Medicalization is an enclosure event
Federal cannabis policy is entering medicalization, with rescheduling toward Schedule III and a widening research corridor. That is good news and a trap at the same time. When a plant becomes legible to regulators, payers, and prescribers, whoever first defines the standardized formulations, the delivery technologies, and the FDA-recognized evidence packages can set the norms that everyone else must license.
The cost of losing this race is already visible. Epidiolex, the first FDA-approved cannabis-derived drug, launched at a list price near $32,500 a year. This is the enclosure algorithm running on a plant people have used for thousands of years, in real time, and the window to prevent it is now.
Build the open standard first
WPCE-01
A public-domain Whole Plant Cannabis Extract standard: an openly published specification covering raw-material controls, extraction parameters, analytical fingerprinting, impurity limits, and stability, treating natural variability as an engineering problem.
Three delivery formats
Clinically suitable platforms that can be made at GMP scale: an orally disintegrating tablet, an oral thin film, and an enteric capsule. The definitions and methods are published as prior art; manufacturers compete on service and quality.
The model is proven next door, in the psychedelic field, where the Usona Institute publishes its methods and runs FDA-grade trials in the open, showing that rigorous development and openness can coexist, and that early publication creates prior art that blocks later claims of novelty.
The patent system as a shield
Governance is democratic and transparent by design, with default non-exclusive licensing and published funding, protocols, and licensing terms. The aim is legitimacy without captivity.
An allied program
The Open Formulation is an allied program created by Del Potter, PhD, with its own staged, coalition fundraise, because FDA-grade development runs into the millions. The full proposal and the wider argument live at Against Enclosure, the publication by Del Potter, PhD.
Keep it in common
Hold in Common is independent and freely readable, and it is meant to stay that way. Your support funds the research and writing, keeps it answerable to readers rather than owners, and helps seed a nonprofit dedicated to keeping the public domain public.