economically disadvantaged” business owners.
Nonprofits with political connections.
But veterans? The men and women who the federal government itself ordered into wars — and then criminalized for using cannabis instead of VA-issued opioids? Nowhere.
Why? Because veterans are not the Democratic Party’s favored equity constituency. They don’t fit the narrative. They’re politically inconvenient.
⚖️ The Verdict
The MORE Act is less about universal justice and more about targeted restitution for groups Democrats see as core allies. Veterans get lip service on Memorial Day speeches, but when the actual legislative chips are on the table, they’re invisible.
🔥 Deployable Line (Shapiro Mode):
“The MORE Act calls itself an equity bill. But equity apparently means handpicking the Democratic Party’s favorite groups and ignoring veterans entirely. The people who fought wars for this country are left out of the war on drugs cleanup. That’s not equity — that’s selective politics dressed up as justice.”
Carlin Mode initialized. ☠️🔥
Stand back, because this is going to get messy.
👀 Let’s start with the stage play:
The government spent fifty years screaming “Cannabis is the devil’s lettuce! No medical use! Dangerous! Lock ‘em up!” They used that line to cage people, deport people, strip them of jobs, housing, families, dignity. A whole generation sacrificed to a lie.
Now Congress waltzes in with the MORE Act, puffing its chest like it’s delivering salvation. “Good news, peasants! We’ve decided the law was wrong!” Oh, how noble. The same clowns who ran the con for half a century now want applause for admitting, in fine print, that it was all bullshit.
⚰️ Here’s the hypocrisy:
The “Confession Disguised as Reform.”
Every section of this bill is an admission of guilt. Expungement? That’s saying, “Oops, shouldn’t have arrested you.” Immigration? “Oops, shouldn’t have deported you.” Veterans denied benefits? “Oops, shouldn’t have done that either.” The whole bill is one giant “Oops,” but instead of restitution, you get paperwork and taxes.The Tax Hustle.
They stole from you for decades, seized your crops, raided your homes, auctioned off your cars, pocketed your cash. Now they’ll legalize — but only if you pay a 5% tax into a shiny “Opportunity Trust Fund.” It’s the same mob shakedown with a new logo. They torch your house, then sell you the water to put it out.The Equity Shell Game.
They’ve got lists of “equity groups.” Nonprofits, immigrants, minority entrepreneurs. All fine. But who’s missing? Veterans. The very people the government drafted, broke, and then punished for trying to heal themselves with cannabis instead of VA’s opiate cocktail. Left out. Invisible. Disposable. Equity, my ass — it’s political favoritism wrapped in virtue signaling.The Alphabet Soup Circus.
GAO, NIOSH, DOE, DOT — all suddenly summoned to “study the impacts.” Where the hell were these studies in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, when people were rotting in prison? Now they’ll spend millions studying whether legalization is safe — after fifty years of damage. It’s like shooting someone in the chest and then hiring a think tank to study “the effects of bullets on lungs.”
💀 The punchline:
The MORE Act is Congress writing its own plea deal. They’re guilty as sin, and they know it. But instead of facing sentencing, they’re patting themselves on the back for finally, maybe, sorta admitting they lied.
Meanwhile, the victims — the veterans, the prisoners, the deported, the kids who lost parents to prison — get told to apply for grants. Fill out forms. Maybe, if the nonprofit middlemen decide you’re worthy, you’ll get a taste of “reinvestment.” That’s not justice. That’s bureaucracy laundering guilt.
🔥 Deployable Carlin Blast:
“The Controlled Substances Act was a fifty-year con job. The MORE Act is Congress writing its confession, but instead of paying damages, they’re charging us a 5% tax for the privilege of acknowledging the truth. They’ll call it equity, they’ll call it justice, but it’s the same scam in a new suit — and veterans, the people they broke twice, don’t even make the guest list. This isn’t reform. It’s a cover-up with better marketing.”
Cohn Mode is now initialized. ⚖️🔥
Courtroom lights up, the jury shifts in their seats. We are no longer talking about abstractions. We’re talking about veterans — the men and women this government sent into war, broke in body and mind, then abandoned when they sought cannabis over opioids.
👨⚖️ Opening Statement:
Ladies and gentlemen, what’s on trial here is not just the Controlled Substances Act. It is the government’s treatment of its own soldiers. For fifty years, veterans came home from war, found cannabis helped them sleep, eased their pain, quieted the nightmares. And what was their reward? Arrest. Prosecution. Denial of VA benefits. Loss of housing. Stripped clearances. Careers destroyed. Families torn apart.
And now Congress comes crawling in with the MORE Act — not as a gift, but as a half-hearted apology note scribbled in the margins of legislation. They will restore housing, restore clearances, erase convictions… but not once in hundreds of pages do they say the word “veteran.” Not once.
📂 The Evidence:
Exhibit A – Equity Framework.
The bill prioritizes immigrants, nonprofits, minority-owned businesses, disadvantaged entrepreneurs. All groups worth protecting. But veterans? Absent. As though the people who fought America’s wars are somehow less worthy of justice than a 501(c)(3) with a grant writer on retainer.Exhibit B – The Data.
Veterans are 6% of the U.S. population, but nearly 15% of the homeless. Suicide rates 57% higher than civilians. Nearly $1 billion in VA spending on substance use disorders each year. And countless prosecutions for cannabis, often while veterans were battling PTSD and combat injuries. These numbers are not politics. They are casualties.Exhibit C – The Pattern.
Every Memorial Day, veterans are praised in speeches. Every Veterans Day, the parades roll out. But when it comes to actual equity in law, in cannabis reform, veterans are invisible. “Take what you’re given, be grateful it’s legal now, and maybe you’ll get a grant if you can fill out the forms.” That’s the message. Gratitude instead of justice.
🔨 Closing Argument:
The MORE Act proves prohibition was a fraud. It restores rights that never should have been stripped. It expunges crimes that never should have existed. It protects immigrants who never should have been deported. But for veterans — the people who bore the weight of this nation’s wars — it offers silence.
That silence is damning. Because when the government knows a class of people was uniquely harmed, disproportionately targeted, and deliberately silenced — and then excludes them from restitution — that is not oversight. That is intent.
Congress is not just guilty of bad law. They are guilty of betrayal. They told veterans: fight our wars, come home broken, and when you reach for cannabis instead of a pill bottle, we will break you again. And now, even in reform, they tell veterans: take what you get, and be happy about it.
Ladies and gentlemen, justice demands more than silence. It demands restitution. Full, immediate, unconditional restitution. Not taxes, not grant applications, not empty promises. Veterans should not have to beg through paperwork for rights that should never have been taken.
💥 Deployable Cohn Strike Line:
“The MORE Act proves prohibition was a lie — but when it comes to veterans, Congress doesn’t just admit past wrongs, it compounds them. After fifty years of betrayal, this bill tells veterans to take what they get and be grateful. That isn’t equity. That’s abandonment, dressed up in legislative language.”
