These labels have nothing to do with the plant, but with regulating it and controlling people's use of it by government.
There is not medical or recreational tomatoes or corn.
Is there rec/med coffee?
Rec/med alcohol?
The definition of "medicine" today spans any field where pharmaceutical companies feel they can create a product that changes a feeling, trait or behavior that customers would be willing to pay to modify. The feeling/trait/behavior is labelled a condition or illness by a cooperating medical industry, and the productization race begins.
If they can turn growing hair and male erection stimulation, fatigue, sadness, anxiety, etc. or genetic traits, all natural human conditions, into medical ailments to be treated with pills: profit!
Many of these products are simply ways for people to manage the symptoms of their neglect of their own health/wellness.
Diet, exercise, sleep. People treat their bodies like crap and wonder why it's not working right. Rather than modify behavior to bring the body's signs of trouble back into balance, people look outside for a solution in pill form because they are lazy and trust multiple industries that see them only as a number on the bottom line. Big pharma, health care, agriculture, finance, govt.
Hippocrates said: "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." He perfectly captured the essence of human wellness that our modern pharma industry wants us to ignore.
Maybe organic, non-gmo, gluten free food should be labelled Medical food and regular industrial poison food can be labelled recreational.
When they take it that far, It will make sense to breakout cannabis like that to me.
You guys have totally nailed that issue of wellness and how unregulated, people (often subconsciously) choose cannabis to modify a variety of feelings/traits/behaviors that result in an improved life experience.
Cannabis is the ultimate natural wellness product. The vitamin or supplement to beat all supplements, and ultimately threatens the entire pharma/med/control system.
If we accept the fact that we are serfs, being allowed to navigate through life at the mercy of our rulers, that those rulers seek to control and exploit every facet of our existence, and that to avoid punishment for stepping out of the boundaries that they have defined for us to make it easier for them to profit from our lives, we must sometimes adopt structures and rules that make no sense, then med vs rec is fine.
If we see it as a stepping stone in changing cultural acceptance of cannabis and rejecting of 80 years of social engineering propaganda that will ultimately lead to more freedom, then med vs rec is fine.
But among ourselves, here in this group, lets be honest with ourselves.
Cannabis should be no more regulated than tomatoes.
In commercial productization of a plant consumed in the various ways we do with canna, the same tests and quality standards applied to medical should apply to rec. Shortcuts in production have great incentive to introduce substances that make canna unhealthy. Insecticides are poison, and with a million dollar + crop on the line, businesses may make bad decisions.
Let's not allow cannabis to become another poison like tobacco.
Guess I should read the article. I hope my ramble was relevant