Law vs Reality = Human Biology vs Cannabis Law

The endocannabinoid system exists in every human being. Phytocannabinoids interact with receptors that evolution has conserved across millions of years. What actually matters is dose, route of administration, cannabinoid ratios, and individual context — not the plant’s inherited stigma.

Yet the law treats the molecule as a moral absolute. Biology treats it as conditional. Regulation begins with the presumption of danger. Human physiology operates through modulation, dose-dependent thresholds, and intricate feedback loops.

There is a peculiar habit in lawmaking: when something unsettles people, lawmakers freeze it in amber. They chisel new rules onto stone tablets, sprinkle a little Latin over the text, and hope biology will show enough respect to stop evolving. No plant has been punished more consistently for this instinct than cannabis over the past three centuries.

On one side stands human physiology: messy, adaptive, feedback-driven, relentlessly seeking balance. On the other stands regulation: tidy, categorical, convinced that certain molecules behave like cartoon villains. This is Law vs Reality.

Let us begin where most lawmakers and governments almost never look, inside your own body.

The System Nobody Asked the Law About

Every human is born with an endocannabinoid system (ECS). It is not optional. It is not elective. It is a built-in network of receptors, enzymes, and signalling molecules that quietly regulates pain perception, inflammation, mood, appetite, sleep, immune function, and aspects of memory consolidation.

Your grandmother has one. The customs officer has one. The SAPS member who stops your vehicle has one. The system runs on endocannabinoids produced inside your own tissues to maintain equilibrium. Picture an internal thermostat: temperature too high, it cools things down; inflammation rising, it dampens the response; stress hormones surging, it gently nudges them back toward baseline.

This is not fringe science. It is mainstream human physiology, covered in medical textbooks and recognised by health authorities around the world.

Then the legal machinery arrives , treating cannabis as though it conceals some classified national-security secret. A plant whose molecules happen to fit neatly into a receptor system that evolution installed in our lineage long before any legislature existed is branded with every warning sign imaginable.

Plants, Meet Receptors

Cannabis produces phytocannabinoids, mostly in their acidic forms: THCA, CBDA and others. Heat or prolonged storage triggers decarboxylation, converting them into THC, CBD and their better-known neutral counterparts.

These plant-derived compounds then bind to ECS receptors. They fit, not because the plant was designed for humans, but because biology is ruthlessly pragmatic. Keys that were never cut by your body’s locksmith can still turn the lock.

We see the same opportunism everywhere else in nature. Eat broccoli and its sulfur compounds modulate detox enzymes. Drink coffee and caffeine occupies adenosine receptors, politely informing your brain that the fatigue meeting has been cancelled. Swallow aspirin and it blocks the prostaglandin pathway that was amplifying your pain and swelling.

No select committee ever held hearings on whether humans ought to possess receptors that caffeine or aspirin can occupy. With cannabis, however, the mere fact of receptor interaction is treated as presumptively sinister. One almost expects immune cells to be required to lodge paperwork at the nearest SAPS station before responding.

Dose Is Not a Footnote — It’s the Plot

Here is where physiology and statute begin to argue in raised voices.

In biology, everything turns on dose, route, cannabinoid ratios, timing, and context. The first principle of toxicology remains: the dose makes the poison. Water can kill. Oxygen can injure lungs at excessive partial pressure. Vitamin A becomes hepatotoxic in surplus. Nobody is campaigning to prohibit oxygen because a few scuba divers miscalculated.

Yet cannabis regulation continues to treat the plant as intrinsically and absolutely dangerous, irrespective of concentration, delivery method, formulation, or user profile. To a physiologist that logic is equivalent to banning fire because it can burn, while conveniently forgetting that controlled fire cooks food, sterilises instruments, and underpins industrial civilisation.

Real-world cannabis use varies enormously. Inhalation produces one pharmacokinetic profile; oral ingestion produces another. CBD can blunt certain unwanted effects of THC. Gradual titration is not the same as an abrupt high dose. Therapeutic intent differs from recreational intent. A first-time user responds differently from someone with years of experience. Liver enzymes understand these distinctions. Receptors understand them. The Criminal Procedure Act and the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act do not.

Thresholds, Not Thunderbolts

The ECS is governed by negative feedback loops, a phrase one rarely finds in primary legislation. Receptor density down-regulates with chronic exposure. Enzyme activity adjusts. Neurotransmitter release is fine-tuned. This is how biological systems avoid remaining stuck at maximum output.

Law prefers binary cliffs: lawful / unlawful, permitted / prohibited, safe / dangerous. Cliffs are far simpler to enforce than gradients. Biology, unfortunately, inhabits gradients.

The resulting mismatch generates outcomes that border on farce. The identical molecule can send one person to prison in one jurisdiction while appearing on pharmacy shelves, in cosmetics, and in registered supplements in another, all depending on the paperwork attached to it that day.

When Fear Becomes Architecture

Most of the world’s cannabis prohibitions were enacted during periods dominated by geopolitical manoeuvring, racialised moral panics, and economic protectionism, not receptor pharmacology. Once a substance is classified and scheduled, entire infrastructures crystallise around it: specialised police units, prosecution guidelines, licensing bureaucracies, border protocols, and deeply entrenched cultural stigma.

Dismantling any part of that architecture feels like attempting major renovations on a cathedral during the Second Coming. The compromise position becomes pilot programmes, tightly circumscribed research exemptions, and private-use dispensations surrounded by multiple layers of sub-clauses. A quiet legislative footnote reminding your neighbour not to report your plants.

Physiology observes the spectacle with quiet detachment.

The Core Tension

Biology regards cannabinoids as modulators. Law regards cannabis as a moral absolute.

Living bodies function on continua and homeostatic adjustment. Statutes function on decontextualised symbols and permanent criminal records.

Regulation presumes peril and, if it ever asks,  inquires about dosage much later. Physiology continually probes thresholds, recalibrates sensitivity, and restores equilibrium.

One approach clings to the precautionary principle at all costs. The other understands that homeostasis is the default state of life.

The consequence is policy that increasingly appears absurd to patients, physicians, and researchers who witness cannabinoid pharmacology extending and improving quality of life, while the machinery that criminalises those same people continues to draw salaries for work declared well done.

You do not possess an endocannabinoid system because cannabis exists. Cannabis exists because humans, and many other vertebrates, possess an endocannabinoid system.

Your receptors are simply chemists doing their ordinary work. The legal system, meanwhile, remains committed to moral categorisation, arrests, prosecutions, and lifelong criminal records.

Try explaining that distinction to someone whose survival or quality of life is currently held hostage by paperwork no one seems willing to amend.

H3 Legal Solutions

South Africa

www.h3legal.co.za

charl@h3legal.co.za

+27 78 231 2947