Should marijuana be legalized?

[vyo476]

Those are excellent articles. They make a lot of good points. I've got a good point for you too: take a look at the vote. It's still 23 to 9 in favor of legalizing marijuana. Most of us are on board, myself included; we just want you to recognize that marijuana has harmful properties too. Well, palerider still wants to argue you down, but r0beph and 9sublime and I all agree with the legalization, or at the very least decriminalization, of marijuana. The only part of the conversation that is as yet unfinished is the conversation on negative effects.

[9sublime]

Those are excellent articles. They make a lot of good points. I've got a good point for you too: take a look at the vote. It's still 23 to 9 in favor of legalizing marijuana. Most of us are on board, myself included; we just want you to recognize that marijuana has harmful properties too. Well, palerider still wants to argue you down, but r0beph and 9sublime and I all agree with the legalization, or at the very least decriminalization, of marijuana. The only part of the conversation that is as yet unfinished is the conversation on negative effects.


Summed up this whole thread in a paragraph.

Now I know this is from Erowid, so it is going to be a bit pro-cannabis but:

Except for their psychoactive ingredients, marijuana and tobacco smoke are nearly identical. 21 Because most marijuana smokers inhale more deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs, more dangerous material may be consumed per cigarette. However, it is the total volume of irritant inhalation - not the amount in each cigarette - that matters.

Most tobacco smokers consume more than 10 cigarettes per day and some consume 40 or more. Regular marijuana smokers seldom consume more than three to five cigarettes per day and most consume far fewer. Thus, the amount of irritant material inhaled almost never approaches that of tobacco users.

http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/wyoming/family/reality_check/cigarette.jpg

However, I think that if you didn't cut your joint with tobacco then its going to be so much better. But thats just impractical.

[palerider]

Those are excellent articles. They make a lot of good points. I've got a good point for you too: take a look at the vote. It's still 23 to 9 in favor of legalizing marijuana. Most of us are on board, myself included; we just want you to recognize that marijuana has harmful properties too. Well, palerider still wants to argue you down, but r0beph and 9sublime and I all agree with the legalization, or at the very least decriminalization, of marijuana. The only part of the conversation that is as yet unfinished is the conversation on negative effects.


Actually, I said that I could favor decriminalization if serious prison terms were put in place for those involved in production and trafficking. And I would want to see fines for people who were endangering the public as a result of being under the influence with medium length jail terms for those who are multiple time offenders or unable to afford the fines.

I would also like to see the same for repeat alcohol offenders. A 3 time DUI should rot in jail for a decade.

[Rokerijdude11]

Summed up this whole thread in a paragraph.

Now I know this is from Erowid, so it is going to be a bit pro-cannabis but:

Except for their psychoactive ingredients, marijuana and tobacco smoke are nearly identical. 21 Because most marijuana smokers inhale more deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs, more dangerous material may be consumed per cigarette. However, it is the total volume of irritant inhalation - not the amount in each cigarette - that matters.

Most tobacco smokers consume more than 10 cigarettes per day and some consume 40 or more. Regular marijuana smokers seldom consume more than three to five cigarettes per day and most consume far fewer. Thus, the amount of irritant material inhaled almost never approaches that of tobacco users.

http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/wyoming/family/reality_check/cigarette.jpg

However, I think that if you didn't cut your joint with tobacco then its going to be so much better. But thats just impractical.

This is why people should be making "Ice Water Hash " which was invented by a woman i know whos name is Mila
she is In Amsterdam and she has travelled the world learning about hash ...and then came to invent a new method which is called the Ice-O-Lator system.

It has been copied by a Canadian man and caleed Bubble hash also using the Bubble bag syatem...same sytem different name Mila gets credit she invented it with an American. http://www.pollinator.nl is her website


anyways what this does is it washes the scraps that are usually thrown away during cannabis growth and harvest
There are what is known as "Trichomes" present all over a female marijuana plant that is in bloom. these "trichomes" under a microscope are at the end of shafts and are small bubbles filled with THC.

the material is placed in freezing water ,water right at freezing but not frozen the material is agitated and the trichomes freeze and break off of theyre stems.At this point they fall into the water and are strained through a series of screens. when they reach the last screen they are removed from the water the excess water is squeezed out and the crystals that remain are dried..

what you are left with is prctically PURE THC it is from 85-95% pure depending on the weed, and the wash, as it can be done twice with the same material. if left to dry and not pressed into hash they remain in a crystal like state. very much like freeze dired coffee if they are first wash they are nearly clear .....and have no smell the plant material has been completly stripped from the equation


if the crystals are pressed into hash when they are pressed and the oils are released and begin to mix, a recation occurs and it increases the potency of the overall Buzz.
this pressed hash or these crystals can then either be added to some weed or some tobacco and you achieve instant no nonsense Buzz.... which is so concentrated a few tokes is all most will be able to handle


if the crystals or hash is used in a commercial grade vapourizer....there is NO flame no smoke only the release of the oils as the vapourize into a lil vapor cloud that you inhale...this has eliminated all of the clorophyll from the plant any residual agents the plant may have ingested and also eliminated the carbon from actual smoke

a almost totally PURE way of smoking


Marijuana can also be used with a commercial vapourizer which eliminates the actual smoking of the plant product the vapourizer hets up the trichome sacks until they rupture releasing again a vapor cloud not an actual smoke cloud....as a matter of fact when a bud is smoked in a high grade commercial vapourizer it look the same as it did before you "smoked" it so ther have been developments
in the delivery methods which eliminates the actual smoke



not to mention ciggarettes contain over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known, cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds, and 400 other toxins. These include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.


marijuana smoke does not contain anywhere NEAR the amounts of elements listed...... it is non-comparable IMHO

[vyo476]

Actually, I said that I could favor decriminalization if serious prison terms were put in place for those involved in production and trafficking.

I apologize. I remember you saying that now...this thread has gotten really, really long.

[Fred]

Jack Herer is the SH7T!!!!!!!

he knows what hes talking about!!!

[Cheshire Cat]

Jack Herer is the SH7T!!!!!!!

he knows what hes talking about!!!
Pot get to your brain the word isn't SH7T it is S.H.I.T

[Kelly]

Yes. Cannibis should be legalized. It's natural and much better for people and a large number of their ailments than all this artificial chemical crap the pharmaceutical companies peddle to people.

[palerider]

Yes. Cannibis should be legalized. It's natural and much better for people and a large number of their ailments than all this artificial chemical crap the pharmaceutical companies peddle to people.

And upon what medical or pharmaceutical degree do you base that position?

[9sublime]

You don't need a degree to have knowledge or an opinion on something.

[Abraxis Axis]

And upon what medical or pharmaceutical degree do you base that position?

are you for real? do you see the stats? you are in the MINORITY big time on this one mister..it took an hour to read this post..seems the MAJORITY of the Members of this website are in FAVOR of legalization

[palerider]

are you for real? do you see the stats? you are in the MINORITY big time on this one mister..it took an hour to read this post..seems the MAJORITY of the Members of this website are in FAVOR of legalization

And that means what? Have you studied history? Would you like to start compiling lists of how often a majority has ever been right on anything? It has been my experience that the majority is one big idiot composed mostly of followers. I only start to worry about my position when it beginst to agree with the majority.

[palerider]

You don't need a degree to have knowledge or an opinion on something.

But you do need a deree or special knowledge to make a claim like this:

"much better for people and a large number of their ailments than all this artificial chemical crap the pharmaceutical companies peddle to people"

[Abraxis Axis]

you need to loosen your pantaloons there big guy. Have at your meaningless rantings. Your clearly in the minority..
that was the point nothing more, nothing less .go on and argue with yourself Big guy?


we need a degree to have an opinion!!!!
im not interested in what you have to say

[9sublime]

Abraxis talks like Roker.

[palerider]

Abraxis talks like Roker.

You noticed that too?

[9sublime]

We'll be able to tell when he says 'have a nice day...' and 'this thread is closed in my book...'

[vyo476]

And that means what? Have you studied history? Would you like to start compiling lists of how often a majority has ever been right on anything? It has been my experience that the majority is one big idiot composed mostly of followers. I only start to worry about my position when it beginst to agree with the majority.

Tell me, does it just kill you to live in a democratic country?

[vyo476]

Abraxis talks like Roker.

Agreed. Although I think he's trying to make it look like it isn't him.

Mods...?

[palerider]

Tell me, does it just kill you to live in a democratic country?


No. Should it? Actually, I like it because I am not compelled to follow the crowd. Look at the old soviet if you want to see the end result of that.

[vyo476]

No. Should it? Actually, I like it because I am not compelled to follow the crowd. Look at the old soviet if you want to see the end result of that.

The laws of this country are based on the will of a majority. I made the inference because of your apparent disdain for majorities.

[Kelly]

"The laws of this country are based on the will of a majority. I made the inference because of your apparent disdain for majorities."
--True! And don't forget: Just about everyone in this country has at least tried smoking pot at some time in their lives. Maybe Palerider got excluded by the cool kids when they tried it at summer camp and he's bitter about it. Also Palerider, don't tell me that I need a pharma degree to state that smoking a weed that naturally grows everywhere is better for you than Fin Fin or pills that "might cause diarrhea, chest pains, headaches, vomiting, cold sweats, abdominal cramps"...you've seen the commercials.

[9sublime]

Just look at the vote son.

[palerider]

The laws of this country are based on the will of a majority. I made the inference because of your apparent disdain for majorities.


So you are saying that laws making pot illegal are in force because the majority want it so? If that is how you want it, why are you complaining?

[palerider]

"The laws of this country are based on the will of a majority. I made the inference because of your apparent disdain for majorities."
--True! And don't forget: Just about everyone in this country has at least tried smoking pot at some time in their lives. Maybe Palerider got excluded by the cool kids when they tried it at summer camp and he's bitter about it. Also Palerider, don't tell me that I need a pharma degree to state that smoking a weed that naturally grows everywhere is better for you than Fin Fin or pills that "might cause diarrhea, chest pains, headaches, vomiting, cold sweats, abdominal cramps"...you've seen the commercials.

Maybe you don't know what the hell you are talking about also.

I am asking you by what special knowledge or degrees you can determine that pot is better for sick people than drugs that have been researched, tested, and found effective for diseases. Can you answer or not.

Also, if the laws are in place by the authority of the majority, and that is the way that you want it, then why are you pissing and moaning about the laws against pot that were, by your own assertion, put there by the majority? Make up your mind.

[palerider]

Just look at the vote son.

And you find the vote on a political board scientific? Have you read the content of much of what is written here? How willing would you be to put other aspects of your life into the hands of the ones who voted for legalization here?

[palerider]

Abraxis talks like Roker.

I did a quick look at some of roker's posts and he curiously misspells a couple of words and oddly enough, a search for those words spelled as he spells them returns only his and axis's posts.

[vyo476]

So you are saying that laws making pot illegal are in force because the majority want it so? If that is how you want it, why are you complaining?

Nice try. Yes, the laws prohibiting marijuana (despite what Roker will tell you) were originally enacted because it was the will of the majority of the people to do so (based on bad info? Maybe. Ask yourself though - was anything based on good info back then?). Today, we're looking at those laws and asking if perhaps they're a mistake. Changing times...changing laws.

If the majority now wishes for marijuana to be legalized, it ought to be; if not...well, it shouldn't. You expressed disdain purely for the opinions of majorities. To suggest a revision of previously enacted laws is not to express disdain for them; it is simply to reevaluate their practicality in America's new setting, which is vastly different from when those laws came into being.

That was a poor attempt at spin. Your arguments are usually fairly well-formed but I can't imagine that you didn't see right through the post in question at least as well as I did.

[vyo476]

I did a quick look at some of roker's posts and he curiously misspells a couple of words and oddly enough, a search for those words spelled as he spells them returns only his and axis's posts.

There's that, and the references to the Trilateral Commission that no one else makes. And the odd punctuation that fits Roker's with everything except capitalization (looks like he's making an effort to disguise his writing style). There's a post in one of the other threads that is particularly damning; sadly, I can't remember which one.

[palerider]

Nice try. Yes, the laws prohibiting marijuana (despite what Roker will tell you) were originally enacted because it was the will of the majority of the people to do so (based on bad info? Maybe. Ask yourself though - was anything based on good info back then?). Today, we're looking at those laws and asking if perhaps they're a mistake. Changing times...changing laws.

If the majority now wishes for marijuana to be legalized, it ought to be; if not...well, it shouldn't. You expressed disdain purely for the opinions of majorities. To suggest a revision of previously enacted laws is not to express disdain for them; it is simply to reevaluate their practicality in America's new setting, which is vastly different from when those laws came into being.

That was a poor attempt at spin. Your arguments are usually fairly well-formed but I can't imagine that you didn't see right through the post in question at least as well as I did.

I think that if the majority of americans wanted pot legal, and wanted it legal bad enough, then it would be legal. I merely pointed out that the grief I was getting about the "majority" wanting pot legal was a load of hooey. Don't point out to me that the majority wants pot legal and that the majority sets the laws and then in the same breath complain because the laws make pot illegal. You can't have it both ways.

[Abraxis Axis]

A Conspiracy to Wipe Out the Natural Competition

In the mid-1930s, when the new mechanical hemp fiber stripping machines and machines to conserve hemp's high-cellulose pulp finally became state-of-the-art, available and affordable, the enormous timber acreage and businesses of the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division, Kimberly Clark (USA), St. Regis - and virtually all other timber, paper and large newspaper holding companies - stood to lose billions of dollars and perhaps go bankrupt.

Coincidentally, in 1937, DuPont had just patented processes for making plastics from oil and coal, as well as a new sulfate/sulfite process for making paper from wood pulp. According to DuPont's own corporate records and historians,* these processes accounted for over 80% of all the company's railroad carloadings over the next 60 years into the 1990s.

*Author's research and communications with DuPont, 1985-1996.

If hemp had not been made illegal, 80% of DuPont's business would never have materialized and the great majority of the pollution which has poisoned our Northwestern and Southeastern rivers would not have occurred.

In an open marketplace, hemp would have saved the majority of America's vital family farms and would probably have boosted their numbers, despite the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But competing against environmentally-sane hemp paper and natural plastic technology would have jeopardized the lucrative financial schemes of Hearst, DuPont and DuPont's chief financial backer, Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh.

"Social Reorganization"

A series of secret meetings were held.

In 1931, Mellon, in his role as Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury, appointed his future nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, to be head of the newly reorganized Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FBNDD), a post he held for the next 31 years.

These industrial barons and financiers knew that machinery to cut, bale, decorticate (separate the fiber from the high-cellulose hurd), and process hemp into paper or plastics was becoming available in the mid-1930s. Cannabis hemp would have to go.

In DuPont's 1937 Annual Report to its stockholders, the company strongly urged continued investment in its new, but not readily accepted, petrochemical synthetic products. DuPont was anticipating "radical changes" from "the revenue raising power of government. . . converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization."*

*(DuPont Company, annual report, 1937, our emphasis added.)

In the Marijuana Conviction (University of Virginia Press, 1974), Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread II detailed this process:

"By the fall of 1936, Herman Oliphant (general counsel to the Treasury Department) had decided to employ the taxing power [of the federal government], but in a statute modeled after the National Firearms Act and wholly unrelated to the 1914 Harrison [narcotics] Act. Oliphant himself was in charge of preparing the bill. Anslinger directed his army to turn its campaign toward Washington.

"The key departure of the marijuana tax scheme from that of the Harrison Act is the notion of the prohibitive tax. Under the Harrison Act, a non-medical user could not legitimately buy or possess narcotics. To the dissenters in the Supreme Court decisions upholding the act, this clearly demonstrated that Congress' motive was to prohibit conduct rather than raise revenue. So in the National Firearms Act, designed to prohibit traffic in machine guns, Congress 'permitted' anyone to buy a machine gun, but required him to pay a $200 transfer tax* and carry out the purchase on an order form.

"The Firearms Act, passed in June 1934, was the first act to hide Congress' motives behind a prohibitive tax. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the anti-machine gun law on March 29, 1937. Oliphant had undoubtedly been awaiting the Court's decision, and the Treasury Department introduced its marihuana tax bill two weeks later, April 14, 1937."

Thus, DuPont's** decision to invest in new technologies based on "forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization" makes sense.

* About $5,000 in 1998 dollars.

** It is interesting to note that on April 29, 1937, two weeks after the Marihuana Tax Act was introduced, DuPont's foremost scientist, Wallace Hume Carothers, the inventor of nylon for DuPont, the world's number one organic chemist, committed suicide by drinking cyanide. Carothers was dead at age 41. . .

A Question of Motive

DuPont's plans were alluded to during the 1937 Senate hearings by Matt Rens, of Rens Hemp Company:

Mr. Rens: Such a tax would put all small producers out of the business of growing hemp, and the proportion of small producers is considerable. . . The real purpose of this bill is not to raise money, is it?

Senator Brown: Well, we're sticking to the proposition that it is.

Mr. Rens: It will cost a million.

Senator Brown: Thank you. (Witness dismissed.)

[vyo476]

Also, if the laws are in place by the authority of the majority, and that is the way that you want it, then why are you pissing and moaning about the laws against pot that were, by your own assertion, put there by the majority? Make up your mind.

That was the authority of a past majority. Today, the majority is looking at the whole thing in a different light. We have the ability to review and discard laws - or is that something you dislike, too? And when that happens - I hate to tell you - there's a majority vote to see if the resolution passes or not.

My problem with your original statement was your expressed disdain for (apparently) all majorities, when every law that goes into affect in this country only does so because of majority votes in Congress. While the Senators and Reps don't always strictly adhere to the will of their constituents, if they ever deviate too far they won't make reelection - and they know it, so unless they have some particular stake in a bill, they follow the will of the people as closely as possible.

I don't have any personal love affair with the ideas of majorities. Most of their decisions are eventually reviewed and quite a few of them are chucked in favor of better ideas; however, when that happens, it is another majority that is doing so.

For instance - if this thread's vote was taking place in the Senate, and we were to enlarge the numbers by percentile to meet quorum, legislation for the legalization of marijuana would pass the Senate and head on over to the House to see how well they like it. Same thing happens there - it gets sent to the President - and then he can either veto it, in which case Congress would have to pass it by a larger margin, and then...we have ourselves legalized marijuana.

That's just how it works. If you have any ideas for a system that is better than the majority rule we currently use I'd love to hear what it is.

[Abraxis Axis]

Hearst, His Hatred and Hysterical Lies

Concern about the effects of hemp smoke had already led to two major governmental studies. The British governor of India released the Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893-1894 on heavy bhang smokers in the subcontinent.

And in 1930, the U.S. government sponsored the Siler Commission study on the effects of off-duty smoking of marijuana by American servicemen in Panama. Both reports concluded that marijuana was not a problem and recommended that no criminal penalties apply to its use.

In early 1937, Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Walter Treadway told the Cannabis Advisory Subcommittee of the League of Nations that, "It may be taken for a relatively long time without social or emotional breakdown. Marihuana is habit-forming. . . in the same sense as. . . sugar or coffee."

But other forces were at work. The war fury that led to the Spanish American War in 1898 was ignited by William Randolph Hearst, through his nationwide chain of newspapers, and marked the beginning of "yellow journalism"* as a force in American politics.

* Webster's Dictionary defines "yellow journalism" as the use of cheaply sensational or unscrupulous methods in newspapers and other media to attract or influence the readers.

In the 1920s and '30s, Hearst's newspapers deliberately manufactured a new threat to America and a new yellow journalism campaign to have hemp outlawed. For example, a story of a car accident in which a "marijuana cigarette" was found would dominate the headlines for weeks, while alcohol related car accidents (which outnumbered marijuana connected accidents by more than 10,000 to 1) made only the back pages.

This same theme of marijuana leading to car accidents was burned into the minds of Americans over and over again the in late 1930s by showing marijuana related car accident headlines in movies such as "Reefer Madness" and "Marijuana - Assassin of Youth."

Blatant Bigotry

Starting with the 1898 Spanish American War, the Hearst newspaper had denounced Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Latinos.

After the seizure of 800,000 acres of Hearst's prime Mexican timberland by the "marihuana" smoking army of Pancho Villa,* these slurs intensified.

*The song "La Cucaracha" tells the story of one of Villa's men looking for his stash of "marijuana por fumar!" (to smoke!)

Non-stop for the next three decades, Hearst painted a picture of the lazy, pot-smoking Mexican - still one of our most insidious prejudices. Simultaneously, he waged a similar racist smear campaign against the Chinese, referring to them as the "Yellow Peril."

From 1910 to 1920, Hearst's newspapers would claim that the majority of incidents in which blacks were said to have raped white women, could be traced directly to cocaine. This continued for 10 years until Hearst decided it was not "cocaine-crazed Negroes" raping white women - it was now "marijuana-crazed Negroes" raping white women.

Hearst's and other sensationalistic tabloids ran hysterical headlines atop stories portraying "Negroes" and Mexicans as frenzied beasts who, under the influence of marijuana, would play anti-white "voodoo-satanic" music (jazz) and heap disrespect and "viciousness" upon the predominantly white readership. Other such offenses resulting from this drug-induced "crime wave" included: stepping on white men's shadows, looking white people directly in the eye for three seconds or more, looking at a white woman twice, laughing at a white person, etc.

For such "crimes", hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and blacks spent, in aggregate, millions of years in jails, prisons and on chain gangs, under brutal segregation laws that remained in effect throughout the U.S. until the 1950s and '60s. Hearst, through pervasive and repetitive use, pounded the obscure Mexican slang word "marijuana" into the English-speaking American consciousness. Meanwhile, the word "hemp" was discarded and "cannabis," the scientific term, was ignored and buried.

The actual Spanish word for hemp is "canamo." But using a Mexican "Sonoran" colloquialism - marijuana, often Americanized as "marihuana" - guaranteed that few would realize that the proper terms for one of the chief natural medicines, "cannabis," and for the premiere industrial resource, "hemp," had been pushed out of the language.

The Prohibitive Marijuana Tax

In the secret Treasury Department meetings conducted between 1935 and 1937, prohibitive tax laws were drafted and strategies plotted. "Marijuana" was not banned outright; the law called for an "occupational excise tax upon dealers, and a transfer tax upon dealings in marijuana."

Importers, manufacturers, sellers and distributors were required to register with the Secretary of the Treasury and pay the occupational tax. Transfers were taxed at $1 an ounce; $100 an ounce if the dealer was unregistered. The new tax doubled the price of the legal "raw drug" cannabis which at the time sold for one dollar an ounce.2 The year was 1937. New York State had exactly one narcotics officer.*

[Abraxis Axis]

* New York currently has a network of thousands of narcotics officers, agents, spies and paid informants - and 20 times the penal capacity it had in 1937, although the state's population has only doubled since then.

After the Supreme Court decision of March 29, 1937, upholding the prohibition of machine guns through taxation, Herman Oliphant made his move. On April 14, 1937 he introduced the bill directly to the House Ways and Means Committee instead of to other appropriate committees such as food and drug, agriculture, textiles, commerce, etc.

His reason may have been that "Ways and Means" is the only committee that can send its bills directly to the House floor without being subject to debate by other committees. Ways and Means Chairman Robert L. Doughton,* a key DuPont ally, quickly rubber-stamped the secret Treasury bill and sent it sailing through Congress to the President.

* Colby Jerry, The DuPont Dynasties, Lyle Stewart, 1984.

"Did Anyone Consult the AMA?"

However, even within his controlled Committee hearings, many expert witnesses spoke out against the passage of these unusual tax laws.

Dr. William G. Woodward, for instance, who was both a physician and an attorney for the American Medical Association, testified on behalf of the AMA.

He said, in effect, the entire fabric of federal testimony was tabloid sensationalism! No real testimony had been heard! This law, passed in ignorance, could possibly deny the world a potential medicine, especially now that the medical world was just beginning to find which ingredients in cannabis were active.

Woodward told the committee that the only reason the AMA hadn't come out against the marijuana tax law sooner was that marijuana had been described in the press for 20 years as "killer weed from Mexico."

The AMA doctors had just realized "two days before" these spring 1937 hearings, that the plant Congress intended to outlaw was known medically as cannabis, the benign substance used in America with perfect safety in scores of illnesses for over one hundred years.

"We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman," Woodward protested, "why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared." He and the AMA" were quickly denounced by Anslinger and the entire congressional committee, and curtly excused.3

*The AMA and the Roosevelt Administration were strong antagonists in 1937.

When the Marijuana Tax Act bill came up for oral report, discussion, and vote on the floor of Congress, only one pertinent question was asked from the floor: "Did anyone consult with the AMA and get their opinion?"

Representative Vinson, answering for the Ways and Means Committee replied, "Yes, we have. A Dr. Wharton [mistaken pronunciation of Woodward?] and {the AMA} are in complete agreement!"

With this memorable lie, the bill passed, and became law in December 1937. Federal and state police forces were created, which have incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Americans, adding up to more than 14 million wasted years in jails and prisons - even contributing to their deaths - all for the sake of poisonous, polluting industries, prison guard unions and to reinforce some white politicians' policies of racial hatred.

(Mikuriya, Tod, M.C., Marijuana Medical Papers, 1972; Sloman, Larry, Reefer Madness, Grove Press, 1979; Lindsmith, Alfred, The Addict and the Law, Indiana U. Press; Bonnie & Whitebread; The Marijuana Conviction, U. of VA Press; U.S. Cong. Records; et al.)

Others Spoke Out, Too

Also lobbying against the Tax Act with all its energy was the National Oil Seed Institute, representing the high-quality machine lubrication producers, as well as paint manufacturers. Speaking to the House Ways and Means Committee in 1937, their general counsel, Ralph Loziers, testified eloquently about the hempseed oil that was to be, in effect, outlawed:

"Respectable authorities tell us that in the Orient, at least 200 million people use this drug; and when we take into consideration that for hundreds, yes, thousands of years, practically that number of people have been using this drug. It is significant that in Asia and elsewhere in the Orient, where poverty stalks abroad on every hand and where they draw on all the plant resources which a bountiful nature has given that domain - it is significant that none of those 200 million people has ever, since the dawn of civilization, been found using the seed of this plant or using the oil as a drug.

"Now, if there were any deleterious properties or principles in the seed or oil, it is reasonable to suppose that these Orientals, who have been reaching out in their poverty for something that would satisfy their morbid appetite, would have discovered it. . .

"If the committee please, the hempseed, or the seed of the cannabis sativa l., is used in all the Oriental nations and also in a part of Russia as food. It is grown in their fields and used as oatmeal. Millions of people every day are using hempseed in the Orient as food. They have been doing that for many generations, especially in periods of famine. . . The point I make is this - that this bill is too all inclusive. This bill is a world encircling measure. This bill brings the activities - the crushing of this great industry under the supervision of a bureau - which may mean its suppression. Last year, there was imported into the U.S. 62,813,000 pounds of hempseed. In 1935 there was imported 116 million pounds. . ."

[Abraxis Axis]

Protecting Special Interests

As the AMA's Dr. Woodward had asserted, the government's testimony before Congress in 1937 had in fact consisted almost entirely of Hearst's and other sensational and racist newspaper articles read aloud by Harry J. Anslinger,* director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). (This agency has since evolved into the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]).

*Harry J. Anslinger was director of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics from its inception in 1931 for the next 31 years, and was only forced into retirement in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy after Anslinger tried to censor the publications and publishers of Professor Alfred Lindsmith (The Addict and the Law, Washington Post, 1961) and to blackmail and harass his employer, Indiana University. Anslinger had come under attack for racist remarks as early as 1934 by a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, Joseph Guffey, for such things as referring to "ginger-colored ******s" in letters circulated to his department heads on FBN stationery.

Prior to 1931, Anslinger was Assistant U.S. Commissioner for Prohibition. Anslinger, remember, was hand-picked to head the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics by his uncle-in-law, Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under President Herbert Hoover. The same Andrew Mellon was also the owner and largest stockholder of the sixth largest bank (in 1937) in the United States, the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, one of only two bankers for DuPont* from 1928 to the present.

* DuPont has borrowed money from banks only twice in its entire 190-year history, once to buy control of General Motors in the 1920s. Its banking business is the prestigious plum of the financial world.

In 1937, Anslinger testified before Congress saying, "Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

This, along with Anslinger's outrageous racist statements and beliefs, was made to the southern dominated congressional committee and is now an embarrassment to read in its entirety.

For instance, Anslinger kept a "Gore File," culled almost entirely from Hearst and other sensational tabloids - e.g., stories of axe murders, where one of the participants reportedly smoked a joint four days before committing the crime.

Anslinger pushed on Congress as a factual statement that about 50% of all violent crimes committed in the U.S. were committed by Spaniards, Mexican-Americans, Latin Americans, Filipinos, African-Americans and Greeks, and these crimes could be traced directly to marijuana.

(From Anslinger's own records given to Pennsylvania State University, ref.; Li Cata Murders, etc.)

Not one of Anslinger's marijuana "Gore Files" of the 1930s is believed to be true by scholars who have painstakingly checked the facts.4

Self-Perpetuating Lies

In fact, FBI statistics, had Anslinger bothered to check, showed at least 65-75% of all murders in the U.S. were then - and still are - alcohol related. As an example of his racist statements, Anslinger read into U.S. Congressional testimony (without objection) stories about "coloreds" with big lips, luring white women with jazz music and marijuana.

He read an account of two black students at the University of Minnesota doing this to a white coed "with the result of pregnancy." The congressmen of 1937 gasped at this and at the fact that this drug seemingly caused white women to touch or even look at a "Negro."

Virtually no one in America other than a handful of rich industrialists and their hired cops knew that their chief potential competitor - hemp - was being outlawed under the name "marijuana."

That's right. Marijuana was most likely just a pretext for hemp prohibition and economic suppression.

The water was further muddied by the confusion of marijuana with "loco weed" (Jimson Weed). The situation was not clarified by the press, which continued to print the misinformation into the 1960s.

At the dawn of the 1990s, the most extravagant and ridiculous attacks on the hemp plant drew national media attention - such as a study widely reported by health journals* in 1989 that claimed marijuana smokers put on about a half a pound of weight per day. Now in 1998, they just want to duck the issue.

*American Health, July/August 1989.

Meanwhile, serious discussions of the health, civil liberties and economic aspects of the hemp issue are frequently dismissed as being nothing but an "excuse so that people can smoke pot" - as if people need an excuse to state the facts about any matter.

One must concede that, as a tactic, lying to the public about the beneficial nature of hemp and confusing them as to its relationship with "marijuana" has been very successful.

Footnotes:

1. Dewey & Merrill, Bulletin 404, US Department of Agriculture 1916; "Billion-Dollar Crop," Popular Mechanics, 1938; U.S. Agricultural Indexes, 1916 through 1982; New Scientist, November 13, 1980.

2. Uelmen & Haddax, Drug Abuse and the Law, 1974.

3. Bonnie, Richard & Whitebread, Charles, The Marijuana Conviction, Univ. of Virginia Press, 1974; Congressional testimony, 1937 (See full testimony in Appendix); et al.

4. Sloman, Larry; Reefer Madness, 1979; Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marijuana Conviction, Univ. of Virginia Press, 1974.

[vyo476]

I think that if the majority of americans wanted pot legal, and wanted it legal bad enough, then it would be legal. I merely pointed out that the grief I was getting about the "majority" wanting pot legal was a load of hooey. Don't point out to me that the majority wants pot legal and that the majority sets the laws and then in the same breath complain because the laws make pot illegal. You can't have it both ways.

I'm not saying the majority of Americans want pot legal. The majority of us do. I was simply using this marijuana debate as an example; I am not saying that a majority of Americans want to legalize pot because quite frankly I don't know if it's true or not.

My issue was more with your original statement about disliking majorities. I took it out of the context of the thread as you saying that all majorities are dumb. That is the reason I took this line of reasoning; not because of a desire to advocate the popularity of marijuana legalization. Sorry if that was not clear.

[palerider]

I'm not saying the majority of Americans want pot legal. The majority of us do. I was simply using this marijuana debate as an example; I am not saying that a majority of Americans want to legalize pot because quite frankly I don't know if it's true or not.

My issue was more with your original statement about disliking majorities. I took it out of the context of the thread as you saying that all majorities are dumb. That is the reason I took this line of reasoning; not because of a desire to advocate the popularity of marijuana legalization. Sorry if that was not clear.


Generally speaking, I don't lend much credibility to majorities. It doesn't take much browsing through history to see that they are usually wrong.

[Abraxis Axis]

Man-Made Fiber. . .

The Toxic Alternative to Natural Fibers

The late 1920s and 1930s saw continuing consolidation of power into the hands of a few large steel, oil and chemical (munitions) companies. The U.S. federal government placed much of the textile production for the domestic economy in the hands of its chief munitions maker, DuPont.

The processing of nitrating cellulose into explosives is very similar to the process for nitrating cellulose into synthetic fibers and plastics. Rayon, the first synthetic fiber, is simply stabilized guncotton, or nitrated cloth, the basic explosive of the 19th Century.

"Synthetic plastics find application in fabricating a wide variety of articles, many of which in the past were made from natural products,"* beamed Lammot DuPont (Popular Mechanics, June 1939, pg. 805).

"Consider our natural resources," the president of DuPont continued, "The chemist has aided in conserving natural resources by developing synthetic products to supplement or wholly replace natural products."

DuPont's scientists were the world's leading researchers into the processes of nitrating cellulose and were in fact the largest processor of cellulose in the nation in this era.

The February 1938 Popular Mechanics article stated "Thousands of tons of hemp hurds are used every year by one large powder company for the manufacture of dynamite and TNT." History shows that DuPont had largely cornered the market in explosives by buying up and consolidating the smaller blasting companies in the late 1800s. By 1902 it controlled about two-thirds of industry output.

They were the largest powder company, supplying 40% of the munitions for the allies in WWI. As cellulose and fiber researchers, DuPont's chemists knew hemp's true value better than anyone else. The value of hemp goes far beyond linen fibers; although recognized for linen, canvas, netting and cordage, these long fibers are only 20% of the hempstalk's weight. Eighty percent of the hemp is in the 77% cellulose hurd, and this was the most abundant, cleanest resource of cellulose (fiber) for paper, plastics and even rayon.

The empirical evidence in this book shows that the federal government - through the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act - allowed this munitions maker to supply synthetic fibers for the domestic economy without competition. The proof of a successful conspiracy among these corporate and governing interests is simply this: in 1997 DuPont was still the largest producer of man-made fibers, while no American citizen has legally harvested a single acre of textile grade hemp in over 60 years (except during the period of WWII).

An almost unlimited tonnage of natural fiber and cellulose would have become available to the American farmer in 1937, the year DuPont patented nylon and the polluting wood-pulp paper sulfide process. All of hemp's potential value was lost.

Simple plastics of the early 1900s were made of nitrated cellulose, directly related to DuPont's munitions-making process. Celluloid, acetate and rayon were the simple plastics of that era, and hemp was well known to cellulose researchers as the premier resource for this new industry to use. Worldwide, the raw material of simple plastics, rayon and paper could be best supplied by hemp hurds.

Nylon fibers were developed between 1926-1937 by the noted Harvard chemist Wallace Carothers, working from German patents. These polyamides are long fibers based on observed natural products. Carothers, supplied with an open-ended research grant from DuPont, made a comprehensive study of natural cellulose fibers. He duplicated natural fibers in his labs and polyamides - long fibers of a specific chemical process - were developed. (Curiously, Wallace Carothers committed suicide one week after the House Ways and Means Committee, in April of 1937, had the hearings on cannabis and created the bill that would eventually outlaw hemp.)

Coal tar and petroleum-based chemicals were employed, and different devices, spinnerets and processes were patented. This new type of textile, nylon, was to be controlled from the raw material stage, as coal, to the completed product: a patented chemical product. The chemical company centralized the production and profits of the new "miracle" fiber. The introduction of nylon, the introduction of high-volume machinery to separate hemp's long fiber from the cellulose hurd, and the outlawing of hemp as "marijuana" all occurred simultaneously.

The new man-made fibers (MMFs) can best be described as war material. The fiber-making process has become one based on big factories, smokestacks, coolants and hazardous chemicals, rather than one of stripping out the abundant, naturally available fibers.

Coming from a history of making explosives and munitions, the old "chemical dye plants" now produce hosiery, mock linens, mock canvas, latex paint and synthetic carpets. Their polluting factories make imitation leather, upholstery and wood surfaces, while an important part of the natural cycle stands outlawed.

The standard fiber of world history, America's traditional crop, hemp, could provide our textiles and paper and be the premier source for cellulose. The war industries - DuPont, Allied Chemical, Monsanto, etc., - are protected from competition by the marijuana laws. They make war on the natural cycle and the common farmer.

- Shan Clark

[vyo476]

Generally speaking, I don't lend much credibility to majorities. It doesn't take much browsing through history to see that they are usually wrong.

Then perhaps you wouldn't mind enlightening us with a form of government that would work better than majority rule, since majorities are so often wrong.

[9sublime]

And you find the vote on a political board scientific? Have you read the content of much of what is written here? How willing would you be to put other aspects of your life into the hands of the ones who voted for legalization here?


OK OK chill your beans. I never said it was a proportinal representation of the entire world or anything I was just bringing it to everyones attention.

[palerider]

Then perhaps you wouldn't mind enlightening us with a form of government that would work better than majority rule, since majorities are so often wrong.


We don't operate on majority rule here. Are you under the impression that the US is a democracy?

So much for public education. We are a representative republic, not to be confused with a democracy. Democracy is no more and no less than 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.

[Abraxis Axis]

Marijuana Prohibition

Anslinger got his marijuana law. . .

Should we believe self-serving, ever-growing drug enforcement/drug treatment bureaucrats, whose pay and advancement depends on finding more and more people to arrest and 'treat'?

"More Americans die in just one day in prisons, penitentiaries, jails and stockades than have ever died from marijuana throughout history. Who are they protecting? From what?" - Fred Oerther, M.D., Portland, Oregon, September 1986

Moving to Crush Dissent

After the 1938-1944 New York City "LaGuardia Marijuana Report" refuted his argument, by reporting that marijuana caused no violence at all and citing other positive results, Harry J. Anslinger, in public tirade after tirade, denounced Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the New York Academy of Medicine and the doctors who researched the report.

Anslinger proclaimed that these doctors would never again do marijuana experiments or research without his personal permission, or be sent to jail!

He then used the full power of the United States government, illegally, to halt virtually all research into marijuana while he blackmailed the American Medical Association (AMA)* into denouncing the New York Academy of Medicine and its doctors for the research they had done.

* Why, you ask, was the AMA now on Anslinger's side in 1944-45, after being against the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937? Answer: since Anslinger's FBN was responsible for prosecuting doctors who prescribed narcotic drugs for what he, Anslinger, deemed illegal purposes, they (the FBN) had prosecuted more than 3,000 AMA doctors for illegal prescriptions through 1939. In 1939, the AMA made specific peace with Anslinger on marijuana. The results: only three doctors were prosecuted for illegal drugs of any sort from 1939 to 1949.

To refute the LaGuardia report, the AMA, at Anslinger's personal request, conducted a 1944-45 study showing that 34 "Negro" GI's and one white GI (for statistical control) who smoked marijuana, became disrespectful of white soldiers and officers in the segregated military. (See Appendix, "Army Study of Marijuana," Newsweek, Jan 15, 1945.)

This technique of biasing the outcome of a study is known among researchers as "gutter science."

Pot and the Threat of Peace

However, from 1948 to 1950, Anslinger stopped feeding the press the story that marijuana was violence-causing and began "red baiting", typical of the McCarthy era.

Now the frightened American public was told that this was a much more dangerous drug than he originally thought. Testifying before a strongly anti-Communist Congress in 1948 - and thereafter continually to the press - Anslinger proclaimed that marijuana rendered its users not violent at all, but so peaceful - and pacifistic! - that the Communists could and would use marijuana to weaken our American fighting men's will to fight.

This was a 180-degree turnaround of the original pretext on which "violence-causing" cannabis was outlawed in 1937. Undaunted, however, Congress now voted to continue the marijuana law - based on the exact opposite reasoning they had used to outlaw cannabis in the first place.

It is interesting and even absurd to note that Anslinger and his biggest supporters - Southern congressmen and his best senatorial friend, Senator Joseph McCarthy* of Wisconsin - from 1948 on, constantly received press coverage on the scare.

*According to Anslinger's autobiographical book, The Murderers, and confirmed by former FBN agents, Anslinger had been supplying morphine illegally to a U.S. senator - Joseph McCarthy - for years. The reason given by Anslinger in his book? So the Communists would not be able to blackmail this great American Senator for his drug-dependency weakness. (Dean Latimer, Flowers in the Blood; Harry Anslinger; The Murderers.)

Anslinger told congress the Communists would sell marijuana to American boys to sap their will to fight - to make us a nation of zombie pacifists. Of course, the Communists of Russia and China ridiculed this U.S. marijuana paranoia every chance they got - in the press and at the United Nations.

Unfortunately, the idea of pot and pacifism got so much sensational world press for the next 20 years that eventually Russia, China, and the Eastern Bloc Communist countries (that grew large amounts of cannabis) outlawed marijuana for fear that America would sell it or use it to make the communist soldiers docile and pacifistic.

This was strange because Russia, Eastern Europe, and China had been growing and ingesting cannabis as a medical drug, relaxant and work tonic for hundreds and even thousands of years, with no thought of marijuana laws.

(The J.V. Dialogue Soviet Press Digest, Oct. 1990 reported a flourishing illegal hemp business, despite the frantic efforts by Soviet law enforcement agencies to stamp it out. "In Kirghizia alone, hemp plantations occupy some 3,000 hectares." In another area, Russians are traveling three days into "one of the more sinister places in the Moiyn-Kumy desert," to harvest a special high-grade, drought resistant variety of hemp known locally as anasha.)"

[Abraxis Axis]

A Secret Program to Control Minds and Choices

Through a report released in 1983 under the Freedom of Information Act, it was discovered (after 40 years of secrecy) that Anslinger was appointed in 1942 to a top-secret committee to create a "truth serum" for the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), which evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (Rolling Stone, August 1983)

Anslinger and his spy group picked, as America's first truth serum, "honey oil," a much purer, almost tasteless form of hash oil, to be administered in food to spies, saboteurs, military prisoners and the like, to make them unwittingly "spill the truth."

Fifteen months later, in 1943, marijuana extracts were discontinued by Anslinger's group as America's first truth serum because it was noted that they didn't work all the time.

The people being interrogated would often giggle or laugh hysterically at their captors, get paranoid, or have insatiable desires for food (the munchies?). Also, the report noted that American OSS agents and other interrogation groups started using the honey oil illegally themselves, and would not give it to the spies. In Anslinger's OSS group's final report on marijuana as a truth serum, there was no mention of violence caused by the drug! In fact, the opposite was indicated. The OSS and later the CIA continued the search and tried other drugs as a truth serum; psilocybin or amanita mascara mushrooms and LSD, to name a few.

For twenty years, the CIA secretly tested these concoctions on American agents. Unsuspecting subjects jumped from buildings, or thought they'd gone insane.

Our government finally admitted doing all this to its own people in the 1970s, after 25 years of denials: drugging innocent, non-consenting, unaware citizens, soldiers and government agents - all in the name of national security, of course.

These American "security" agencies constantly threatened and even occasionally imprisoned individuals, families and organizations that suggested the druggings ever occurred.

It was three decades before the Freedom of Information Act forced the CIA to admit its lies through exposure on TV by CBS's "60 Minutes" and others. However, on April 16, 1985 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the CIA did not have to reveal the identities of either the individuals or institutions involved in this travesty.

The court said, in effect, that the CIA could decide what was or was not to be released under the Freedom of Information Act, and that the courts could not overrule the agency's decision.

As an aside, repealing this Freedom of Information Act was one of the prime goals of the Reagan/Bush/Quayle Administration.

(L.A. Times, The Oregonian, etc. editorials 1984; The Oregonian, January 21, 1985; Lee, Martin & Shlain, Bruce, Acid Dreams, Grove Press, NY, 1985. )

[Abraxis Axis]

Criminal Misconduct

Before Anslinger started the pacifist zombie-marijuana scare in 1948, he publicly used jazz music, violence, and the "gore files" for five to seven more years (1943-50) in the press, at conventions, lectures, and congressional hearings.

We now know that on the subject of hemp, disguised as marijuana, Anslinger was a bureaucratic police liar.

For more than 60 years now Americans have been growing up with and accepting Anslinger's statements on the herb - from violence to evil pacifism and finally to the corrupting influence of music.

Whether this was economically or racially inspired, or even because of upbeat music or some kind of synergistic (combined) hysteria, is impossible to know for sure. But we do know that for the U.S. government, e.g., DEA, information disseminated on cannabis was then and continues to be, a deliberate deception.

As you will see in the following chapters, the weight of empirical fact and large amounts of corroborating evidence indicate that the former Reagan/Bush/Quayle administrations, along with their unique pharmaceutical connections (see "Bush/Quayle/Lilly Pharmaceutical Sellout" below), have probably conspired at the highest levels to withhold information and to disinform the public, resulting in the avoidable and needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

And they did it, it seems, intending to save their own investment - and their friends' - in the pharmaceutical, energy and paper industries; and to give these poisonous, synthetic industries an insane advantage over natural hemp and protect the billions of dollars in annual profits that they stood to lose if the hemp plant and marijuana were not prohibited!

As a result, millions of Americans have wasted millions of years in jail time, and millions of lives have been and continue to be ruined by what started out as Hearst's, Anslinger's and DuPont's shameful economic lies, vicious racial libels and bigoted musical taste.

Footnotes:

1. Abel, Ernest, Marijuana, The First 12,000 Years, Plenum Press, NY, 1980, pg. 73 & 99.

2. Sloman, Larry, Reefer Madness, Grove Press, Inc., New York 1979, pg. 40.

3. Ibid, pg. 196, 197.

4. Research of Dr. Michael Aldrich, Richard Ashley, Michael Horowitz, et al.; The High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs, pg. 138.

[Abraxis Axis]

The Bush/Quayle/Lilly Pharmaceutical Sellout

In America, marijuana's most outspoken opponents are none other than former First Lady Nancy Reagan (1981-1989) and former President George Bush (1989-1993), the former Director of the CIA under Gerald Ford (1975-1977) and past director of President Reagan's "Drug Task Force" (1981-1988).

After leaving the CIA in 1977, Bush was made director of Eli Lily to none other than Dan Quayle's father and family, who owned controlling interest in the Lilly company and the Indianapolis Star. Dan Quayle later acted as go-between for drug kingpins, gun runners and government officials in the Iran-Contra scandals.

The entire Bush family was large stockholders in Lilly, Abbott, Bristol and Pfizer, etc. After Bush's disclosure of assets in 1979, it became public that Bush's family still has a large interest in Pfizer and substantial amounts of stock in the other aforementioned drug companies.

In fact, Bush actively lobbied illegally both within and without the administration as Vice President in 1981 to permit drug companies to dump more unwanted, obsolete or especially domestically-banned substances on unsuspecting Third World countries.

While Vice President, Bush continued to illegally act on behalf of pharmaceutical companies by personally going to the IRS for special tax breaks for certain drug companies (e.g. Lilly) manufacturing in Puerto Rico. In 1982, Vice President Bush was personally ordered to stop lobbying the IRS on behalf of the drug companies by the U.S. Supreme Court itself. (See Appendix.)

He did - but they (the pharmaceuticals) still received a 23% additional tax break for their companies in Puerto Rico who make these American outlawed drugs for sale to Third World countries.

(Financial disclosure statements; Bush 1979 tax report; "Bush Tried to Sway a Tax Rule Change But Then Withdrew" NY Times, May 19, 1982; misc. corporate records; Christic Institute "La Penca" affidavit; Lilly 1979 Annual Report.)

[Abraxis Axis]

The Body of Medical Literature on Cannabis Medicine

Our authority here is the 'Body of Literature,' starting with ancient materia medicae; Chinese and Hindu pharmacopoeia and Near Eastern cuneiform tablets, and continuing all the way into this century, including the 1966-76 U.S. renaissance of cannabis studies - some 10,000 separate studies on medicines and effects from the hemp plant. Comprehensive compendia of these works are designated as the prime sources for this medical chapter, as well as ongoing interviews with many researchers.

Affordable, Available Herbal Health Care

For more than 3,500 years, cannabis/hemp/marijuana has been, depending on the culture or nation, either the most used or one of the most widely used plants for medicines. This includes: China, India, the Middle and Near East, Africa, and pre-Roman Catholic Europe (prior to 476 A.D.).

Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, NORML, High Times and Omni magazines (September 1982) all indicate that if marijuana were legal it would immediately replace 10-20% of all pharmaceutical prescription medicines (based on research through 1976). And probably, Mechoulam estimates, 40-50% of all medicines, including patent medicines, could contain some extract from the cannabis plant when fully researched.

(Read the U.S. government-sponsored research as outlined by Cohen & Stillman, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana, 1976; Roffman, Roger, Marijuana as Medicine, 1980; Mikuriya, Tod, M.D., Marijuana Medical Papers, 1972; Also, the work of Dr. Norman Zinberg; Dr. Andrew Weil; Dr. Lester Grinspoon; and the U.S. Government's Presidential Commission reports [Shafer Commission] from 1972; Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, Tel Aviv/Jerusalem Univ. 1964-97; W.B. O'Shaunessy monograph, 1839; and the long term Jamaican studies I & II, 1968-74; Costa Rican studies through 1982; U.S. Coptic studies, 1981; Ungerlieder; U.S. military studies since the 1950s and '60s.)

Superstar of the 19th Century

Marijuana was America's number one analgesic for 60 years before the rediscovery of aspirin around 1900. From 1842 to 1900 cannabis made up half of all medicine sold, with virtually no fear of its high.

The 1839 report on the uses of cannabis by Dr. W.B. O'Shaugnessy, one of the most respected members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, was just as important to mid-19th Century Western medicine as the discoveries of antibiotics (like penicillin and Terramycin) were to mid-20th Century medicine.

In fact, the Committee on Cannabis Indica for the Ohio State Medical Society concluded that "High Biblical commentators [scholars]" believe "that the gall and vinegar, or myrrhed wine, offered to our Saviour immediately before his crucifixion was in all probability, a preparation of Indian hemp."

(Transcripts, Ohio State Medical Society 15th annual meeting June 12-14, 1860, pg. 75-100.)

From 1850 to 1937, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia listed cannabis as the primary medicine for more than 100 separate illnesses or diseases.

During all this time (pre-1000 B.C. to 1940s A.D., researchers, doctors and drug manufacturers (Eli Lilly, Parke-David, Squibb, etc.) had no idea what the active ingredients of cannabis were until Dr. Mechoulam discovered THC in 1964.

20th Century Research

As outlined in the previous chapters, the American Medical Association (AMA) and drug companies testified against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act because cannabis was known to have so much medical potential and had never caused any observable addictions or death by overdose.

The possibility existed, they argued, that once the active ingredients in cannabis (such as THC Delta-9) were isolated and correct dosages established, cannabis could become a miracle drug.

Twenty-nine years would pass, however, before American scientists could begin to even look into cannabis medicine again.

THC Delta-9 was isolated by Dr. Raphael Mechoulam at the University of Tel Aviv in 1964. His work confirmed that of Professor Taylor of Princeton, who had lead the research and identification of natural THC Delta-9 precursors in the 1930s. Kahn, Adams and Loewe also worked with the structure of cannabis' active ingredients in 1944.

Since 1964, more than 400 separate compounds have been isolated in cannabis from over a thousand suspected compounds. At least 60 of the isolated compounds are therapeutic. The United States, however, forbade this type of research through the bureaucratic authority of Harry Anslinger util 1962, when he was forced to retire. (Omni Magazine, Sept. 1982)

Growing Acceptance

By 1966, millions of young Americans had begun using marijuana. Concerned parents and government, wanting to know the dangers their children were risking, started funding dozens and later hundreds of marijuana health studies.

Entrenched in the older generation's minds were 30 years of Anslinger/Hearst scare stories of murder, atrocity, rape, and even zombie pacifism.

Federally sponsored research results began to ease Americans' fears of cannabis causing violence or zombie pacifism, and hundreds of new studies suggested that hidden inside the hemp plant's chemistry lay a medicinal array of incredible therapeutic potential. The government funded more and more studies.

Soon, legions of American researchers had positive indications using cannabis, anorexia, tumors and epilepsy, as well as for a general use antibiotic. Cumulative findings showed evidence of favorable results occurring in cases of Parkinson's disease, anorexia, multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy; plus thousands of anecdotal stories all merited further clinical study.

Prior to 1976, reports of positive effects and new therapeutic indications for cannabis were almost a weekly occurrence in medical journals and the national press.

[Kelly]

"Maybe you don't know what the hell you are talking about also.

I am asking you by what special knowledge or degrees you can determine that pot is better for sick people than drugs that have been researched, tested, and found effective for diseases. Can you answer or not.

Also, if the laws are in place by the authority of the majority, and that is the way that you want it, then why are you pissing and moaning about the laws against pot that were, by your own assertion, put there by the majority? Make up your mind."

--Have you smoked pot??? Then shut the F up!!! What degree do you have to claim the opposite of my claim Dr. Doolittle??? I have a Ph.D. in the stinky green b**ch and I'm not ashamed by it one bit. Sure, the will of the majority was duped into originally legislating the prohibition of pot thanks to the enormous lobby effort by DuPont (who artificially manufactures everything that can naturally be made of hemp). But, hold a national referrendum on it today and I guarantee it'll yield the same results as the poll on this thread. I've taken drugs prescribed to me throughout my life and have suffered some serious side effects. Smoking pot has never made me sick, have anxiety, headaches, etc. THAT'S my credibility! I don't need a pharmacist to tell me that. Squares like you who have never even tried things, yet are so quick to allow their opinions to be handed to them by whoever has the most money and best propaganda strategy, don't know a damn thing about what they so pompusly sit there and talk about. Or, HAVE you smoked pot??? If, so, you're a big hypocrite!!! Either way, your snotty assertions are worthless. People like you make the lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness of people like me difficult. What effect will it have on society when they legalize pot? Oooooh, people wouldn't have their lives ruined because they get caught having fun with their friends; jails wouldn't be overcrowded with non-violent offenders. Oooh! That would be soooooo awful wouldn't it???

[Kelly]

"Democracy is no more and no less than 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner."
--That's the most cynical thing I've ever heard. Too bad Hitler or Mussolini aren't around anymore to take you in.

[palerider]

--Have you smoked pot???

Yes. But then I have the capacity to learn from my mistakes. Apparently you do not.

Then shut the F up!!! What degree do you have to claim the opposite of my claim Dr. Doolittle???

An MS in biochemistry.

I have a Ph.D. in the stinky green b**ch and I'm not ashamed by it one bit.

Clearly you do, and the effect it has had on your intellectual capacities is obvious.

Smoking pot has never made me sick, have anxiety, headaches, etc. THAT'S my credibility!

Your inability to maintian your temper with someone who is no more than words on a screen to you negates any credibility you might have had.

Squares like you who have never even tried things, yet are so quick to allow their opinions to be handed to them by whoever has the most money and best propaganda strategy, don't know a damn thing about what they so pompusly sit there and talk about. Or, HAVE you smoked pot???

Little girl, I lived through 2 combat tours in vietnam. How many soldiers do you think came home from there not having smoked their way through plenty? Like I said. I maintained the capacity to learn from my mistakes. Clearly you have not.

[Kelly]

Palerider, so you went to Vietnam and have and MS in Biochemistry. This has nothing to do with why pot should be kept illegal and why squares like you dabbling in the lives of people like me is somehow justified. Besides, If you do have an MS, and you ACTUALLY study the effects/benefits of pot, you'd know that there's a whole lot more scholarly lit. that states marijuana is not harmful to you than there is lit. that states it is.The rest of your lame 'dissection' of my comments was nothing more than your typical opinionated rhetoric.

[Cheshire Cat]

Well, I read the first 2 pages and the last page of this thread. While I haven't smoked pot in years, I still think it is a gateway drug. It lead me to tobacco. I really see no problem with legalizing pot, it really isn't that harmful. Although, it's legalization could lead to the legalization of other more societal harmful drugs. I suspect one of the reasons the government is against the legalization of pot, as opposed to alcohol, is the ability to test ones current state of inebriation. If I drive drunk, a blood alcohol test can determine my BAC almost instantaneously, if I drive stoned, there is no test available that can determine if I am stoned right now, or if it was yesterday. that is why the government doesn't want to legalize pot.

[PLC1]

"Democracy is no more and no less than 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner."
--That's the most cynical thing I've ever heard. Too bad Hitler or Mussolini aren't around anymore to take you in.

It may be cynical, but it is correct. That's why we don't have a democracy in the US, but a Constitutional republic. We don't vote directly for our laws, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Those two wolves can't pass any unconstitutional law about who's for dinner unless we allow them to ignore the law.

[Kelly]

"It may be cynical, but it is correct. That's why we don't have a democracy in the US, but a Constitutional republic. We don't vote directly for our laws, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Those two wolves can't pass any unconstitutional law about who's for dinner unless we allow them to ignore the law."
--I understand that we're a constitutional republic, but as Americans, we adhere to democratic principles. It really bothers me when people use the fact that we're technically a constitutional republic to bash democratic ideology. That's a step towards fascism. Plus, all these people who are so bent on the fact that we're technically a con. republic, not a democracy don't seem to bring that point up when Bush tells us how he is supposedly spreading 'democracy' to Iraq.

[Cheshire Cat]

It may be cynical, but it is correct. That's why we don't have a democracy in the US, but a Constitutional republic. We don't vote directly for our laws, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Those two wolves can't pass any unconstitutional law about who's for dinner unless we allow them to ignore the law.
Actually, those two wolves have voted many laws that are against personal property rights. Many owners of property (restaurants) are not permitted to allow smoking on their premises because 2 wolves decided the sheep shouldn't smoke.
In some places. the wolves have decided the sheep shouldn't eat trans-fat either. These are just an example of how the wolves are violating the rights of the minority.

[PLC1]

"It may be cynical, but it is correct. That's why we don't have a democracy in the US, but a Constitutional republic. We don't vote directly for our laws, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Those two wolves can't pass any unconstitutional law about who's for dinner unless we allow them to ignore the law."
--I understand that we're a constitutional republic, but as Americans, we adhere to democratic principles. It really bothers me when people use the fact that we're technically a constitutional republic to bash democratic ideology. That's a step towards fascism. Plus, all these people who are so bent on the fact that we're technically a con. republic, not a democracy don't seem to bring that point up when Bush tells us how he is supposedly spreading 'democracy' to Iraq.

Bush is using the term "democracy" rather loosely.

The quote about the wolves and the sheep applies to a classical democracy, one in which the majority rules no matter what. There is nothing wrong with "democratic ideology", so long as there are safeguards in place, such as every successful "democraticy" has.

Look at what is happening in Venezuela. The people have spoken, the majority likes Hugo Chavez and his decidedly anti democratic agenda. It's kind of ironic that the people would use the majority rule to dismantle a democratic government, but that is what is happening.

[Kelly]

"While I haven't smoked pot in years, I still think it is a gateway drug. It lead me to tobacco."
--Ha ha ha! You so crazy Cheshire!

"If I drive drunk, a blood alcohol test can determine my BAC almost instantaneously, if I drive stoned, there is no test available that can determine if I am stoned right now, or if it was yesterday. that is why the government doesn't want to legalize pot."
--This reminds me of another point: The human body obviously gets rid of crap that really IS bad for you as quickly as possible: Alcohol in a matter of hours, cocaine in a matter of days, opiates in a matter of days. However, it takes about a month for the human body to rid itself of excess THC. I don't think you need an MS in Biochem to see that there's another bit of significant evidence here that demonstrates that marijuana isn't nearly as bad for you as other things (some of them legal). Alcohol was the gateway drug for me back when I did things that really ARE bad for you. Also, in my experience as a paralegal for a criminal defense attorney, if a violent crime had been committed by someone under the influence, it was ALWAYS alcohol or cocaine related. I've typed hunderds of recorded depositions and have sat in on just as many conversations between the client and attorney (which were protected by attorney-client privilege inn which the clients were completely honest for the sake of their defense) and it was ALWAYS alcohol that influenced the clients to do stupid things (some times cocaine), but NEVER pot.

[Kelly]

"The quote about the wolves and the sheep applies to a classical democracy, one in which the majority rules no matter what. There is nothing wrong with "democratic ideology", so long as there are safeguards in place, such as every successful "democraticy" has.

Look at what is happening in Venezuela. The people have spoken, the majority likes Hugo Chavez and his decidedly anti democratic agenda. It's kind of ironic that the people would use the majority rule to dismantle a democratic government, but that is what is happening."
--Can't disagree with you there. But the context that Palerider used it in was an obvious sign that he thinks he knows better than the rest of us and that his vote should count more than yours and especially mine. That sounds like a 'gateway drug' to fascism to me.

[Cheshire Cat]

"While I haven't smoked pot in years, I still think it is a gateway drug. It lead me to tobacco."
--Ha ha ha! You so crazy Cheshire!


While that was a bit tongue in cheek, it is still true.

This reminds me of another point: The human body obviously gets rid of crap that really IS bad for you as quickly as possible: Alcohol in a matter of hours, cocaine in a matter of days, opiates in a matter of days. However, it takes about a month for the human body to rid itself of excess THC. I don't think you need an MS in Biochem to see that there's another bit of significant evidence here that demonstrates that marijuana isn't nearly as bad for you as other things (some of them legal). Alcohol was the gateway drug for me back when I did things that really ARE bad for you. Also, in my experience as a paralegal for a criminal defense attorney, if a violent crime had been committed by someone under the influence, it was ALWAYS alcohol or cocaine related. I've typed hunderds of recorded depositions and have sat in on just as many conversations between the client and attorney (which were protected by attorney-client privilege inn which the clients were completely honest for the sake of their defense) and it was ALWAYS alcohol that influenced the clients to do stupid things (some times cocaine), but NEVER pot.
The human body does attempt to get rid of harmful substances, but your analogy is incorrect. Some substances are easier to get rid of than others. I would use radiation as an example. That takes way longer to remove naturally than pot, cocaine or drugs, but is far more harmful. Besides, in a court of law, one can admit alcohol without further incrimination, but admitting any other drug use as a defense only leaves one open for more criminal charges.

[palerider]

Palerider, so you went to Vietnam and have and MS in Biochemistry. This has nothing to do with why pot should be kept illegal and why squares like you dabbling in the lives of people like me is somehow justified.

Squares like me. Tell me little girl, where did you set up camp at woodstock? You shouldn't call names when you don't have any idea what the hell you are talking about.

Besides, If you do have an MS, and you ACTUALLY study the effects/benefits of pot, you'd know that there's a whole lot more scholarly lit. that states marijuana is not harmful to you than there is lit. that states it is.The rest of your lame 'dissection' of my comments was nothing more than your typical opinionated rhetoric.

If you had read the thread rather than just jump to the end to put in your 2cents, you would have seen that the stuff that roker was posting to prove that pot is harmless was 20, 30, 40 years old and some was even older than that. Modern studies are showing that pot has some pretty serious physical, physiological, and psychological side effects. Hard science is not rehetoric.

[palerider]

--This reminds me of another point: The human body obviously gets rid of crap that really IS bad for you as quickly as possible: Alcohol in a matter of hours, cocaine in a matter of days, opiates in a matter of days. However, it takes about a month for the human body to rid itself of excess THC. I don't think you need an MS in Biochem to see that there's another bit of significant evidence here that demonstrates that marijuana isn't nearly as bad for you as other things (some of them legal).

You really don't think through much of what you say do you. You believe that the speed with which a thing is metabolized out of your system indicates in any way what is good for you and what is not? Consider cyanide. It never leaves your system. You can get exposed to small amounts over years with little or no effect and then all of a sudden, you reach a critical level in your system and you begin to die a horrible death. There are a great many toxins that never leave your body.

It is a good thing that folks like me are around to protect people like you from yourselves. Your understanding of how toxins affect your body make you a prime candidate for a darwin award.

[Kelly]

"You really don't think through much of what you say do you. You believe that the speed with which a thing is metabolized out of your system indicates in any way what is good for you and what is not? Consider cyanide. It never leaves your system. You can get exposed to small amounts over years with little or no effect and then all of a sudden, you reach a critical level in your system and you begin to die a horrible death. There are a great many toxins that never leave your body.

It is a good thing that folks like me are around to protect people like you from yourselves. Your understanding of how toxins affect your body make you a prime candidate for a darwin award."
--I'm not saying that this in-and-of-itself proves it. I'm saying it is a bit of evidence that helps to demonstrate my point that pot isn't as bad as other things--like alcohol.

[Kelly]

"It is a good thing that folks like me are around to protect people like you from yourselves."
--By spying on me? By throwing me in jail? By prohibiting me from my own creative endeavors? By basically sticking your nose where it doesn't belong??? NO THANKS!!!

--I guess it's about time that I make this point: All insults aside, I do appreciate people like you being on forums like this. At least we can debate about things we both feel strongly about (with good reason--probably on both sides) in an intelligent manner (over all, we are discussing this in a fairly intelligent manner, I think). Anyways, I'll try not to get so heated and I'll try to tone down the insults.

[9sublime]

It is a good thing that folks like me are around to protect people like you from yourselves. Your understanding of how toxins affect your body make you a prime candidate for a darwin award.

YES! PALERDIER, thank god for you! If you didn't save us from the ills of this terrible drug, then we could be doing things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHjHFkDZ1nk

Yes, this is from that genuine government video reefer madness. Maybe you should think twice about what you believe about illegal drugs and legal drugs. Alochol isn't THAT bad for you, but its effects while intoxicated are far worse.
You could end up like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30kYRp6Y68

[PLC1]

"You really don't think through much of what you say do you. You believe that the speed with which a thing is metabolized out of your system indicates in any way what is good for you and what is not? Consider cyanide. It never leaves your system. You can get exposed to small amounts over years with little or no effect and then all of a sudden, you reach a critical level in your system and you begin to die a horrible death. There are a great many toxins that never leave your body.

It is a good thing that folks like me are around to protect people like you from yourselves. Your understanding of how toxins affect your body make you a prime candidate for a darwin award."
--I'm not saying that this in-and-of-itself proves it. I'm saying it is a bit of evidence that helps to demonstrate my point that pot isn't as bad as other things--like alcohol.

And the fact that things like mercury, lead, cyanide, THC, and a whole lot of other things linger in the body much longer than alcohol does is not an indication that such things are less harmful than alcohol. On the contrary, if the effects of alcohol were cumulative, the human race would have either given it up, or died out centuries ago.

I'm betting on the dying out hypothesis, as we certainly haven't shown any signs of wanting to give up alcohol.

[PLC1]

Actually, those two wolves have voted many laws that are against personal property rights. Many owners of property (restaurants) are not permitted to allow smoking on their premises because 2 wolves decided the sheep shouldn't smoke.
In some places. the wolves have decided the sheep shouldn't eat trans-fat either. These are just an example of how the wolves are violating the rights of the minority.

The representatives of those wolves have passed some laws that are blatantly unconstitutional and are against property rights. The asset forfeiture laws spring to mind as a great example. Just when the sheep will wake up and see what has happened remains to be seen.

There has been no law passed against trans fats that I'm aware of, but some information has come to light that would discourage its consumption.

Now, the sheep did pass a law against smoking in public places, at least in California. That law was passed as a ballot iniative against the strenuous objections of the wolves, ie, the nicotine pushers. There have been a number of California state laws passed by the will of the majority that could serve as examples of the inadvisability of pure majority rule, but this isn't one of them.

Remember, your freedom ends where my nose begins? The anti smoking laws are a literal example of applying that rule.

[Cheshire Cat]

The representatives of those wolves have passed some laws that are blatantly unconstitutional and are against property rights. The asset forfeiture laws spring to mind as a great example. Just when the sheep will wake up and see what has happened remains to be seen.

There has been no law passed against trans fats that I'm aware of, but some information has come to light that would discourage its consumption.

Now, the sheep did pass a law against smoking in public places, at least in California. That law was passed as a ballot iniative against the strenuous objections of the wolves, ie, the nicotine pushers. There have been a number of California state laws passed by the will of the majority that could serve as examples of the inadvisability of pure majority rule, but this isn't one of them.

Remember, your freedom ends where my nose begins? The anti smoking laws are a literal example of applying that rule.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-04-trans-fat-ban_x.htm
That link is for your education about trans-fat bans. NY city was only the first, there have been others.

As far as CA banning smoking of tobacco, I find it quite odd that cities that ban smoking cigarettes allow marijuana. I say it is more about trying to punish business, than trying to be health conscious. After all, one can always choose to not go to a restaurant that allows smoking. But, if you are a restaurant owner in CA, you can't choose to allow what happens on your own property. That my friend is a violation of civil rights.

[PLC1]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-04-trans-fat-ban_x.htm
That link is for your education about trans-fat bans. NY city was only the first, there have been others.

As far as CA banning smoking of tobacco, I find it quite odd that cities that ban smoking cigarettes allow marijuana. I say it is more about trying to punish business, than trying to be health conscious. After all, one can always choose to not go to a restaurant that allows smoking. But, if you are a restaurant owner in CA, you can't choose to allow what happens on your own property. That my friend is a violation of civil rights.

I didn't know about the ban on trans fats in restaurants in New York, and have mixed feelings about it. It is a public health issue, to be sure, but it is also a freedom to choose issue. Maybe allowing the marketplace to decide would be better, just let some of the restaurants make lack of trans fats a selling point. On the other hand, food free of salmonella and e coli is also a public health issue. Who is ready to stop health departments from inspecting restaurants for food safety issues?


Banning smoking of tobacco is another health issue, but with a twist: If you choose to eat unhealthful food, it doesn't affect my health. Second hand smoke, on the other hand, does affect my health. Tobacco is not illegal, just smoking in certain places. You can still smoke, if you so choose, but have to do it outside where it doesn't impinge on my freedoms.

As for smoking pot, that is a federal law. No city can legalize marijuana on its own, but many probably would if the feds would allow it.

[Cheshire Cat]

I didn't know about the ban on trans fats in restaurants in New York, and have mixed feelings about it. It is a public health issue, to be sure, but it is also a freedom to choose issue. Maybe allowing the marketplace to decide would be better, just let some of the restaurants make lack of trans fats a selling point. On the other hand, food free of salmonella and e coli is also a public health issue. Who is ready to stop health departments from inspecting restaurants for food safety issues?


Banning smoking of tobacco is another health issue, but with a twist: If you choose to eat unhealthful food, it doesn't affect my health. Second hand smoke, on the other hand, does affect my health. Tobacco is not illegal, just smoking in certain places. You can still smoke, if you so choose, but have to do it outside where it doesn't impinge on my freedoms.

As for smoking pot, that is a federal law. No city can legalize marijuana on its own, but many probably would if the feds would allow it.
Like I said, you can choose whether or not to enter a restaurant that allows smoking, so it really isn't affecting you a single bit.

Just as you were uninformed about trans fat bans you are just as uninformed about legal marijuana use. It is prescribed, sold and purchased legally in many cities in CA as a medicine. Numerous other state allow it also.

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/medicalm.htm
<snip>
Since 1996, eleven states have legalized medical marijuana use: AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ME, NV, OR, RI, VT and WA. Eight of the ten did so through the initiative process, Hawaii's law was enacted by the legislature and signed by the governor in 2000, Vermont's was enacted by the legislature and passed into law without the governor's signature in May 2004, and Rhode Island's was enacted overriding the governor's veto in January 2006.

Do I have to educate you about everything? Geez man, do a google search once in a while. Or at least read some news.

[PLC1]

Like I said, you can choose whether or not to enter a restaurant that allows smoking, so it really isn't affecting you a single bit.

Yes, I might just concede that you have a point, except for one thing: Before smoking was banned by the voters in California, there were no non smoking restaurants here, none, zero, zip. After the ban in California, there began to be restaurants in other states that opted to ban smoking in their establishments. Someone had to prove that customers would come despite, or perhaps because of, banning smoking. If it weren't for that, I would agree with you that it should be left up to the restaurant owners. Perhaps today it could be.

Just as you were uninformed about trans fat bans you are just as uninformed about legal marijuana use. It is prescribed, sold and purchased legally in many cities in CA as a medicine. Numerous other state allow it also.

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/medicalm.htm
<snip>


Do I have to educate you about everything? Geez man, do a google search once in a while. Or at least read some news.

Before you do any "informing", you need to update your own information. This one (http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/medical/) is about medical marijuana, the last desperate attempt to make its use legal:

Last Updated April 10, 2006

Medical marijuana has strong support from voters and health organizations. The federal government, however, has resisted any change to marijuana's illegal status at the federal level. The Supreme Court ruled in 2005 in Raich v. Gonzales that the federal government can prosecute medical marijuana patients, even in states with compassionate use laws, and several medical marijuana dispensaries in California have since been subject to Drug Enforcement Administration raids.

Some states and municipalities have legalized pot, but the federal government stepped in and put a stop to it. Your information is about a year out of date.

[Cheshire Cat]

Before you do any "informing", you need to update your own information. This one (http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/medical/) is about medical marijuana, the last desperate attempt to make its use legal:

Some states and municipalities have legalized pot, but the federal government stepped in and put a stop to it. Your information is about a year out of date.
Ever been to Santa Cruz CA? It cost's about $100 to get a legal prescription for medical marijuana.

[Abraxis Axis]

Squares like me. Tell me little girl, where did you set up camp at woodstock? You shouldn't call names when you don't have any idea what the hell you are talking about.
Kettle meet pot.....pot meet kettle again Paleriders Hypocrisy surfaces in this thread


If you had read the thread rather than just jump to the end to put in your 2cents, you would have seen that the stuff that roker was posting to prove that pot is harmless was 20, 30, 40 years old and some was even older than that. Modern studies are showing that pot has some pretty serious physical, physiological, and psychological side effects. Hard science is not rehetoric.


You have yet to prove ANY of it wrong though have you ?Roker posted MOSTLY information that shows the conspiracy, and the Prohibition of marijuana as a product. .Had you bothered to read what he presented you you would have known that. Some information that goes back all those years, is related to the HISTORY of Hemp and Cannabis as well as the Lies that were created to wipe out an industry.

while some of what Roker presented was directed at the harmlessness of smoking that was NOT the main Gist of what he was telling you. Had you read what he presented you of course would know that all scientific and medicinal studies of the plant were outlawed in 1976

It is completly obvious that you have only bothered to read parts of what he presented and apparently have investigated None of what you did read..your off mark and frankly wrong at almost every turn here in my opinion

And you have YET to prove ANY of the Data wrong ..even when you were in the middle of a childish argument with Roker over your supposedly proving things wrong one of your members challenged you to simply produce a copy of the e-mail transcript

that post sat unanswered for quite some time. and you have YET to do so?

we have to wonder why?

[top gun]

I could honestly care less about the entire issue, but this is one argument that I never understood "Oh well alcohol is legal, so pot should be be legal."

I think the crux of the argument is the abuse potential and the damage to society any particular substance causes.

Alcohol has a drug component. Pot has a drug component. I think anyone that honestly and unbiasedly were to weigh (if both legal) the negative effects that these 2 mood altering substances have compared to each other alcohol would clearly be seen as much more dangerous to the user and to society.

Hence I believe the reason for the above argument.

[palerider]

You have yet to prove ANY of it wrong though have you ?Roker posted MOSTLY information that shows the conspiracy, and the Prohibition of marijuana as a product. .


Yeah roker I proved your crap wrong. Your conspiracy theories are best addressed by a tin foil hat and your "science" (if that is what you like to call it) was mostly 40 years out of date and some of it more than that.

[vyo476]

while some of what Roker presented was directed at the harmlessness of smoking that was NOT the main Gist of what he was telling you. Had you read what he presented you of course would know that all scientific and medicinal studies of the plant were outlawed in 1976

It is completly obvious that you have only bothered to read parts of what he presented and apparently have investigated None of what you did read..your off mark and frankly wrong at almost every turn here in my opinion



Quite recently, OJ Simpson hired a ghost writer and "wrote" a book entitled, "If I Had Done It, This Is How It Would Have Happened," detailing a "fictional" account of the murders he was put on trial for in the mid-90s.

That's kind of what this, and every other, post by Abraxis reminds me of: "If I Was Rokerijdude11, This Is What I Would Say."

Clearly OJ really was guilty and the account in the book was simply a sweetening up of the tale. Clearly Abraxis really is Roker, and all of his attempts to dissuade us from thinking so are bull.

[PLC1]

Ever been to Santa Cruz CA? It cost's about $100 to get a legal prescription for medical marijuana.

Yes, I've been to Santa Cruz. The beach boardwalk is a lot of fun. I've never tried to get a medical marijuana prescription, but I suppose it might be possible. Now, just where would you go to fill that prescription again? The local Walgreens perhaps?

I'm sure that Santa Cruz would allow medical marijuana, and probably recreatiional pot as well. The problem isn't with the municipality, but with the all powerful federal bureaucracy. Did you read my link?

[9sublime]

Yes, I've been to Santa Cruz. The beach boardwalk is a lot of fun. I've never tried to get a medical marijuana prescription, but I suppose it might be possible. Now, just where would you go to fill that prescription again? The local Walgreens perhaps?

I'm sure that Santa Cruz would allow medical marijuana, and probably recreatiional pot as well. The problem isn't with the municipality, but with the all powerful federal bureaucracy. Did you read my link?

Is medical skunk good?

Also Palerider, you have to accept that after 'reefer madness' and various other lies such as THC levels have gone up 30 fold since the 60's, you can understand why people don't believe the government.

[Kelly]

"Yeah roker I proved your crap wrong. Your conspiracy theories are best addressed by a tin foil hat and your "science" (if that is what you like to call it) was mostly 40 years out of date and some of it more than that."
--Man! That's pretty low-down. When we all get sent on a camping trip to REX 84, I don't think you'll be cracking 'tin foil hat' jokes!!!

[Kelly]

"Is medical skunk good?"
--Yes my friend. The govt. keeps the good stash for themselves...lol. A band I used to play in toured around with this band from Cali. One of the members had some of the govt. stuff for his 'prescription.' It was unreal. However, I tried smoking a 'turnip' with some of your mates in the U.K. and that was just about as good.

[USMC the Almighty]

Quite recently, OJ Simpson hired a ghost writer and "wrote" a book entitled, "If I Had Done It, This Is How It Would Have Happened," detailing a "fictional" account of the murders he was put on trial for in the mid-90s.

That's kind of what this, and every other, post by Abraxis reminds me of: "If I Was Rokerijdude11, This Is What I Would Say."

Clearly OJ really was guilty and the account in the book was simply a sweetening up of the tale. Clearly Abraxis really is Roker, and all of his attempts to dissuade us from thinking so are bull.

Yeah, really, Roker you aren't fooling anyone.

[Abraxis Axis]

Yes, I've been to Santa Cruz. The beach boardwalk is a lot of fun. I've never tried to get a medical marijuana prescription, but I suppose it might be possible. Now, just where would you go to fill that prescription again? The local Walgreens perhaps?

I'm sure that Santa Cruz would allow medical marijuana, and probably recreatiional pot as well. The problem isn't with the municipality, but with the all powerful federal bureaucracy. Did you read my link?


Proposition 214 in California allows medical cargivers to grow certain amounts of marijuana which is then brought to distribution facilities for paitients to pick it up .
While california law allowed for this tolerant situation, the Federal Government did NOT! and that is when HARSH mandatory federal sentancing was imposed in the United States .

The federal government was superceeding the will of the people of california, who had voted into law medicinal marijuana ,and caregivers being allowed to grow .The feds came crashing in and shuttered many of the distribution facilities . the California law will overrule the process though

The federal Government only issued a few handfuls of prescriptions legally, and the number is down to 7 people left in that experimental government project .Recently England has been at the forefront of Medicinal marijuana studies, developing a spray and losenges that contain the active ingredient THC currently trials are being done in england

[palerider]

Yeah, really, Roker you aren't fooling anyone.

When one sets out to decieve, on is only able to come up with a plan that one thinks is sufficient to decieve oneself. The plan and resulting actions are the best he can manage and he undertook them with the belief that they was good enough to fool him.

[maynuh]

Saying that weed is a gateway drug is bogus. I have been smoking since 1965 and neither I nor any of my friends who smoke have "graduated" to other drugs. And I also cannot think of any incidents where a person smoking weed had killed anyone in an automobile accident. I don't drink alcohol because I see all of the alcoholics in the area and I sure as hell don't want to be like that. I have also seen many cases where medical uses was very beneficial to the patient. It is time to legalize it and worry about the other harmful drugs that are so abundent on the streets.

[9sublime]

However, I tried smoking a 'turnip' with some of your mates in the U.K. and that was just about as good.

Lol, what?

[Abraxis Axis]

Yeah roker I proved your crap wrong. Your conspiracy theories are best addressed by a tin foil hat and your "science" (if that is what you like to call it) was mostly 40 years out of date and some of it more than that.

Your telling us you have proven information wrong that roker posted from Jack Herer? Interesting then you must Certainly have collected the 100,000,00 that was issued as a standing challenge to all comers!!!

Your now Rich and famous? Conspiracies? Hardly factual documentation on the Prohibition of Marijuana YES , Conspiracy NO. is this the point your choosing to try and refute his week? the TRUTH behind Prohibition?

if so please address us with your documented proof showing that the Eradication of an entire industry was no conspircay lets start in 1935 shall we? when Prohibition was beginning to appeal to Business magnates here in the US

lets start at chapter 4 and work forward that is of course if your up to it?

[9sublime]

Roker roker roker, you've really given yourself away this time.

[Abraxis Axis]

Rokerijdude11 has been banned

[9sublime]

Yes I know. But his IP address obviously hasn't.

[Abraxis Axis]

Im Not sure of what you mean all i know is it says he is banned under his avatar im no computer nerd? I read the post and followed all the links its an interesting thread

[9sublime]

I'm no computer nerd either. All I know is that you are Roker, and that your original account has been banned. All you've done is started another (unfortunatley Roker12 somehow got clocked), off the same computer. If they had banned your IP you wouldn't be able to register any more accounts off your PC.

[Abraxis Axis]

Alot of people use proxy servers maybe roker was using proxies?

[9sublime]

Give it up geezer. I don't have a problem with you really, I just find it funny that you try and keep this act up.

[Rokerijdude11]

Alot of people use proxy servers maybe roker was using proxies?

no i was banned temporarily for a cool down
im on probation now.Ive been here all along just couldnt post
so i was reading and i agree why dont we start with the prohibition stages of marijuana starting in 1937 chapter four of the book i see you posted most of that chapter so then i am asking for the proof you have Mr Rider?

you say you have proven chapter 4 wrong would you care to address it ?

[palerider]

no i was banned temporarily for a cool down
im on probation now.Ive been here all along just couldnt post
so i was reading and i agree why dont we start with the prohibition stages of marijuana starting in 1937 chapter four of the book i see you posted most of that chapter so then i am asking for the proof you have Mr Rider?

you say you have proven chapter 4 wrong would you care to address it ?


Talking to yourself now? Talk about mental masturbation.

[Rokerijdude11]

Apprently so ? your intellect level on this matter is evidentry by your responses here,you claim to have proven something wrong.But when asked to present such information you resort to name calling and snide remarks


Not to mention your complete obsession with anything Roker. I am directly challenging you to prove the "conspiracy" of Hemp and marijuana Prohibition beginning in 1937 when it ALL STARTED

all of our LAWS are based on this information the government relies on lies that were perpetuated in 1938 and have continued since then

I see AA has layed out chapter 4 all nice and neat .care to put up? or are you going to again degenerate into trash talk?
dont participate in the thread if your not interested in actually getting to the bottom of it

[Rokerijdude11]

When one sets out to decieve, on is only able to come up with a plan that one thinks is sufficient to decieve oneself. The plan and resulting actions are the best he can manage and he undertook them with the belief that they was good enough to fool him.
Is this YOUR life story Mr Rider?I never set out to Decieve anyone of anything? your obsessed

[Justinian]

Well, the consensus goes to show you what kind of people you have on these forums. The idea of entertaining such an asinine repugnant concept as legalizing pot is so naive and stupid, it forces me to believe I won't be able to take most of you peoples opinions seriously.

[9sublime]

I guess the feelings mutual with you too. Why don't you **** off to a forum where people come in with a belief and refuse to debate it and think they are better than everyone else because they take whatever stance the government has on the drugs issue.

Notice that the 'war on drugs' isn't working... which means we need a change.

[Rokerijdude11]

Well, the consensus goes to show you what kind of people you have on these forums. The idea of entertaining such an asinine repugnant concept as legalizing pot is so naive and stupid, it forces me to believe I won't be able to take most of you peoples opinions seriously.
thats the way
alienate the entire community by your arrogant off the cuff statements care to di