CHAPTER
13 ~ PREJUDICE: MARIJUANA
AND THE JIM CROW LAWS
Since the abolition of slavery, racism and bigotry have
generally had to manifest themselves in less blatant forms in America.
The cannabis prohibition laws illustrate again this
institutional intolerance of racial minorities and show how prejudice is
concealed behind rhetoric and laws which seem to have an entirely different
purpose.
SMOKING IN AMERICA
The first known* smoking of female cannabis tops in the Western
hemisphere was probably in the 1870s in the West Indies (Jamaica, Bahamas,
Barbados, etc.); and arrived with the immigration of thousands of Indian Hindus
(from British-controlled India) imported for cheap labor. By 1886, Mexicans and
black sailors, who traded in those islands, picked up and spread its use
throughout all the West Indies and Mexico.
*There are other theories about the first known “smoking” of
hemp flower tops, e.g., by American and Brazilian slaves, Shawnee Indians,
etc., some fascinating ~ but none verifiable.
Cannabis smoking was generally used in the West Indies to ease
the back-breaking work in the cane fields, beat the heat, and to relax in the
evenings without the threat of an alcohol hangover in the morning.
The jazz and swing music of “Negroes, Mexicans and entertainers”
was declared an outgrowth of marijuana use.
Given its late 19th century area of usage ~ the Caribbean West
Indies and Mexico ~ it is not surprising the first marijuana use recorded in
the U.S. was by Mexicans in Brownsville, Texas in 1903. And the first marijuana
prohibition law in America ~ pertaining only to Mexicans ~ was passed in
Brownsville in that same year.
“Ganja” use was next reported in 1909 in the port of New
Orleans, in the black dominated “Storeyville” section frequented by sailors.
New Orleans’ Storeyville was filled with cabarets, brothels,
music, and all the other usual accoutrements of “red light” districts the world
over. Sailors from the islands took their shore leave and their marijuana
there.
BLACKFACE…
The Public Safety Commissioner of New Orleans wrote that,
“marijuana was the most frightening and vicious drug ever to hit New Orleans,”
and in 1910 warned that regular users might number as high as 200 in
Storeyville alone.
To the DA and Public Safety Commissioners and New Orleans
newspapers from 1910 through the 1930s, marijuana’s insidious evil influence
apparently manifested itself in making the “darkies” think they were as good as
“white men.”
In fact, marijuana was being blamed for the first refusals of
black entertainers to wear blackface* and for hysterical laughter by “negroes”
under marijuana’s influence when told to cross a street or go to the back of
the trolley, etc.
*That’s right; your eyes have not deceived you. Because of a
curious quirk in the “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, black Americans were banned
from any stage in the Deep South (and most other places in the North and West
also). “Negroes” had to wear (through the 1920s) blackface ~ (like Al Jolson
wore when he sang “Swanee”) ~ a dye which white entertainers wore to resemble
or mimic black people. Actually, by “Jim Crow” law, blacks were not allowed on
the stage at all, but because of their talent were allowed to sneak/enter
through back doors, put on blackface, and pretend to be a white person playing
the part of a black person…
…AND ALL THAT JAZZ
In New Orleans, whites were also concerned that black musicians,
rumored to smoke marijuana, were spreading (selling) a very powerful (popular)
new “voodoo” music that forced even decent white women to tap their feet and
was ultimately aimed at throwing off the yoke of the whites. Today we call that
new music… jazz!
Blacks obviously played upon the white New Orleans racists’
fears of “voodoo” to try to keep whites out of their lives. Jazz’s birthplace
is generally recognized to be Storeyville, New Orleans, home of original
innovators: Buddy Bohler, Buck Johnson and others (1909-1917). Storeyville was
also the birthplace of Louis Armstrong* (1900).
*In 1930 ~ one year after Louis Armstrong recorded “Muggles”
(read: “marijuana”) ~ he was arrested for a marijuana cigarette in Los Angeles
and put in jail for 10 days until he agreed to leave California and not return
for two years.
Mexicans under marijuana’s influence were demanding humane
treatment, looking at white women, asking that their children be educated while
the parents harvested sugar beets and making other “insolent” demands.
American newspapers, politicians, and police had virtually no
idea, for all these years (until the 1920s, and then only rarely), that the
marijuana the “darkies” and “Chicanos” were smoking in cigarettes or pipes was
just a weaker version of the many familiar concentrated cannabis medicines
they’d been taking since childhood, or that the same drug was smoked legally at
the local “white man’s” plush hashish parlors.
White racists wrote articles and passed city and state
“marijuana” laws without this knowledge for almost two decades, chiefly because
of “Negro/Mexican” vicious “insolence”* under the effect of marijuana.
*Vicious Insolence: Between 1884 and 1900, 3,500 documented
deaths of black Americans were caused by lynching; between 1900 and 1917, over
1,100 were recorded. The real figures were undoubtedly higher. It is estimated
that one-third of these lynchings were for “insolence,” which might be anything
from looking (or being accused of looking) at a white woman twice, to stepping
on a white man’s shadow, even to looking a white man directly in the eye for
more than three seconds; for not going directly to the back of the trolley, and
other “offenses.”
It was obvious to whites, marijuana caused “Negro” and Mexican
“viciousness” or they wouldn’t dare be “insolent”; etc…
Hundreds of thousands of “Negroes” and Chicanos were sentenced
from 10 days to 10 years mostly on local and state “chain gangs” for such silly
crimes as we have just listed.
This was the nature of “Jim Crow” laws until the 1950s and ‘60s;
the laws Martin Luther King, the NAACP, and general public outcry have finally
begun remedying in America.
We can only imagine the immediate effect the black entertainers’
refusal to wear blackface had on the white establishment, but seven years
later, 1917, Storeyville was completely shut down. Apartheid had its moment of
triumph.
No longer did the upright, uptight white citizen have to worry
about white women going to Storeyville to listen to “voodoo” jazz or perhaps be
raped by its marijuana-crazed “black adherents” who showed vicious disrespect
(insolence) for whites and their “Jim Crow Laws” by stepping on their (white
men’s) shadows and the like when they were high on marijuana.
Black musicians then took their music and marijuana up the
Mississippi to Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, etc., where the
(white) city fathers, for the same racist reasons, soon passed local marijuana
laws to stop “evil” music and keep white women from falling prey to blacks
through jazz and marijuana.
MEXICAN-AMERICANS
In 1915, California and Utah passed state laws outlawing
marijuana for the same “Jim Crow” reasons ~ but directed through the Hearst
papers at Chicanos.
Colorado followed in 1917. Its legislators cited excesses of
Pancho Villa’s rebel army, whose drug of choice was supposed to have been
marijuana. (If true, this means that marijuana helped to overthrow one of the
most repressive, evil regimes Mexico ever suffered.)
The Colorado Legislature felt the only way to prevent an actual
racial blood bath and the overthrow of their (whites’) ignorant and bigoted
laws, attitudes and institutions was to stop marijuana.
Mexicans under marijuana’s influence were demanding humane
treatment, looking at white women, and asking that their children be educated
while the parents harvested sugar beets; and making other “insolent” demands.
With the excuse of marijuana (Killer Weed), the whites could now use force and
rationalize their violent acts of repression.
This “reefer racism” continues into the present day. In 1937,
Harry Anslinger told Congress that there were between 50,000 to 100,000*
marijuana smokers in the U.S., mostly “Negroes and Mexicans, and entertainers,”
and their music, jazz and swing, was an outgrowth of this marijuana use. He
insisted this “satanic” music and the use of marijuana caused white women to
“seek sexual relations with Negroes!”
*Anslinger would have flipped to know that one day there would
be 26 million daily marijuana users and another 30-40 million occasional users
in America, and that rock ‘n’ roll and jazz are now enjoyed by tens of millions
who have never smoked marijuana.
SOUTH AFRICA TODAY
In 1911, South Africa* began the outlawing of marijuana for the
same reasons as New Orleans: to stop insolent blacks! White South Africa, along
with Egypt, led the international fight (League of Nations) to have cannabis
outlawed worldwide.
*South Africa still allowed its black mine workers to smoke
dagga (marijuana) in the mines, though. Why? Because they were more productive!
In fact, in that same year, South Africa influenced southern
U.S. legislators to outlaw cannabis (which many black South Africans revered as
“dagga,” their sacred herb). Many South Africans’ American business
headquarters were in New Orleans at the time.
This is the whole racial and religious (Medieval Catholic
Church) basis out of which our laws against hemp arose. Are you proud?
Sixteen million years so far have been spent in jails, prisons,
parole and on probation by Americans for this absurd, racist, and probably
economic reasoning. (See Chapter 4, “Last Days of Legal Cannabis.”)
Isn’t it interesting that in 1985 the U.S. incarcerated a larger
percentage of people than any country in the world except South Africa? In 1989
the U.S. surpassed South Africa, and the 1997 incarceration rate was almost
four times that of South Africa. Now, in 2007, there are over 2.2 million
people incarcerated in the U.S.
President Bush Sr., in his great drug policy speech of September
5, 1989, promised to double the federal prison population again, after it had
already doubled under Reagan. He succeeded. In 1993, President Bill Clinton
planned to redouble the number of prisoners again by 1996. He did.
Remember the outcry in 1979 when former UN Ambassador Andrew
Young told the world that the U.S. had more political prisoners than any other
nation?
(Amnesty International, ACLU.) Also, see Appendix: “Fighting the
Police State.”
LASTING REMNANTS
Even though blackface disappeared as law in the late 1920s, as
late as the 1960s, black entertainers (such as Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis,
Jr.) still had to go in the back door of theatrical establishments, bars, etc;
by law!
They couldn’t rent a hotel room in Las Vegas or Miami Beach ~ even
while being the headline act.
Ben Vereen’s 1981 Presidential Inauguration performance for
Ronald Reagan presented this country’s turn-of-the-century Blackface/Jim Crow
laws in a great story about black comic genius Bert Williams (circa 1890 to
1920).
Vereen had been invited to perform for the Reagan Inauguration
and had accepted only on the condition that he could tell the entire
“Blackface” story ~ but the whole first half of Vereen’s show, depicting Bert
Williams and blackface, was censored by Reagan’s people on ABC TV, contrary to
the special agreement Vereen had with them.
1937: Hemp banned. Only an estimated 60,000 Americans
smoke “marijuana,” but thanks to Hearst and Anslinger’s disinformation
campaign, virtually everyone in the country has heard of it.
1945: Newsweek reports that over 100,000 people now smoke
marijuana.
1967: Millions of Americans regularly and openly smoke
hemp leaves and flowers.
1977: Tens of millions smoke cannabis regularly, with many
people growing their own.
2007: One in three Americans, approximately 100+ million
citizens, have now tried it at least once, and some 10-20% (25 to 50 million
Americans) still choose to buy and smoke cannabis regularly, despite urine
tests and tougher laws.
Throughout history, Americans have held the legal tradition that
one could not give up one’s constitutional rights ~ and if someone was stripped
of these protections, then he or she was being victimized. However, by 1989, if
you signed up for an extracurricular activity in school or applied for a
minimum wage job, you could be asked to forego your right to privacy,
protection from self-incrimination, Constitutional requirements of reasonable
grounds for search and seizure, presumed innocence until found guilty by your
peers, and that most fundamental right of all: personal responsibility for your
own life and consciousness.
By 1995, the U. S. Supreme Court upheld that these intrusions
into your individual privacy were constitutional!
In November 1996, as earlier stated, California passed a
statewide people’s initiative that won by 56% of the vote and legalized medical
marijuana within the state.
.
.
Also in November 1996, Arizona passed a statewide initiative (by
65% of the vote) that included medical marijuana but, unlike California law,
Arizona’s legislature and the governor (now impeached) can and have since
rejected this people’s law. This was the first rejection by the legislature and
the governor of any Arizona state initiative in 90 years!
THE ARMED FORCES & INDUSTRY
The Armed Forces, as well as many civilian factories, will boot
you out if you smoke marijuana; even if you smoke it 30 days before testing and
while off duty. These tests are done at random and often do not include liquor,
tranquilizer or other speed/downer type drugs. However, according to OSHA and
insurance actuarial findings, plus the AFL-ClO, it is alcohol (!) that is
involved in 90-95% of drug related factory accidents.
In fact, numerous U.S. Army tests of the effects of cannabis on
soldiers (through the 1950s and ‘60s) at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, and
elsewhere, show no loss of motivation or performance after two years of heavy
(military sponsored) smoking of marijuana.
This study was repeated six more times by the military and
dozens of times by universities with the same or similar results. (Also,
British Indian Hemp Report,
Panama/Siler study; Jamaican study, et al.)
Panama/Siler study; Jamaican study, et al.)
South African gold and diamond mines allowed and even encouraged
blacks to use cannabis/dagga which enabled them to work harder.
(U.S. Government Reports, 1956-58-61-63-68-69-70-76.)
PRIVACY IS A RIGHT
Groups like NORML, HEMP, ACLU, BACH and the Libertarian Party
(for example) feel that as long as military personnel or factory workers do not
smoke cannabis while on duty, or during the period 4 to 6 hours before duty,
it’s their own business. This is consistent with the conclusions of the U.S. government’s
own Siler Commission (1933) and Shafer Commission (1972) reports, as well as
the LaGuardia report (1944), the Canadian Government Study (1972), Alaska State
Commission (1989), and the California Research Advisory Panel (1989), all of
which held that no criminal penalties are in order for its use.
INACCURATE URINE TESTING
Military/factory worker marijuana urine tests are only partially
accurate and do not indicate the extent of your intoxication. They indicate
only whether you have smoked or been in the presence of cannabis smoke or have
eaten hempseed oil or any hempseed food product in the last 30 days.
Whether you smoked or ate it an hour ago or 30 days ago ~ the
test results are the same: Positive.
John P. Morgan, M.D., stated in High Times February 1989 (and in
2006 he still says),
“The tests are far from reliable. Tampering and high rates of false-positives, false-negatives, etc. are common, and further these testing companies are held to no standards but their own.”
At 20-50 nanograms (billionths of a gram) per milliliter of THC
Carboxy Acid (a metabolite) these tests can be read as positive or negative ~
yet results derived from this part of the scale are known to be meaningless. To
the untrained eye, any positive indication sends up a red flag. And most
testers are untrained and uncertified. Still, the decision to hire, fire,
detain, re-test or begin drug abuse treatment is made for you on the spot.
“I believe the tendency to read the EMIT [the urine test for THC metabolites] test below the detection limit is one of the important reasons why the test was not often confirmed in published reports,” Dr. Morgan said.
In 1985, for the first time, Milton, Wisconsin, high school kids
were ordered to have urine tests weekly to see if they smoked pot. Local
“Families against Marijuana” type organizations were demanding this testing,
but not for liquor, downers or other hazardous drugs.
Hundreds of communities and high schools throughout the country
were awaiting the outcome of constitutional challenges in Milton in 1988 before
implementing similar testing programs in their own school districts. Because of
this ruling in Milton’s favor, testing for high school students participating
in extra-curricular activities has since been widely adopted and continues
across the United States in 2007.
For instance, in Oregon the testing of high school athletes has
spread by court order to any and all extra-curricular activity. Band members
and majorettes ~ even debate team members, some debating on the marijuana issue
~ can now be tested at will in all states except California, where even a high
school student can, since 1996, have a doctor’s recommendation or
acknowledgment for the medical use of cannabis.
(NORML reports, High Times, ABC, NBC, CBS News, and L.A. Times,
1981-1998, Oregonian, October 23, 1989.)
BASEBALL & THE BABE
Former Baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth first ordered in
1985 all personnel, except unionized players, to submit to these urine tests.
From the owners to the peanut vendors to the bat boys, it is mandatory in order
to be employed. By 1990, it had been incorporated into all contracts, including
ball-players.
Now, since November 1996, a professional baseball player (or any
other sports player for that matter) in California may take advantage of
cannabis as medicine, and continue to play professionally.
Whether you smoked an hour or 30 days ago, the urine test
results are the same: Positive.
Aside from the civil liberties questions raised, it is
apparently forgotten that Babe Ruth would regularly invite reporters to
accompany him while he drank 12 beers prior to playing a game, during alcohol
Prohibition.
Many “dry” organizations and even the league commissioner
implored him to think of the children who idolized him and stop, but the Babe
refused.
If Peter Ueberroth or his ilk had been in charge of baseball
during Prohibition, the “Sultan of Swat” would have been fired in shame and
millions of children would not have proudly played in “Babe Ruth Little
Leagues.”
Tens of millions of average Americans choose to use cannabis as
self medication or to relax during their time off the job, and therefore open
themselves to the risk of criminal penalties. Job performance should be the
principle criterion for evaluation of all employees, not personal lifestyle
choices.
The Babe Ruths of sports, the Henry Fords of industry, the Pink
Floyds, Beatles, Picassos and Louis Armstrongs of the arts, and one out of 10
Americans have become criminals ~ and thousands unemployed ~ for smoking cannabis,
even when merely unwinding in the privacy of their own homes.
Robert Mitchum’s film career was almost destroyed by a 1948
marijuana arrest (see page 102).
Federal Judge Douglas Ginsburg was on the verge of being
appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 when it was revealed that he had
smoked grass while a university professor and his name was withdrawn from
nomination. However, George Bush’s appointee Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas’ 1991 admission that he smoked marijuana in college was not an issue in
his controversial confirmation.
DIVIDING COMMUNITIES… & SPLITTING UP FAMILIES
“Help a friend, send him to jail,” says a billboard in Ventura,
California. This is an example of the “zero tolerance” campaign’s
inform-on-your-neighbor tactics being used to enforce the laws against the
victimless crime of cannabis smoking.
Here’s another example from TV: “If you have knowledge of a
felony you can earn up to one thousand dollars. Your name will not be used and
you will not be required to appear in court.”* One man received a postcard in
jail saying, “Our informant received $600 for turning you in. Crimestoppers.”
*(Crimestoppers, Ventura, California)
SURVEILLANCE & SEIZURES
In rural California, where cannabis growing has supported whole
communities, the well-armed CAMP forces go into a thick forest discovering
15-foot tall, lush, hearty eight-month-old plants. These are hacked down, piled
up and smothered with gasoline and rubber tires. Uncured, they burn slowly.
Elsewhere, a helicopter pilot circles over a neighborhood,
peering into a heat sensitive camera pointed at a house. “We’re looking for the
indoor sun,” he explains matter-of-factly.
“We only pursue specific objectives,” houses where grow lights
have been bought or some other tangible basis exists to suspect “manufacturing
a controlled substance”; a felony.
“Look, there’s the light from the house.” His thermal-sensitive
screen shows heat leaking out from under the eaves of the house. Site
confirmed.
Next they obtain a search warrant, raid the property, seize the
house under civil proceedings, and prosecute its inhabitants under criminal
law.
(48 Hrs., CBS television, “Marijuana Growing in California,”
October 12, 1989.)
UN-AMERICAN POLICIES & POLITICAL EXTORTION
Richard Nixon ordered the FBI to illegally monitor John Lennon
24-hours a day for six solid months in 1971 because Lennon had given a concert
in Michigan to free a student (John Sinclair) from five years in jail for
possession of two joints.
(L.A. Times, August, 1983.)
The drug, oil, paper, liquor and beer companies want pot illegal forever, no matter whose rights they suppress or how many years we have to spend in prison to assure their profits.
Politicians who are liberal are investigated and, we believe,
are blackmailed to keep their mouths shut on this subject and others, or risk
being exposed for some past indiscretion by themselves or members of their
families ~ possibly sexual or drug-related.
POLICE, SECRETS & BLACKMAIL
A few years ago, then Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates
(1978–1992) ordered surveillance of City Councilman Zev Yarslovsky, City
Attorney John Van DeKamp and Mayor Tom Bradley, among others. He monitored
their private sex lives for more than a year.
“Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.” A vocal supporter of
marijuana legalization, McCartney has repeatedly been arrested and was
imprisoned for 10 days during a concert tour of Japan. The government cancelled
his tour and banned him from playing in that country, costing him millions of
dollars. To his credit, he has continued to speak out for pot smokers.
(L.A. Times, August, 1983.)
J. Edgar Hoover, as Director of the FBI, did this for five years
to Martin Luther King Jr. and, in the most “sick” situation, deliberately drove
actress Jean Seburg to suicide with terrible ongoing federal letters and
information fed to tabloids exposing her pregnancies and private dates with
blacks.
In fact, using the FBI, Hoover harassed selected targets for as
long as 20 years because of their civil rights stands. The former director of
the FBI and also direct overseer of the DEA, William Webster, answered
questions in 1985 about the squandering of 50% ($500 million) of federal drug
enforcement money on cannabis enforcement this way: “Oh, marijuana is an extremely
dangerous drug and the proof [referring to totally discredited brain and
metabolite studies by Heath, Nahas] is now coming in.”
Webster then asked for more money and more unrestrained powers
to stop pot. (“Nightwatch,” CBS, January 1, 1985.) And more money has been
asked for by every succeeding DEA administrator and drug czar up to the
present, 2007.
In 2006, the DEA’s budget was almost 2.5 billion dollars and
growing.
PUBLIC HUMILIATION
Entertainers caught with cannabis have had to do a “Galileo”-type
recanting to stay out of jail or to retain their television, endorsement, or
nightclub contracts, etc. Some have had to go on television and denounce
marijuana to stay out of jail (e.g., Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary,
David Crosby, and actress Linda Carter). Our courts and legislators have sold
our American “guaranteed” Bill of Rights, written on cannabis, to secure a
cannabis-free world.
“Don’t suspect your neighbor, turn him in.” Any hearsay is to be
reported. That which revolted us as children ~ the spectre of Nazis and Commies
asking everyone to spy and inform on one another; Stalin’s secret police taking
people from their homes at night to administer stupefying drugs and extort
information; a government spreading lies and creating a police state ~ has now
become our everyday Amerikan reality.
And those who dare to stand against the tide of oppression face
the prospect of financial ruin.
SEIZURE: FEUDAL LAW & ORDER
When the federal government seizes cars, boats, money, real
estate and other personal property, proceedings are set into motion based on
laws that originated with medieval superstition.
English common law of the Middle Ages provided for forfeiture of
any object causing a man’s death. Known as a “deodand,” the object, such as a weapon
or run-away ox cart, was personified and declared tainted or evil, and
forfeited to the king.
Today’s in rem (against things rather than against persons)
forfeiture proceedings are civil suits against the property itself. Relying on
analogy to the deodand, a legal “personification fiction,” declares the
property to be the defendant. It is held guilty and condemned, as though it
were a personality ~ and the guilt or innocence of the owner is irrelevant.
By applying this civil label to forfeiture proceedings, the
government sidesteps almost all the protections offered by the Constitution to
individuals. There is no Sixth Amendment guarantee of right to counsel.
Innocent until proven guilty is reversed. Each violation of a constitutional
right is then used as the basis for the destruction of another.
The violation of the Fifth Amendment’s “innocent until proven
guilty” due process standard is used to destroy the prohibition of double
jeopardy. Even acquittal of the criminal charges the forfeiture is based upon
does not prevent re-trying the same facts, because, even though the government
couldn’t prove a crime was committed, at the second trial the defendant must
provide proof of innocence.
The Supreme Court holds that it is constitutional to forfeit property
in rem from a person who is completely innocent and non-negligent in his use of
the property. Lower courts accept prosecutors’ arguments that if it is
permissible to confiscate property from completely innocent people, then
constitutional protections could not possibly apply to anyone who is guilty of
even a minor drug offense.
Unlike civil suits between individuals, the government is immune
to counter-suit. The government can use its unlimited resources to repeatedly
press a suit in the mere hope of convincing one juror the defendant did not
provide a preponderance of evidence.
Forfeitures imposed by the English Crown led our nation’s
founders to prohibit bills of attainder (forfeiture consequent to conviction)
in the first article of the American Constitution. The main body of the
Constitution also forbids forfeiture of estate for treason. The first Congress
passed the statute, still law today, stating that “No conviction or judgment
shall work corruption of blood or any forfeiture of estate.” However, early
Americans did incorporate in rem (proceeding against a thing) procedures under
Admiralty and Maritime law, to seize enemy ships at sea and to enforce payment
of customs duties.
It was not until the outbreak of the Civil War that these
Customs procedures were radically changed. The Confiscation Act of July 17,
1862, declared all property belonging to Confederate officers or those who
aided the rebels to be forfeitable in rem. The U.S. Supreme Court held that if
the act was an exercise of the war powers of government and was applied only to
enemies, then it was constitutionally allowable in order to ensure a speedy
termination of the war.
Today, the passions of the “War on Drugs” have caused Congress
to once again use in rem proceedings to inflict punishment without the nuisance
of the protections provided by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. “We have to
save our Constitution,” says Vickie Linker, whose husband served two years in
prison for a cannabis offense. “We have the truth.”
ENTRAPMENT, INTOLERANCE & IGNORANCE
When not enough people seem to be committing crimes, the DEA and
police departments often resort to entrapment to make criminals out of
unsuspecting and otherwise non-criminal people. Government agents have been
caught time after time provoking and participating in drug smuggling and
sales.*
*High Witness News department, High Times magazine; “Inside the
DEA,” Dale Geiringer, Reason magazine, December 1986; Christic Institute “La
Penca” lawsuit; DeLorean cocaine trial testimony and verdict of innocence;
Playboy magazine, etc.
In an October, 1989, Louisville, KY address to the Police Chiefs
of that state, then–Drug Czar and social-drinking, nicotine-addicted William
Bennett* announced that marijuana smoking makes people stupid.
*This is the same man who helped engineer a $2.9 million grant
for the Texas National Guard to dress its agents up as cactus to patrol the
Mexican border. This was the National Guard unit that later shot and killed a
young American-born Mexican sheep herder assuming him to be an illegal
immigrant.
He offered no proof, and although crack was not a major issue in
Kentucky, proclaimed that more money was necessary for the war on drugs because
of this new-found marijuana-induced danger ~ stupidity!
Bennett was seen to brace himself with a late-morning gin and
tonic in December 1989, as he tried to pitch a similar anti-marijuana message
to representatives of the broadcast and film industries in Beverly Hills, CA.
(High Times, February, 1990. See “Booze Brunch” in Appendix.)
PDFA: SLICKLY PACKAGED LIES
Another recent development has been the formation of the PDFA
(Partnership for a Drug Free America) in the media. PDFA, with primarily
in-kind funding from ad agencies and media groups, makes available (free of
charge to all broadcast and print media) slick public service ads directed
primarily against marijuana.
In addition to releasing such meaningless drivel as an ad which
shows a skillet (“This is drugs”) on which an egg is frying (“This is your
brain. Get it?”), PDFA is not above lying outright in their ads.
Outraged researcher Dr. Donald Blum of the UCLA Neurological
Studies Center told KABC news that the chart said to show the effects of
marijuana actually shows the brain waves of someone in a deep sleep ~ or in a
coma.
In one ad, the wreckage of a train is shown. Now, everyone will
agree that no one should attempt to drive a train while high on marijuana. But
a man’s voice says that anyone who tells you that “marijuana is harmless” is
lying, because his wife was killed in a train accident caused by marijuana.
This contradicts the direct sworn testimony of the engineer
responsible for that disaster; that “this accident was not caused by
marijuana.” And it deliberately ignores his admissions of drinking alcohol,
snacking, watching TV, generally failing to pay adequate attention to his job,
and deliberately jamming the train’s safety equipment prior to the accident.
Yet, for years the PDFA has described this train accident as being
marijuana-caused, even though the engineer was legally drunk and had lost his
automobile driver’s license six times, including permanently, for drunken
driving in the previous three years.
In another ad, a sad-looking couple is told that they cannot
have children because the husband used to smoke pot. This is a direct
contradiction both of the clinical evidence developed in nearly a century of
cannabis studies and of the personal experiences of millions of Americans who
have smoked cannabis and borne perfectly healthy children.
And in yet another ad, the group was so arrogant in putting out
lies that it finally got into trouble. The ad showed two brain-wave charts
which it said showed the brain waves of a 14-year-old “on marijuana.”
Outraged, researcher Dr. Donald Blum from the UCLA Neurological
Studies Center told KABC-TV (Los Angeles) news November 2, 1989, that the chart
actually shows the brain waves of someone in a deep sleep ~ or in a coma.
He said that he and other researchers had previously complained
to the PDFA, and added that a cannabis user’s brain-wave charts are much
different and have a well-known signature, due to years of research on the
effects of cannabis on the brain.
Even after this public refutation, it took the station KABC-TV
and the PDFA weeks to pull the spot, and no apology or retraction have yet been
offered for the deceit. Despite having been ordered by the courts to stop, the
PDFA has shown this ad continuously, on hundreds of TV channels, throughout the
United States, for the last decade.*
.
*Groups including the American Hemp Council, the Family Council
on Drug Awareness and Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) have decided to
step up their pressure to expose PDFA lies and get their distortions banned from
the airwaves or, better yet, replaced with accurate information on the medical,
social and commercial uses of hemp.
Perhaps a more valid ad for the PDFA to produce and the networks
to run would show a skillet (“This is the PDFA”) and an egg frying (“These are
the facts”).
DARE: POLICE PROPAGANDISTS
The DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, a national
program that was initiated in 1983 by then Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl
Gates, has become yet another tool for disinforming the public on hemp.
Typically, a police department spokesperson will conduct a
17-week course at a local elementary school to promote personally responsible
behavior by young people while irresponsibly giving them distorted information
and outright lies about cannabis.
Most of the course does not deal with drugs as such, but rather
with making choices about how to act when there are opportunities or pressures
to drink, smoke, steal, lie, break laws, etc. However, the program’s truly
useful support for good behavior is undermined by an undercurrent of lies and
innuendo about marijuana’s effects and users.*
*In an interview, L.A.’s main DARE instructor, Sgt. Domagalski,
gave information on the program and made such unsubstantiated ~ and untrue ~
statements as marijuana leads to heroin, “The guy across the street or next
door has been smoking marijuana for years and there doesn’t seem to be anything
wrong with him. There is something wrong, but it may not be obvious.”
And, “People in the Sixties smoked marijuana and thought there
was nothing wrong with it. Now it’s watered and sprayed and tampered with ~ and
they’re not concerned what they spray it with, either. But parents don’t know
this. They got all their information in the Sixties, and they’re not interested
in this new information.”
(Downtown News, July 10, 1989. See Chapter 15, “Debunking” for
the facts on his “new information.”
In 2007, DARE, still consciously teaches these same lies to our
children and threatens any community that dares to tell DARE to stop or cease
in their school district. However, in 1997 the city of Oakland, California
withdrew from the DARE program and has so far suffered no consequences.
For example, according to teachers who sit in on the sessions,*
the police officer will remark, “I can’t tell you that smoking pot causes brain
damage, because you all know people who smoke pot and they seem pretty normal.
But that’s what it does. You just can’t tell ~ yet.”
*Some of the teachers we talked to find themselves in the
uncomfortable position of knowing the real studies, or have used cannabis
themselves and know its effects, but cannot openly present their case for fear
of being urine tested or dismissed.
No supporting evidence is then offered, and the literature that
goes home with the child (and is potentially seen by marijuana-savvy parents)
tends to appear more balanced, although it refers to mysterious “new studies”
showing the dangers of marijuana.
But throughout the entire course, the police officer refers to
lung damage, brain damage, sterility and other unfounded claims of health
damage and death being caused by marijuana.
Or they report on studies detailing the cardio-pulmonary risks
of using cocaine, then mention marijuana smoke ~ unrelated except by context.
Or the “well-intentioned” officer tells anecdotes about people he claims to
know who “started” with marijuana and ultimately destroyed their lives with
hard drugs, crime and depravity; then lumps marijuana in with genuinely
dangerous drugs and describes how youngsters or fellow police officers were
killed by these desperate, drug crazed criminals.
Then the officer encourages the students to “help” their
drug-using friends and family by becoming a police informant. These kinds of
indirect lies through innuendo and implication are given in an off-hand manner
calculated to leave a strong, permanent impression on the subconscious mind,
without basing it on any research or other sources that can be objectively
studied or directly challenged – just a lasting, indistinct mental image.
What makes the DARE program uniquely dangerous is that it
provides some accurate information and has genuine value for young people, but
undermines itself and the public record by using these irresponsible,
underhanded tactics.
If DARE officials want responsible behavior from students, they
must also act responsibly. If they have information about marijuana that is
hidden from the rest of us, let’s see it. But, so far as we know, no DARE
organization has yet dared to debate any marijuana legalization advocacy group*
or include their literature in its program.
*Since 1989, Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) and The
Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp (BACH) have issued ongoing standing
challenges to publicly debate any DARE representative in the Los Angeles area,
which have yet to be taken up. These groups have also offered to provide free
and accurate literature on cannabis for DARE’s use, but as of July 1998, have
received no response.
THE MEDIA IN A STUPOR
Despite a strong injection of reason and fact into the cannabis
debate by the media in the 1960s and 1970s, the national media has largely
failed to distinguish marijuana prohibition from the broader “drug war”
hysteria, which “sold more copy” in the 1980s.
Hemp activists have been ignored, their events censored and
excluded from calendar listings – even paid advertisements about events or
legal, non-smoking hemp products are refused by news sources. Whatever happened
to fact checking?
Instead of serving as the probing watchdogs of government and
keepers of the public trust, corporate news groups regard themselves as the
profit-making tool for forging “consensus” on national policy.
“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.” ~ President Jimmy Carter, August 2, 1977
According to groups like Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
(FAIR) and researchers like Ben Bakdikian and Michael Parenti, these
corporations define and protect the “national interest” ~ often meaning their
own vested financial interests and political agendas. It must be remembered
that many of the largest publishers have direct holdings in timberland for
paper development, and the pharmaceutical drug, petrochemical companies, etc.
are among the media’s major advertisers.
In an article published in the L.A. Times magazine May 7, 1989
entitled “Nothing Works” (and since mimicked in hundreds of magazines,
including Time and Newsweek), Stanley Meiseler lamented the problem facing
schools in drug education programs and inadvertently revealed the news media’s
own assumptions and bias:
“Critics believe that some education programs have been crippled
by exaggerating the dangers of drugs. Principals and teachers, watched closely
by city officials, feel pressured not to teach pupils that marijuana, although
harmful,* is less addicting than cigarettes….
Failure to acknowledge such information means school programs
can lose credibility. But more honest programs could be even more harmful”
(emphasis added).
The harm Meiseler predicts is an expected increase in marijuana
consumption when people learn the health benefits and lack of physical or
psychological risks involved. Many people decide that they prefer pot (which
apparently does not need to advertise) to alcohol and tobacco, for which so
many advertising dollars are spent.
*No specific studies showing the alleged harmful effects of
cannabis were cited in the article. In fact, cannabis was barely mentioned
except for this reference and a note that detoxification businesses report some
success in “breaking a mild dependence on marijuana and alcohol.”
.
ONGOING INJUSTICE
President Jimmy Carter addressed Congress on another kind of
harm done by prohibition and the drug issue August 2, 1977, saying that
“penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an
individual than the use of the drug itself.
“Therefore, I support legislation amending federal law to
eliminate all federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce
of marijuana.”
However, his efforts to apply even this bit of reasoning to
America’s marijuana laws 30 years ago were derailed by a Congress determined to
show that it is tough on crime, no matter whether an action is criminal or
poses any real threat to society, no matter how many people are hurt in the
process.
And this attitude of intolerance and oppression has escalated in
the post-Carter years.
By 1990, some 30 states had established “Special Alternative
Incarceration” (SAI) camps (called “boot camps”) where non-violent, first-time
drug offenders are incarcerated in a boot camp-like institution, verbally
abused and psychologically worn down to break them of their dissident attitude
towards drug use. Now, in 1998, there are 42 states with special alternative
incarceration camps implementing similar programs.
The inmates are handled with robotic precision, and those who
don’t conform are subject to incarceration in the state penitentiary. Most of
these young offenders are in for marijuana. Even more states are considering implementing
similar programs.*
* In These Times, “Gulag for drug users,” December 20, 1989, pg
4.
What pretext has been used to rationalize this anti-American
policy? A handful of official government reports and studies that are touted by
the DEA, politicians and the media to show that marijuana really is “damaging
to an individual.”
Next, we look at some of these infamous studies . . .
CHAPTER
15 ~ THE OFFICIAL STORY ~ DEBUNKING “GUTTER SCIENCE”
After 15 days of taking
testimony and more than a year’s legal deliberation, DEA Administrative Law
Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe
marijuana. In a September 1988 judgment, he ruled:
“The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision . . . It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”
Yet former DEA Administrator
John Lawn, his successor, Robert Bonner, and current DEA Administrator John
Constantine ~ non-doctors all! ~ have refused to comply and have continued to
deprive persons of medical cannabis, according to their own personal
discretion.
WASTING
TIME, WASTING LIVES
More than 100 years have
passed since the 1894 British Raj commission study of hashish smokers in India
reported cannabis use was harmless and even helpful. Numerous studies since
have all agreed: The most prominent being Siler, LaGuardia, Nixon’s Shafer
Commission, Canada’s LeDain Commission, and the California Research Advisory
Commission.
Ed: As noted before, I
participated in the LeDain Commission studies.
Concurrently, American
presidents have praised hemp, the USDA amassed volumes of data showing its
value as a natural resource, and in 1942 the Roosevelt administration even made
Hemp for Victory, a film glorifying our patriotic hemp farmers. That same year,
Germany produced The Humorous Hemp Primer, a
comic book, written in rhyme, extolling hemp’s virtues. (See appendix I of the
paper version of this book.)
Yet even the humane use
of hemp for medicine is now denied. Asked in late 1989 about the DEA’s failure
to implement his decision quoted above, Judge Young responded that
administrator John Lawn was being given time to comply.
More than a year after
that ruling, Lawn officially refused to reschedule cannabis, again classing it
as a Schedule I “dangerous” drug that is not even allowed to be used as
medicine.
Decrying this needless
suffering of helpless Americans, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana
Laws (NORML) and the Family Council on Drug Awareness quickly demanded Lawn’s
resignation. His successors, Bonner and now Constantine, retain the same
policy.
What hypocrisy allows
public officials to scoff at the facts and deny the truth? How do they
rationalize their atrocities? How? They invent their own experts.
GOVERNMENT
DOUBLESPEAK
Since 1976, our federal
government (e.g., NIDA, NIH, DEA*, and Action), police sponsored groups (like
DARE*), and special interest groups (like PDFA*) have proclaimed to public,
press, and parent groups alike that they have “absolute evidence” of the
shocking negative effects of marijuana smoking.
* National Institute on
Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Drug Enforcement Agency, Drug Abuse
Resistance Education, Partnership for a Drug Free America. All subsequent
researchers found Heath’s marijuana findings to be of no value, because carbon
monoxide poisoning and other factors were totally left out.
When U.S. government
sponsored research prior to 1976 indicated that cannabis was harmless or
beneficial, the methodology of how each study was done was always presented in
detail in the reports; e.g., read The Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana (1976)
and you will see exactly what the methodology of each medical study was.
However, when our
government bureaucrats deliberately sponsored negative marijuana research, time
and time again Playboy magazine, NORML, High Times, etc. had to sue under the
new Freedom of Information Act to find out the actual laboratory methodology
these “experiments” employed.
What they found was
shocking.
DR.
HEATH/TULANE STUDY, 1974
THE HYPE:
BRAIN
DAMAGE & DEAD MONKEYS
In 1974, California
Governor Ronald Reagan was asked about decriminalizing marijuana.
After producing the
Heath/Tulane University study, the so-called “Great Communicator” proclaimed,
“The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the
inevitable results of the use of marijuana.” (L.A. Times)
The report from Dr. Heath
had concluded that Rhesus monkeys, smoking the equivalent of only 30 joints a
day, began to atrophy and die after 90 days.
And ever since, dead
brain cells found in monkeys who were forced to smoke marijuana has been given
maximum scare play in federal booklets and government sponsored propaganda
literature against pot.
Senator Eastland of
Mississippi used it throughout the mid-1970s to horrify and stop national
legislators from supporting NORML’s decriminalization bills in Congress, mostly
sponsored by the late Senator Jacob Javitts of New York.
Reports of the study have
also been distributed by the hierarchy of drug rehabilitation professionals as
part of their rationalization for wanting to get kids off pot, based on
supposed scientific studies. It is used to terrorize parent groups, church
organizations, etc., who redistribute it still further.
Heath killed the half-dead
monkeys, opened their brains, counted the dead brain cells, and then took
control monkeys, who hadn’t smoked marijuana, killed them too, and counted
their brain cells. The pot smoking monkeys had enormous amounts of dead brain
cells as compared to the “straight” monkeys.
Ronald Reagan’s
pronouncement was probably based on the fact that marijuana smoking was the
only difference in the two sets of monkeys. Perhaps Reagan trusted the federal
research to be real and correct. Perhaps he had other motives.
.
.
Whatever their reasons,
this is what the government ballyhooed to press and PTA, who trusted the
government completely.
In 1980, Playboy and
NORML finally received for the first time after six years of requests and suing
the government an accurate accounting of the research procedures used in the
infamous report:
When NORML/Playboy hired
researchers to examine the reported results against the actual methodology,
they laughed.
THE
FACTS:
SUFFOCATION
OF RESEARCH ANIMALS
As reported in Playboy,
the Heath “Voodoo” Research methodology involved strapping Rhesus monkeys into
a chair and pumping them with equivalent of 63 Colombian strength joints in
“five minutes, through gas masks,” losing no smoke. Playboy discovered that
Heath had administered 63 joints in five minutes over just three months instead
of administering 30 joints per day over a one-year period as he had first
reported. Heath did this, it turned out, in order to avoid having to pay an
assistant’s wages every day for a full year.
The monkeys were
suffocating! Three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation causes brain damage
“dead brain cells.” (Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety Manual) With the
concentration of smoke used, the monkeys were a bit like a person running the
engine of a car in a locked garage for 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time every day!
.
.
The Heath Monkey study
was actually a study in animal asphyxiation and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Among other things, Heath
had completely (intentionally? incompetently?) omitted discussion of the carbon
monoxide the monkeys inhaled.
Carbon monoxide, a deadly
gas that kills brain cells, is given off by any burning object. At that smoke
concentration, the monkeys were, in effect, like a person locked in a garage
with the car engine left running for five, 10, 15 minutes at a time every day!
.
All subsequent researchers agree the findings in Heath’s experiment regarding marijuana were of no value, because carbon monoxide poisoning and other factors were totally left out and had not been considered in the report. This study and others, like Dr. Gabriel Nahas’ 1970s studies, tried to somehow connect the THC metabolites routinely found in the fatty tissue of human brains, reproductive organs, and other fatty areas of the body to the dead brain cells in the suffocated monkeys.
Now, in 1999, 17 years
have passed and not a single word of Dr. Heath’s or Dr. Nahas’ research has
been verified! But their studies are still hauled out by the Partnership for a
Drug Free America, the Drug Enforcement Administration, city and state
narcotics bureaus, plus politicians and, in virtually all public instances,
held up as scientific proof of the dangers of marijuana.
This is U.S. government
propaganda and disinformation at its worst! The public paid for these studies
and has the right to the correct information and history being taught in our
taxpayer sponsored schools.
In 1996, Gabriel Nahas,
in France, sued Mishka, the translator of the French edition of this book,
“L’Emperor est Nu!” for damages. Mishka wrote that Nahas’ studies were viewed
by the world as garbage. The French court, upon hearing all the testimony by
Nahas, and after Nahas had spent an equivalent of tens of thousands of American
dollars on legal fees, awarded him its highest insult: one franc, the equivalent
of approximately 15 cents American for damages, and no legal fees!
LINGERING
THC METABOLITES
THE
HYPE:
IT
STAYS IN YOUR SYSTEM FOR 30 DAYS
The government also
claimed that since “THC metabolites” stay in the body’s fatty cells for up to
30 days after ingestion, just one joint was very dangerous; inferring that the
long range view of what these THC metabolites eventually could do to the human
race could not even be guessed and other pseudo-scientific double-talk (e.g.,
phrases like: “might be,” “could mean,” “possibly,” “perhaps,” etc.)*
* “May, might, could, and
possibly are not scientific conclusions.” Dr. Fred Oerther, M.D., September
1986.
THE
FACTS:
GOVERNMENT’S
OWN EXPERTS SAY THAT METABOLITES ARE NON-TOXIC, HARMLESS RESIDUE
We interviewed three
doctors of national reputation either currently working (or having worked) for
the U.S. government on marijuana research:
~ Dr. Thomas Ungerlieder,
M.D., UCLA, appointed by Richard Nixon in 1969 to the President’s Select
Committee on Marijuana, re-appointed by Ford, Carter, and Reagan, and currently
head of California’s “Marijuana Medical Program;”
~ Dr. Donald Tashkin,
UCLA, M.D., for the last 29 years the U.S. government’s and the world’s leading
marijuana researcher on pulmonary functions; and
~ Dr. Tod Mikuriya, M.D.,
former national administrator and grant distributor of the U.S. government’s
marijuana research programs in the late 1960s.
In effect these doctors
said that the active ingredients in THC are used-up in the first or second pass
through the liver. The leftover THC metabolites then attach themselves, in a
very normal way, to fatty deposits, for the body to dispose of later, which is
a safe and perfectly natural process.
Many chemicals from
foods, herbs, and medicines do this same thing all the time in your body. Most
are not dangerous and THC metabolites show less toxic* potential than virtually
any known metabolic leftovers in your body!
* The U.S. government has
also known since 1946 that the oral dose of cannabis required to kill a mouse
is about 40,000 times the dose required to produce typical symptoms of
intoxication. (Mikuriya, Tod, Marijuana Medical Papers, 1976; Loewe, Journal of
Pharmacological and Experimental Therapeutics, October, 1946.)
THC metabolites left in
the body can be compared to the ash of a cigarette: The inert ingredient left
over after the active cannabinoids have been metabolized by the body. These
inert metabolites are what urinary analysis studies show when taken to
discharge military or factory or athletic personnel for using, or being in the
presence of cannabis within the last 30 days.
.
LUNG
DAMAGE STUDIES
THE
HYPE:
MORE
HARMFUL THAN TOBACCO
According to the American
Lung Association, cigarettes and tobacco smoking related diseases kill more
than 430,000 Americans every year. Fifty million Americans smoke, and 3,000
teens start each day. The Berkeley carcinogenic tar studies of the late 1970s
concluded that “marijuana is one-and-a-half times more carcinogenic than
tobacco.”
THE
FACT:
NOT
ONE DOCUMENTED CASE OF CANCER
There are lung irritants
involved in any smoke. Cannabis smoke causes mild irritation to the large
airways of the lungs. Symptoms disappear when smoking is discontinued.
However, unlike tobacco
smoke, cannabis smoke does not cause any changes in the small airways, the area
where tobacco smoke causes long term and permanent damage. Additionally, a
tobacco smoker will smoke 20 to 60 cigarettes a day, while a heavy marijuana
smoker may smoke five to seven joints a day, even less when potent high-quality
flower tops are available.
While tens of millions of
Americans smoke pot regularly, cannabis has never caused a known case of lung
cancer as of December 1997, according to America’s foremost lung expert, Dr.
Donald Tashkin of UCLA. He considers the biggest health risk to the lungs would
be a person smoking 16 or more “large” spliffs a day of leaf/bud because of the
hypoxia of too much smoke and not enough oxygen.
Tashkin feels there is no
danger for anyone to worry about potentiating emphysema “in any way” by the use
of marijuana totally the opposite of tobacco.
Cannabis is a complex,
highly evolved plant. There are some 400 compounds in its smoke. Of these, 60
are presently known to have therapeutic value.
Cannabis may also be
eaten, entirely avoiding the irritating effects of smoke. However, four times
more of the active ingredients of smoked cannabis are absorbed by the human
body than when the same amount is eaten. And the prohibition inflated price of
black market cannabis, combined with harsh penalties for cultivation, prevent
most persons from being able to afford the luxury of a less efficient, though
healthier, means of ingestion.
LAB
STUDIES FAIL TO REFLECT THE REAL WORLD
Studies have proven that
many of the carcinogens in cannabis can be removed by using a water pipe
system. Our government omitted this information and its significance when
speaking to the press. At the same time politicians outlawed the sale of water
pipes, labeling them “drug paraphernalia.”
HOW
RUMORS GET STARTED
In 1976, Dr. Tashkin,
M.D., UCLA, sent a written report to Dr. Gabriel Nahas at the Rheims, France,
Conference on “Potential Cannabis Medical Dangers.” That report became the most
sensationalized story to come out of this negative world conference on cannabis.
This surprised Tashkin,
who had sent the report to the Rheims conference as an afterthought.
What Tashkin reported to
the Rheims conference was that only one of the 29 pulmonary areas of the human
lung studied the large air passageway Did he find marijuana to be more of an irritant (by 15 times) than tobacco. This figure is insignificant, however, since Tashkin also notes that tobacco has almost no effect on this area. Therefore, 15 times almost nothing is still almost nothing. In any event, cannabis has a positive or neutral effect in most other areas of the lung. (See Chapter 7, “Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis.”)
(Tashkin, Dr. Donald,
UCLA studies, 1969-83; UCLA Pulmonary Studies, 1969-95.)
Afterwards in 1977, the
U.S. government resumed funding for ongoing cannabis pulmonary studies which it
had cut two years earlier when Tashkin reported encouraging therapeutic results
with marijuana/lung studies. But now the government limited funding only to
research to the large air passageway.
We have interviewed Dr.
Tashkin dozens of times. In 1986 I asked him about an article he was preparing
for the New England Journal of Medicine, indicating that cannabis smoke caused
as many or more pre-cancerous lesions as tobacco in “equal” amounts.
Most people do not
realize, nor are the media told, that any tissue abnormality (abrasion,
eruption, or even redness) is called a pre-cancerous lesion. Unlike lesions
caused by tobacco, the THC-related lesions contain no radioactivity.
We asked Tashkin how many
persons had gone on to get lung cancer in these or any other studies of
long-term cannabis-only smokers (Rastas, Coptics, etc.)
Sitting in his UCLA
laboratory, Dr. Tashkin looked at me and said, “That’s the strange part. So far
no one we’ve studied has gone on to get lung cancer.”
“Was this reported to the
press?”
“Well, it’s in the
article,” Dr. Tashkin said. “But no one in the press even asked. They just
assumed the worst.” His answer to us was still that not one single case of lung
cancer in someone who only smoked cannabis has ever been reported. It should be
remembered that he and other doctors had predicted 20 years ago, their
certainty that hundreds of thousands of marijuana smokers would by now (1997)
have developed lung cancer.
ANOTHER
FACT:
EMPHYSEMA
SUFFERERS BENEFIT
During a later interview,
Tashkin congratulated me on the tip I’d given him that marijuana used for
emphysema produced good results among persons we knew.
He laughed at me
originally, because he had presumed that marijuana aggravated emphysema, but
after reviewing his evidence found that, except in the rarest of cases,
marijuana was actually of great benefit to emphysema suffers due to the opening
and dilation of the bronchial passages.
And so the relief
reported to us by cannabis smoking emphysema patients was confirmed.
Marijuana smoke is not
unique in its benefits to the lungs. Yerba Santa, Colt’s foot, Horehound, and
other herbs have traditionally been smoked to help the lungs.
Tobacco and its
associated dangers have so prejudiced persons against “smoking” that most
persons believe cannabis smoking to be as or more dangerous than tobacco. With
research banned, these public health and safety facts are not readily
available.
In December 1997, we
asked Dr. Tashkin again, and he unequivocally stated that “marijuana does not
cause or potentiate emphysema in any way.” In addition, there has not been one
case of lung cancer ever attributed to smoking cannabis.
. . . And So On
Most of the
anti-marijuana literature we have examined does not cite as much as one single
source for us to review. Others only refer to DEA or NIDA. The few studies we
have been able to track down usually end up being anecdotal case histories,
artificial groupings of data, or otherwise lacking controls and never replicated.
Reports of breast
enlargement, obesity, addiction, and the like all remain unsubstantiated, and
are given little credence by the scientific community. Other reports, like the
temporary reduction in sperm count, are statistically insignificant to the
general public, yet get blown far out of proportion when presented by the
media. Still others, like the handful of throat tumors in the Sacramento area
and the high rate of injuries reported in a Baltimore trauma unit are isolated
clusters that run contrary to all other statistics and have never been
replicated.
The spurious results of
Heath, Nahas, and the pregnant mice and monkey studies at Temple University and
UC Davis (where they injected mice with synthetic third-cousin analogues of
THC) are now discredited in the body of scientific and medical literature.
Though these studies are
not used in scientific discourse, mountains of DEA and pharmaceutical
company-sponsored literature about the long-term possible effects of these
metabolites on the brain and reproduction still goes to parent groups as if
they were brand new studies. This disinformation is still very much alive in
U.S. government, DEA, DARE, and PDFA reports.
(Read the 1982 N.I.H.;
the National Academy of Science’s evaluation on past studies; and the Costa
Rica report, 1980.) No Harm to Human Brain or Intelligence Hemp has been used
in virtually all societies since time immemorial as a work motivator and to
highlight and renew creative energies.
NAHAS’ PRESCRIPTION FOR
BLOATED POLICE BUDGETS
Incredibly, a famous
study which found that cannabis reduces tumors (see Chapter 7), was originally
ordered by the Federal Government on the premise that pot would hurt the immune
system. This was based on the “Reefer Madness” studies done by the disreputable
Dr. Gabriel Nahas of Columbia University in 1972.
This is the same Dr.
Nahas who claimed his studies showed pot created chromosome, testosterone (male
hormone) damage, and countless other horrible effects which suggested the
breaking down of the immune system. Nahas’ background is in the OSS/CIA and
later the U.S. where he worked closely with Lyndon LaRouche and Kurt Waldheim.
In 1998, Nahas is still
the darling favorite of the DEA and NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) yet
no anti-marijuana studies of Nahas’ have every been replicated in countless
other research attempts. Columbia University specifically disassociated itself
from Nahas’ marijuana research in a specially called press conference in 1975!
Old, discredited Nahas
studies are still trotted out by the Drug Enforcement Administration today and
deliberately given to unknowledgeable parents’ groups, churches, and PTAs as
valid research regarding the evils of pot.
The dissemination of
Nahas’* dangerous horror stories is paid for with your tax dollars, even years
after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1976 specifically forbade
Nahas from getting another penny of U.S. government money for cannabis studies
because of his embarrassing research in the early 1970s.
* Nahas, in December
1983, under ridicule from his peers and a funding cut-off from NIDA renounced
all his old THC metabolite build-up and unique chromosome Petri dish tissue
damage studies, conclusions, and extrapolations.
Yet the DEA, NIDA, VISTA,
the “War on Drugs,” and now-deceased writer Peggy Mann (in Reader’s Digest
articles and her book Marijuana Alert, with foreword by Nancy Reagan) have used
these discredited studies on parents’ groups such as Parents for a Drug Free
Youth, etc., often with Nahas as a highly paid guest lecturer, without a word
of how his studies are really considered by this peers.
This, we assume, is done
to scare parents, teachers, legislators and judges, using scientific
terminology and bogus non-clinical statistics, ultimately aimed at selling more
urine-testing equipment. Therefore, more profits are created for the
drug-rehabilitation clinics and their staffs of professionals; and to maintain
funding for the DEA, local police, judicial, penal, corrections and other
government pork barrel, police state interests.
The “War on Drugs” is big
money, so the shameless petitioning for more police and more jail cells
continues. And we still have thousands of judges, legislators, police, Reader’s
Digest readers, and parents who have for years used and cited Nahas’ studies in
particular as the prime reasons to continue these unjust laws and to jail
millions of Americans over the last decade.
The DEA, after Nahas’
1983 waffling renouncement, consciously and criminally continues to use his
studies to polarize ignorant judges, politicians, press, and parent groups, who
are unaware of Nahas’ denouncement. These groups trust the government to tell
them the truth their tax dollars paid for. Most of the media, press, and
television commentators still use Nahas’ 1970s, unreplicated studies as gospel,
and much of the frightening folklore and street myths that are whispered around
school yards spring from the deceitful “scientist’s” work.
Refuted and never
replicated results are still taught, while the honest researcher faces prison
if he attempts to test any thoughts about the medical use of cannabis.
In fact, using Nahas’
refuted and unreplicated synthetic THC Petri dish studies on the immune system,
hysterical Families for Drug Free Youth, or “Just Say No” organizations have
gotten the press to say marijuana could cause AIDS – which has no basis
whatsoever, but the press published all this rhetoric creating more Reefer
Madness!
Gabriel Nahas, in 1998,
is living in Paris and goes around Europe teaching as gospel the same old lies
to less informed Europeans. When asked to debate us (H.E.M.P.) on cannabis
before the world press on June 18, 1993 in Paris, he first enthusiastically
accepted until he found out that we would be speaking on all aspects of the
hemp plant (e.g. paper, fiber, fuel, medicine). Then he declined, even though
we met all of his requirements.
RADIOACTIVE
TOBACCO: THE UNTOLD STORY
Tobacco smoking kills
more persons each year than AIDS, heroin, crack, cocaine, alcohol, car
accidents, fire, and murder combined. Cigarette smoking is as addictive as
heroin, complete with withdrawal symptoms, and the percentage of relapses (75%)
is the same as for “kicking” cocaine and heroin users.
It is far and away the
number one cause of preventable death in the U.S. today. Tobacco smokers have
ten times the lung cancer of non-smokers, twice the heart disease, and are
three times more likely to die of heart disease if they do develop it. Yet
tobacco is totally legal, and even receives the highest U.S. government farm
subsidies of any agricultural product in America, all the while being our
biggest killer! What total hypocrisy!
In the U.S. one in seven
deaths are caused by smoking cigarettes. Women should know that lung cancer is
more common than breast cancer in women who smoke and that smoking on the pill
increases cancer and heart risks dramatically.
Seven million dollars a
day promotes the tobacco business, and it is estimated that the cigarette
industry needs about 3,000 new smokers a day to replace those who quit or die
each day from smoking.
Kentucky’s principal
business and agriculture for 100 years (until 1890) was the healthful,
versatile, and useful cannabis hemp. It has since been replaced by non-edible,
non-fibrous, soil-depleting tobacco, which is grown in soil fertilized with
radioactive materials.
U.S. government studies
have shown that a pack-and-a-half of tobacco cigarettes per day over a year for
just one year is the equivalent to your lungs of what some 300 chest x-rays
(using the old, pre-1980s slow x-ray film and without using any lead
protection) are to your skin. But while an x-ray dissipates its radioactivity
instantly, tobacco has a radioactive half-life that will remain active in the
lungs for 21.5 years.
Former Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop said on national television that radioactivity contained in
tobacco leaves is probably responsible for most tobacco-related cancer. No
radioactivity exists in cannabis tars.
(National Center for
Atmospheric Research, 1964; American Lung Assn.; Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza, U. of
Mass. Medical Center; Reader’s Digest, March 1986; Surg. Gen. C. Everett Koop,
1990.)
SOME
STUDIES THE FEDS DON’T TALK ABOUT
THE
COPTIC STUDY (1981)
NO HARM TO HUMAN BRAIN OR
INTELLIGENCE
Hemp has been used in
virtually all societies since time immemorial as a work motivator and to
highlight and renew creative energies.
(Jamaican Studies; Coptic
Studies; Costa Rican Studies; Vedas; Dr. Vera Rubin, Research Institute for the
Study of Man; et al)
In 1981, a study showed
that 10 of American’s heaviest pot smokers (from the Coptic religion and
residing in Florida) actually believed that using 16 huge high potency spliffs*
a day had improved their minds somewhat over a period of 10 years.
They were studied by Drs.
Ungerlieder and Shaeffer (UCLA) and who showed absolutely no brain differences
between them and non-smokers nor did it confirm any increase in IQ that the
Coptics had claimed.
* One spliff is generally
equal to five average American joints.
LONGER
LIFE, FEWER WRINKLES
(COSTA
RICAN AND JAMAICAN STUDIES)
JAMAICAN
STUDIES
(1968-74,
1975)
DEFINITE
BENEFITS FOR MARIJUANA SMOKERS
The most exhaustive study
of hemp smoking in its natural setting is probably Ganja in Jamaica A Medical
Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use by Vera Rubin and Lambros
Comitas (1975; Mouton & Co., The Hague, Paris/Anchor Books, NY).
.
.
The Jamaican study,
sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Center for Studies
of Narcotic and Drug Abuse, was the first project in medical anthropology to be
undertaken and is the first intensive, multi-disciplinary study of marijuana
use and users to be published.
From the Jamaican Study
introduction: “Despite its illegality, ganja use is pervasive, and duration and
frequency are very high; it is smoked over a longer period in heavier
quantities with greater THC potency than in the U.S. without deleterious social
or psychological consequences. The major difference is that both use and
expected behaviours are culturally conditioned and controlled by well
established tradition.”
“No impairment of
physiological, sensory and perceptual-motor performance, tests of concept
formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style and test of memory.”
POSITIVE
SOCIAL ATTITUDES
The study outlines the
positive reinforcement given socially to ganja smokers in Jamaica, the
universal praise for the practice among users, who smoke it as a work
motivator.
Subjects described the effects
of smoking making them “brainier”, lively, merry, more responsible and
conscious. They reported it was good for meditation and concentration, and
created a general sense of well-being and self-assertiveness.
NO
LINK TO CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
Vera Rubin and her
colleagues found no relation of cannabis to crime (except marijuana busts), no
impairment of motor skills, and smokers and non-smokers alike had identical
extroversion scores with no difference in work records or adjustment. Heavy use
of ganja was not found to curtail the motivation to work.
From the psychological
assessment the smokers seemed to be more open in their expressions of feeling,
somewhat more carefree, and somewhat more distractible. There was no evidence
of organic brain damage or schizophrenia.
NO
PHYSIOLOGICAL DETERIORATION
Marilyn Bowman, in a
battery of psychological tests on chronic cannabis users in Jamaica in 1972,
found “no impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual-motor
performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability and cognitive
style and tests of memory.” These Jamaicans had smoked anywhere from six to 31
years (16.6 mean average) and the average age at the first puff was at 12 years
and six months.
In the 1975 study between
users and non-users, no difference was found in plasma testosterone, no
difference in total nutrition, slightly higher performance on the intelligence
sub-tests (not statistically significant), and “a basic measure of
cell-mediated immunity was no less vigorous in the users.”
Finally, “Users in our
matched pair sample smoked marijuana in addition to as many tobacco cigarettes
as did their partners. Yet their airways were, if anything, a bit healthier
than their matches.”
“We must tentatively
conclude either that marijuana has no harmful effects on such passages or that
it actually offers some slight protection against the harmful effects of
tobacco smoke. Only further research will clarify which, if either, is the
case.”
NO
“STEPPING STONE”/GATEWAY EFFECT
As to the stepping-stone
or gateway drug charges leveled against cannabis: “The use of hard drugs is as
yet virtually unknown among working class Jamaicans no one in the study
(Rubin’s) had ever taken any narcotics, stimulants, hallucinogens, barbiturates
or sleeping pills.”
In America during the
late 1800s cannabis was used in treating addiction. Opiate, chloral hydrate,
and alcohol addicts were successfully treated with potent cannabis extracts.
Some patients recovered with less than a dozen doses of cannabis extract.1 Likewise,
smoking cannabis has been found to be valuable in modern alcohol addiction
treatment.2
COSTA
RICAN STUDY (1980)
The Jamaican results were
largely confirmed by another Caribbean study, the 1980 Cannabis in Costa Rica –
A Study in Chronic Marijuana Use edited by William Carter for the Institute for
Study of Human Issues. (ISHI, 3401 Science Center, Philadelphia.)
Again researchers found
no palpable damage to the native population’s chronic cannabis smokers.
Alcoholic social problems, so evident on neighboring cannabis-free islands, are
not found in Costa Rica.
This study makes clear
that socially approved ganja use will largely replace or mitigate the use of
alcohol (rum) if available.
THE
AMSTERDAM MODEL
Since adopting a policy
of tolerance and non-prosecution of cannabis/hashish smokers (it is available
in cafes and bars) and rehabilitation and diversion programs for hard drug
users, Holland has seen a substantial reduction in cannabis consumption among
teenagers and a 33% drop in the number of heroin addicts.
The strategy of
separating cannabis sales from hard drug dealers by bringing pot above-ground
has been quite successful. (L.A. Times, August 1989).
In 1998, despite constant
pressure from the U.S. government and the DEA, the Dutch government has totally
refused to recriminalize marijuana!
FOOTNOTES:
1. “Cannabis Indica as an
Anodyne and Hypnotic,” J.B. Mattison, M.D., The St. Louis Medical and Surgical
Journal, Vol. LVI, No. 5, Nov. 1891, pg 265-271, reprinted in Marijuana: The
Medical Papers, Tod Mikuriya, M.D.
2. “Cannabis
Substitution: An Adjunctive Therapeutic Tool in the Treatment of Alcoholism,”
Tod H. Mikuriya, M.D., Medical Times, Vol. 98, No. 4, April, 1970, reprinted in
Marijuana Medical Papers, Tod Mikuriya, M.D.)
MORE
PROHIBITIONIST DECEPTIONS
Scientific American
reported in 1990: “The alarming statistics, cited by testing advocates, to
demonstrate the high costs of drug abuse . . . do not always accurately reflect
the research on which they are based. In fact, some of the data could be used
to ‘prove’ that drug use has negligible or even beneficial effects.” (March
1990, page 18)
One of the examples given
is the often cited statistic former president George Bush utilized in 1989:
“Drug abuse among American workers costs businesses anywhere from $60 billion
to $100 billion a year in lost productivity, absenteeism, drug-related
accidents, medical claims and theft.” Yet according to a 1989 assessment by
NIDA, all such claims derive from a single study that grew out of a 1982 survey
of 3,700 households.
The Research Triangle
Institute (RTI) found that households where at least one person admitted having
used marijuana regularly reported average incomes 28% lower than average
reported income of otherwise similar households. RTI researchers ascribed the
income difference to “loss due to marijuana use.”
RTI then extrapolated
costs of crime, health problems and accidents to arrive at a “cost to society
of drug abuse” of $47 billion. The White House “adjusted” for inflation and
population increases to provide the basis for Bush’s statement.
Yet the RTI survey also
included questions about current drug use. The answers revealed no significant
difference between income levels of households with current users of illegal
drugs, including cocaine and heroin, and other households.
Thus the same statistics
“prove” that current use of hard drugs does not result in any “loss,” in
contrast to a single marijuana binge in the distant past!
OFFICIAL
CORRUPTION: CARLTON TURNER
In all the research this
author has done about the misapplication of public funds and trusts, nothing,
it seems, compares with the either totally ignorant or willful manslaughter of
fellow Americans by the bureaucrats and politicians of the following story:
ONE
MAN & HIS DRUG SCAMS
The U.S. government
policy, starting in the Nixon and Ford administrations and continuing under
Carlton Turner* (Drug Czar under Reagan 1981-1986), allowed federal medical
marijuana, supplied to the individual state marijuana medical programs, to
consist only of the leaf of the marijuana plant, even though it’s usually only
one-third as strong as the bud and doesn’t contain the same whole spectrum of
the “crude drug,” i.e. the THC and CBNs.
* Prior to becoming
Special White House Advisor (read: National Drug Czar) Carlton Turner, from
1971 to 1980, was the head of all U.S. government marijuana grown for drugs by
reason of his position at the University of Mississippi. The U. of Mississippi
Marijuana Research Program is directed by state charter to discover initiate or
sort out the constituents of THC a “simple” crude cannabis drug that works as a
medicine then synthesize the substances with beneficial medicinal properties to
attain their full potential for pharmaceutical companies.
For example, the leaf’s
relief of ocular pressure for glaucoma patients is much shorter lasting and
therefore unsatisfactory, compared to the bud. Also, the leaf sometimes gives
smokers a headache. The federal government until 1986 used only the leaf.
Turner said to the pharmaceutical companies in an interview, that leaf is all
Americans would ever get although the bud works better. Still today in 1999,
the seven legal marijuana users in the U.S. only get leaf, branch, and bud
chopped up and rolled together. Although buds work better for chemotherapy,
glaucoma, etc., the branches can be as toxic as smoking wood.
Turner said, in 1986,
that natural marijuana will “never” be given as a medicine and, as of April
1998, it still hasn’t. (Except in California, where citizens successfully
voted, in November 1996, to overrule the federal government on medical
marijuana!)
THE
REASONS GIVEN:
.
.
ED: I always found preparation to be part of the pleasure.
By extracting compounds
from the “crude drug” of the bud, there would be no pharmaceutical patents,
therefore no profits. Therefore, his program would have worked against his
former employers, the Mississippi University’s legislative charter and funding.
(Interviews by Ed
Rosenthal for High Times magazine; Dean Latimer, et al; NORML.)
Although buds work better
for chemotherapy, glaucoma, etc., Turner said they will “never” be given. It
also became evident the famous marijuana ‘munchies’ (appetite stimulation) were
not working for the cancer chemotherapy patients using federal leaf.
And even though no
studies have been allowed to compare leaf with bud, we know of doctors who
unofficially recommended bud and watch their wasting cancer patients put on
weight (NORML).
POISONING
POT SMOKERS
In August and September,
1983, Turner went on national television to justify the illegal marijuana
spraying (by plane) of paraquat in Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee by the DEA.
He said it would teach a lesson to any kid who died from paraquat-poisoned pot.
Turner was forced to resign after announcing his conclusions in public that marijuana caused homosexuality, the breakdown of the immune system, and, therefore, AIDS.
Looking into the
therapeutic potential of cannabis is the most controlled and discouraged
research, but any tests pursuing negative or harmful effects of cannabis are
promoted. Since these tests often backfire or are inconclusive, even this
research is rare.
Turner quoted “The Rise
and Fall of the Roman Empire” to show how jazz (rock) singers are eroding the
America “he” loves with this hallucinogenic drug marijuana! Which he meant to
stamp out.
PHONY PARAQUAT KITS
During the 1978 Mexican
marijuana paraquat scare, and while still a private citizen working for the
state of Mississippi marijuana farm, this same Carlton Turner called High Times
magazine to advertise a paraquat tester. Unknown to Turner, High Times was not
accepting ads for any paraquat testers because all evidence showed the testers
didn’t work.
Dean Latimer then a High
Times associate editor, strung Turner along in virtually daily phone
conversations for a month, listening to Turner talk about how much money Turner
was going to make from sales of the device.
High Times wanted to see
a sample. When Turner delivered his prototype version of the paraquat test kit
to High Times, it was a total “Rube Goldberg” type rip-off, “just like the
dozen or so phony kits other companies tried to buy ad space for at this time,”
wrote Latimer in an article published in 1984.
Turner apparently never
thought High Times was ethical enough to check the contraption out. He assumed
they would just take the ad money and run print the ad and make Turner rich.
He didn’t care if some
kid died or was bilked out of money believing in his bogus paraquat test kit.
After this attempted mail
fraud, this man became President Reagan’s national drug czar in 1981,
recommended by George Bush and Nancy Reagan.
A
WANTON DISREGARD FOR LIFE
Turner even said that he doesn’t even care if hundreds of kids die from smoking pot the federal government has deliberately sprayed with paraquat.
Then at the April 25,
1985, PRIDE conference in Atlanta, Georgia, with Nancy Reagan and 16 foreign
First Ladies in attendance (including Imelda Marcos), Turner called for the
death penalty for drug dealers.
Turner was, after all,
Reagan’s, Bush’s, and the pharmaceutical companies’ own hired gun, who saw his
entire mission as not against heroin, PCP, or cocaine, but to wipe out pot and
jazz/rock music.
Carlton Turner was forced
to resign after Newsweek magazine excoriated him October 27, 1986, in a large
editorial sidebar. His resignation was a foregone conclusion after being
lampooned in the Washington Post and elsewhere as no other public figure in
recent memory for his conclusions (in public addresses) that marijuana smoking
caused homosexuality, the breakdown of the immune system, and, therefore, AIDS.
He resigned December 16,
1986. What should have been front page headline news was buried in the back
pages during the Iran-contra scandal that exploded that week.
URINE
TESTING COMPANY
Soon after Turner left
office, Nancy Reagan recommended that no corporation be permitted to do
business with the Federal government without having a urine purity policy in
place to show their loyalty.
Just as G. Gordon Liddy
went into high-tech corporate security after his disgrace, Carlton Turner
became a rich man in what has now become a huge growth industry: urine-testing.
This kind of business denies
the basic rights of privacy, self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment) rights,
unreasonable search and seizure, and the presumption of innocence (until proven
guilty).
Submission to the
humiliation of having your most private body parts and functions observed by a
hired voyeur is now the test of eligibility for private employment, or to
contract for a living wage.
Turner’s new money-making
scheme demands that all other Americans relinquish their fundamental right to
privacy and self-respect.
BUSH
STRIKES AGAIN
President Ronald Reagan,
at the urging of then Vice President George Bush, appointed Carlton Turner as
the White House Drug (czar) Advisor in 1981.
At conventions
(1981-1986) of pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyist the American
Chemical Manufacturers, Turner promised to continue the research ban on the 400
chemical compounds of cannabis.
Bush managed to continue
to direct this effort, simply by not allowing any grants for private or public
research with a positive implication to be issued by NIDA or NIH, or approved
any recent FDA applications unless they pursued negative results. As of this
writing (July 1998) President Clinton’s policy has remained the same.
COMPARISON
TO ALCOHOL
There are many terrible
drug habits. The worst of which is alcohol, in both numbers of users and the
anti-social behavior associated with extreme use. Alcoholism is the leading
cause of teen-age deaths: 8,000 American teenagers are killed each year and
40,000 are maimed from mixing alcohol and driving. (MADD, Mothers against Drunk
Driving; SADD, Students against Drunk Driving; NIDA, National Institute on Drug
Abuse, etc.)
In fact, U.S.
government/police statistics confirm the following strange numbers:
The mortality figure for
alcohol use is 100,000 annually, compared with zero marijuana deaths in 10,000
years of consumption.
From 40-50% of all
murders and highway fatalities are alcohol related. In fact, highway fatalities
that are alcohol related might be as high as 90%, according to the Chicago
Tribune and L.A. Times.
Alcohol is also indicated
in the majority (69-80%) of all child rape/incest cases; wife beating incidents
are in great majority (60-80%) alcohol influenced.
Heroin is indicated in
35% of burglaries, robberies, armed robberies, bank robberies, grand theft
auto, etc.
And there were more than
786,545 arrests for simple marijuana possession in the U.S. in 2005 (up from
400,000 in 1992), according to the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics of the
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
CHAPTER 16 ~ ALTERNATIVES TO
PROHIBITION
In conclusion, we see that the government’s case against
marijuana is woven of transparent lies. In this chapter, we bring to light some
research that the government does not like people to know about. Then we talk
about some realistic alternatives.
BUT
FIRST, A BRIEF FABLE: THE STORY OF THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
(PARAPHRASED FROM HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN’S FAIRY TALE)
There once was a very, very vain and terrible King/Emperor who
heavily taxed his subjects in order to pay for his incredibly fine wardrobe
made from the most expensive fabrics.
One day, two swindlers, representing themselves as great tailors
from afar, arrived and sought an audience with the Emperor. They told of an
amazing new fabric they had invented, made of a very expensive gold fiber that
only the best, purest and wisest of people could see. Excited, the Emperor
asked to see a sample, and the men brought forth an empty spool. “Ah, isn’t it
lovely?” they asked the Emperor.
The Emperor agreed, afraid to admit that he did not see anything
because that would mean he was a dull and stupid person.
So, to test his ministers, the Emperor brought them all in to
get their opinions. Once the power of the fabric was explained to them, all
agreed that this was, indeed, the finest and most beautiful cloth in the whole
world.
The Emperor ordered that much of the gold from the treasury be
given to the supposed tailors to be spun into thread. They set about at once
working day after day, pretending to cut and sew, while the Emperor and his
ministers periodically came by to admire their handiwork ~ and to pay the
enormous bills the merchants were running up in the course of their activities.
Finally, the big day came when all the people in the land were
ordered to gather to see the Emperor’s new outfit, which they had paid so much
for and heard so much about.
When he nakedly strode forth, all the people looked in disbelief
and said nothing. Then they sang the praises of the miraculous new cloth. “It’s
the most beautiful work I’ve ever seen!” “Magnificent!” “I wish I had such
lovely fabric!” They all cheered, afraid of being denounced and called stupid
and impure if they did otherwise.
And the Emperor proudly paraded in front of his subjects,
secretly worried ~ afraid that he would lose the crown if the people knew that
he, himself, could not see the cloth that draped his body.
As he passed through the crowd, a small boy perched on his
father’s shoulder cried out, “But the Emperor has nothing on!”
“Just hear what the innocent says!” said the father. And each
person whispered to another what the child had said. The word spread throughout
his subjects what the little boy had said.
Then, everyone knew that the Emperor and all his ministers had
been tricked by swindlers. Now his guards and ministers, as well as the people,
realized that the swindlers had not only tricked the Emperor, but he, the
Emperor, had spent all their tax money, wasted on this farce. The Emperor heard
the people laughing and murmuring. He knew they were right, but he was too
proud to admit he was wrong and had been made the fool. So he drew himself up
to his full height and stared down at his guards, until he caught one guard’s
eye.
The guard, looking nervously around, realizing this vain Emperor
could have him imprisoned or even beheaded, averted his eyes and looked down at
the ground. Then another guard, seeing that his fellow guard wasn’t laughing
anymore, got scared and lowered his eyes to the ground, too. Soon, all the
guards, ministers, and even the children pretending to carry his invisible
train of gold cloth, were staring at the ground.
The people, seeing the ministers and guards, who a moment ago
were laughing at the Emperor with them, now staring down at the ground, quaking
in their boots, stopped laughing and quickly bowed their heads, as well.
The little boy who had first exclaimed that the Emperor was
naked, seeing all the grownups around him, and even his father, completely
scared and subdued, bowed his head in fear!
Then the Emperor, again pulling himself up to his full height,
announced to his subjects, as he marched proudly through his empire, “Who is to
say that these are not the very finest clothes of all?”
THE MORAL
OF THE STORY IS…
We cannot simply call the Emperor (U.S. government) on his (its)
acts of deceit and manipulation of fact. His guards (FBI, CIA, DEA, etc.) are
far too powerful. His fear of shameful discovery so great he ceaselessly uses
his power (through funding much of the United Nations and the world’s anti-drug
crusades) to buy allegiance through bribery and intimidation (foreign aid, arms
sales, etc.).
Those American citizens who would dare speak out against this
tyranny are often slandered as “druggies” or “dopers” and may be threatened
with the loss of their jobs, income, families and property. To win, we must
drive a stake through the heart of (the U.S. government’s/DEA’s) lies, over and
over and over again by hammering at them relentlessly with hardcore facts to
defeat the evil of this hard-hearted Emperor (unjust cannabis laws) and even
imprison these perpetrators, if necessary, to set our people free!
THE LOGICAL ANALOGY
We contend that America’s marijuana/hemp laws are like the
Emperor’s clothes! Like tyrants and prohibitionists in the past, this Emperor
relies on brute force, intimidation, fear and a virtual police state to
maintain his authoritarian, despotic reign while draining the federal treasury,
dismantling all vestiges of the Bill of Rights while imprisoning innocent
souls.
General Barry McCaffrey, and now John Walters, acting the parts
of the Emperor’s advisors, have all upheld the fallacy of the “pure fabric that
only the purest eyes may see,” woven for them originally by
Anslinger/DuPont/Hearst and their malevolent bureaucrats.
Now it is co-maintained by energy, pharmaceutical, alcohol/beer
companies, drug rehab professionals, drug testers, police, prison guards and
prison builders ~ all with enormous financial interests and police-state
motives.
When agents of the U. S. government deliberately act or conspire
this way ~ be they President, Vice President, National Drug Czar, head of the
DEA, FBI, or CIA ~ they should be imprisoned. And in an honest American
society, they would be held accountable for the 16 million years they’ve
already sentenced so many Americans to for the “crime” of pot.
Our federal bureaucracies and the U.S. Supreme Court are rapidly
chipping away at our freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights (written on
hemp paper). Hemp/marijuana has become their principal excuse for taking away
our guaranteed Constitutional rights ~ more so than for all other crimes,
political actions, insurgencies, strikes, uprisings and wars in the last 200
years combined! And the loss of basic freedoms is even worse in our satellite
Central and South American countries, where their leaders have acted at
America’s behest.
IN CONCLUSION:
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES OF PROHIBITION
When DuPont tells you that they bring “Better Living through
Chemistry,” they don’t tell you that it’s only for 100 years, then the entire
planet dies for their profit.
England and Holland have learned to treat their substance
abusers as human beings ~ keeping them supplied with enough affordable
medicants so they don’t disrupt the activities of others. Such policies allow
them to lead otherwise productive and normal lives. These policies are now
firmly established, effective and popular in those countries. In the mid-1990s,
Switzerland began its own experiments in localized tolerance of public drug
use.
When the Swiss government tried, in 1997, to re-criminalize
cannabis with a ballot initiative, it lost by 79% of the vote!
So, why should other-wise peaceful hemp/marijuana growers and
users be labeled and persecuted as lifetime criminals while 35% of all robberies
and burglaries are committed by heroin and alcohol addicts, 40 to 55% of
murders, rapes and highway fatalities are alcohol related* and hero-in is more
available in jail than on the streets. Yet cannabis users statistically have
the same or lower incidents of crime and violence as the non-cannabis-using
population as a whole.
*FBI Statistics, 2005.
In fact, aside from cannabis usage, take the mob and the dealers
out of heroin and other drugs and you reduce as much as 80% of non-alcohol
related crime. As a direct example, throughout the “Roaring Twenties” era of
alcohol prohibition, the murder rate rose consistently then dropped every year
for the next 10 years following prohibition’s 1933 repeal.*
*FBI Statistics.
Let’s find another way to deal with drug usage or be prepared
for continued exponential erosion of our freedoms, including the rights of self
expression, public debate and a free press, including books and songs.
Accept the fact that virtually all drug-related crime ends if
you treat addicts and users instead of removing them from society. Help them,
educate and encourage them to be financially productive.
In 2006, the top priority of the U. S. government, the DEA and most of the Republican Party is to try to enact legislation that will automatically take away 100% of all citizens’ rights to privacy and freedom from unwarranted search ~ as if the drug war were a true state of emergency ~ in order to further their fascistic, police and prison-state agenda.
HIGH-TECH REPRESSION
In order for America to be marijuana free, all of us, smokers
and non-smokers alike, will have to give up our Bill of Rights…forever! You
will have to conform to the likes of Lyndon LaRouche, Jerry Falwell, Nancy
Reagan, Edwin Meese, William Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, John Walters and
minds of that repressive and ridiculous ilk. Each, in their smug ignorance,
contributing to the permanent poisoning of the Earth while trying with all
their might to completely annihilate the one thing that can save us: HEMP!
The computer, that great boon to mankind, will ironically allow
the police to finish, today, the job the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition
started (see Chapter 10: Dark Ages) because the Church could not stand
“commoners” laughing at them, or knowing the secrets of, among other things,
hygiene, astronomy and hemp. Using computers, the pot police can peer into an
individual’s family background, his sales receipts, his income taxes, and so
forth to enable them to blackmail and/or bribe Americans, as well as destroy
their politicians, judges and other VlPs by exposing issues like their private
sex lives or personal drug use.
For example, the son of Clinton’s former Surgeon General Jocelyn
Elders, was systematically and perpetually badgered, over six months, by his
friend (who had been previously busted and forced to work undercover for the
DEA, specifically to set up young Elders) to get him to purchase a small amount
of cocaine for himself. Elders’ son, who had never been known to deal,
consistently refused, but eventually gave in to the friend’s constant pressure.
The government revealed the information about this transaction
to no one for another six months until they could use it to directly blackmail
Surgeon General Elders into recanting her soft stance on medical cannabis.
Instead, refusing to be silenced, Elders resigned. With such blatantly
underhanded tactics, the DEA is daily bringing us closer to Orwell’s 1984
nightmare.
WASTING OUR TAX MONEY
Approximately 50% of all drug enforcement money, federal and
state, during the last 70 years has been directed toward marijuana!
Some 70-80% of all people now in federal and state prisons in
America wouldn’t have been there as criminals until just 60 or 70 years ago. In
other words we, in our (Anslinger and Hearst inspired) ignorance and prejudice,
have placed approximately 1.2 million of the 1.8 million people in American
prisons (as of 2005) for crimes that were, at worst, minor habits, up until the
Harrison Act, 1914 (whereby the U.S. Supreme Court in 1924 first ruled that drug
addicts weren’t merely sick, they were instead vile criminals).
Eighty percent of these government “War on Drugs” victims were
not dealing. They have been incarcerated for simple possession. And this does
not include the quarter of a million more in county jails.
Remember, just 29 years ago, in 1978, before the “War on Drugs,”
there were only 300,000 people in American prisons for all crimes combined.
Some radio and television preachers have added to the hysteria
by calling rock music “satanic and voodoo” and associating it with the drug
culture. They want to outlaw rock, burn albums and books, and lock up everyone
who doesn’t agree with them. So does Carlton Turner. So does Lyndon LaRouche.
So does William Bennett. So does General Barry McCaffrey. So does John Walters.
And virtually every state is in the midst of the biggest prison
expansion ever in America’s and the world’s history, while political vultures,
concerned only for growth of their prison-related industries and job security,
demand that we build more prisons and expand tax bases to pursue this “law and
order” madness against formerly misdemeanor or even non-existent offenses.
DOUBLE STANDARDS
In the 1980s, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist
was “nodding off” in court ~ and sending other druggies to prison for their
habits ~ he kept feeding his eight-a-day Placidyl habit. This was the
equivalent in dollars, “high,” and mental effect to that of a $70 to $125 a-day
street abuser’s heroin habit.
Placidyl, a cousin of Quaaludes, is known as a “heavy down,”
popular on the streets for imparting a very placid feeling in users.
The physical dependency and mental effects of using the legal
drugs Placidyl, Dilaudid, Quaaludes, etc., are virtually the same as for the
reviled barbiturates, opium, morphine and heroin. In essence, they disturb the
body’s “endorphin” (pain-receptors and nullifiers) balance.
Rehnquist, who was said to have used Placidyl far in excess of
normal limits, did not have to rob liquor stores, physically assault his fellow
citizens, or commit any of the other anti-social behaviors attributed to
“junkies.”
His habit was easily maintained because Placidyl was both
legally available and within his normal income limits. Placidyl was also well
labeled as to purity and frequency of dosage, while people with outlawed drug
habits have to get by on a “dime of tar” (a 10 dollar bag) the purity of which ~
whether 5% or 95% ~ is unknown. The great majority of drug overdoses are caused
by this unknown, unregulated, and unlabeled purity factor.
The government acknowledges that 90% or more of overdoses from
illegal drugs would probably be avoided with accurate labels and appropriate
warnings.
POLICIES BASED ON IGNORANCE
While researching this book over the last 33 years, we have
talked with and questioned senators, legislators, judges, police, DAs,
scientists, historians, Nobel Prize winners, dentists, and MDs. All knew little
bits and pieces of the history and uses of cannabis, but virtually no one knew
in any depth about marijuana in its 360-degree entirety except long-term
medical researchers, such as Ungerlieder, Mikuriya, and writers like Ed
Rosenthal, Dean Latimer and Dr. Michael Aldrich.
For example, 24 years ago, at a large California NORML
fundraiser in February 1983, we spoke privately with then Senate Majority Whip
Tom Rutherford, of New Mexico. He had been a leading pro-marijuana politician
for a decade and was, at that time, probably the most knowledgeable elected
government representative on the subject of marijuana, in the United States. We
asked him why the government didn’t just come out and legalize marijuana,
especially with everything we knew medically, industrially and historically
about cannabis.
We were shocked when he replied that he was not aware of any
argument in favor of the legalization of marijuana, except to just end the
lunacy of criminalization for at worst a minor act.
So, we enthusiastically outlined the facts and entire history of
hemp/marijuana for him, figuring he must have heard some of it before. He sat
literally in awe of the claims he was hearing for the very first time. When we
finished speaking, he said, “If I had that knowledge outlined and documented
for me as you just told it, the government, police and judicial system would be
through persecuting pot.”
“But is it true?” he added.
This was in February 1983 and here were America’s top pro-pot
politicians who literally didn’t know enough about hemp to fill a single page
of a book, and some left public office in the Reagan “just say no” era before
having learned enough to publicly support hemp /marijuana.
But now, many do know hemp is potentially Earth’s number-one
crop and that the present laws are totally unjustifiable, and that the
government’s position on pot is utterly false and can’t stand the simple light
of truth.
WHAT IS THE LAW?
ED:
Most times regarding pot, the law is an ass.
“All laws which can be violated without doing anyone any injury
are laughed at.” ~ Spinoza, (c. 1660.)
To control marijuana is to give up our freedoms, for ourselves,
our kids, and our kid’s kids, forever.
And that, my friends, is called fascism; and simply put, if the
laws on cannabis are not over-turned, and if present Earth-destructive
practices, such as strip mining, oil drilling, clear-cutting of trees, industrial
pollution of waters, and use of pesticides and herbicides are not discontinued,
our planet will soon die at the hands of these ignorant (not-knowing and/or
evil) politicians who think they have a right to pass more and more draconian
laws to fill more and bigger prisons and jails with some of our most decent
citizens.
These same politicians portray themselves as being motivated
purely out of concern for children.
Meanwhile, they promote the massive ongoing environmental
poisoning of these same children every day! But to truly understand why tens of
millions of Americans are scared silly of pot after 70 years of disinformation
that continues to this day, consider the mentality and character of former Los
Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (1978–1992), who has admitted to helping
direct a program of squashing accurate hemp information and ordering the arrest
and harassment of California Marijuana Initiative workers for acting upon their
civic and Constitutional right to collect petition signatures.
In September 1983, on television and through a police spokesman,
Gates called hemp reform advocates “well-intentioned but terribly naïve
regarding marijuana and [they] really don’t know much about it.”
In January 1984, Gates was asked by a parent at a San Fernando
Valley, CA, public school, “What can I do if I find out my child has used
marijuana?” He replied, “It’s too late. Once they’ve smoked one marijuana
cigarette, they are lost to us forever!”*
*These exact words were also used by L.A. County D.A Ira Reiner
in his 1990 campaign for State Attorney General. He lost.
A few months later, then–California Attorney General, John Van
de Kamp, suppressed the August 17, 1990 report by his own advisory panel that
called for hemp re-legalization. Gates testified before the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee on September 5, 1990 that “casual drug users should be
taken out and shot.” He held to this position for almost a week, until public
outcry for his dismissal* forced him to modify his comment to a call for
stricter penalties. Former Drug Czar William Bennett said, “I have no moral
problem with beheading marijuana users, arms, feet and legs (seriously!). In
July of 1998, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, on
On March 3, 1991, the world was shocked to learn that Gates’
officers were indeed capable of such brutal and heinous behavior when the video
“The murder rate in Holland [where “soft” drugs of Los Angeles police officers
savagely beating a defenseless Rodney King (accused of speeding and evading
capture) was revealed to the world. A urine test later revealed traces of THC.
Gates continued to back his officers in the beating, through the time of the
riots.
*Reiner was almost the only official to publicly support Gates.
In July of 1998, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, on a fact-finding mission
to Europe, added insult to ignorance by proclaiming to a Stockholm audience,
“The murder rate in Holland [where “soft” drugs are treated as a legal product]
is double that in the United States…That’s drugs.” Actually, the Dutch murder
rate is 1.7 per 100,000, less than one-fourth that of the U.S.
This was only the latest in McCaffrey’s continuing stream of
ludicrous misinformation. In December 1996, for example, he had been quoted in
the media as saying, “There’s not one shred of evidence that marijuana has
medicinal value…”
CONCLUSION
On the basis of the information provided in this book, we demand
an end to the enforcement of these prohibition laws. All laws regarding the
cultivation of the cannabis plant must be stricken from the books, including
the U. N.’s Single Convention Treaty of 1961, at which Anslinger represented
the United States. Although he was forced to retire by an angry President
Kennedy for, among other things, his antics at the Convention, Anslinger’s
legacy of lies and deceit lives on in 2007.
Our government owes an apology to all people who spent jail or
prison time for cannabis (16 million years in aggregate time so far), had to go
through the courts, had their educations, families and professions torn apart
and their lives, wealth and health often destroyed.
We also owe an apology to honest-but-ignorant teachers, police
and judges for our lack of courage to speak up and educate them. But there is
no apologizing for the profit-minded corporate and government leaders who have
acted illegally to censor and refute the undeniable truth of hemp.
WHAT JUSTICE DEMANDS
Justice demands nothing less than the lifting of all penalties
(criminal and civil) and the removal of all restraints upon the cultivation and
use ~ both smoking and non-smoking uses ~ of this, our most remarkable plant.
Prisoners being held for the peaceful, non-violent possession,
sale, transport or cultivation of cannabis hemp must be released immediately.
Money and property seized must be returned. Criminal records must be wiped
clean, amnesty granted and some sort of reparations paid for time served. These
cannabis prisoners are the real victims of this monstrous crime against
humanity called the “War on Drugs.”
In the end, half measures will not be acceptable.
In the meantime, we must begin with a moratorium on
hemp/marijuana law enforcement. And we must move swiftly to restore and expand
the national archives and historical record on hemp and its multiplicity of
uses.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
We think, now that you’ve had a good look at our side and the
government’s side of this story (both as we see it and as the media projects
it), you’ll want to join us in putting this issue onto the state ballots and
into the legislatures of this country, where everyone can express their
opinions through registering and voting in the straight-forward manner set
forth in our United States’ and individual state constitutions.
Teach hemp to everyone; talk about it ~ all the time. Look for
hemp products, ask for hemp ~ buy hemp. Defend hemp. And use the information
and suggestions about hemp politics and business included in the Appendix at
the end of this book.
At the risk of repetition, let us once more state in the strongest possible terms, that cannabis hemp ~ indeed the plant we denigrate with the slang name marijuana ~ will become known to future generations, as it was known to past generations for millennia, as the number-one annually renewable, fully sustainable, non pesticide-requiring and most abundant source of paper/fiber/fuel/food/medicine on the face of the Earth; with more overall uses than any other known plant.
IN OTHER WORDS, CANNABIS HEMP
IS THE GREATEST PLANT ON EARTH!
Write to your elected officials and to the news media, to help
create a more conscious political leadership and favorable news coverage on
marijuana and hemp. Give credit for good votes and coverage, and complain about
bad. Register, run for office, and always vote!!
Demand that our prisoners of conscience be freed, rewarded and
honored. They deserve to be welcomed home as heroes, and as P.O.W.s in this
“War on Drugs,” to receive veterans’ benefits and rights – not the DEA or
police.
Think of this…
If these “outlaw” citizens had not defied the government and
preserved the hemp seed, our government and its prohibitionist policies would
already have eradicated this plant from our Earth.
So, the heroes of this war are not William Bennett, Nancy
Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jr., the DEA, or DARE, but those who defied
them. These true heroes must have their lives and property returned. For
defying these tyrannical laws, they must be remembered by each one of us for
all time. For they saved the seed that’s going to save the planet!
HEMP FOR VICTORY!
Let our people go.
Let our people grow.
And never allow our politicians to again impose such fanatical
prohibition laws against any natural substance in its natural form.
DEMOCRACY DOESN’T WORK ~ EVER ~
UNLESS IT IS HONEST.
And if the suppression of hemp is just one example of the many
lies with which American police/bureaucrats have been blackmailing their
theoretical bosses ~ elected politicians and the public ~ then we are in big
trouble!
We have reviewed this “drug war” against cannabis hemp/marijuana
as thoroughly as we possibly could, and what we have seen sickens us. And only
those with this knowledge of hemp, whose doors of perception have been
cleansed, can kick the scumbags (the real criminals) out of office and reclaim
our freedoms and our planet.
We therefore agree with the little boy from Hans Christian Andersen’s
tale who, while watching the parade pass by, shouted with courageous innocence:
“THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES!”
WHAT DO YOUR OWN EYES SEE?
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?!
EPILOGUE: STATE
OF THE HEMPIRE, 2007: IT
AIN’T OVER YET…
As I sit here in July 2007, putting the final touches on this
11th edition, 16th printing of the Emperor, I find myself reflecting again upon
all the changes that have occurred since 1985 when the first edition of this
book was released.
Hemp awareness has increased dramatically since then ~ easily
10,000 fold. In 1985, aside from those few items in Captain Ed’s and my store,
there were virtually no hemp products for sale in the western world and not
many in the eastern part of the globe either. Today, in July 2007, multitudes
of hemp products are sold in thousands of stores across America and many more
thousands throughout the world, with more stores jumping on the hemp bandwagon
every day.
The variety of goods on sale is almost as limitless as the uses
of hemp itself: paper, clothing, fiber, fabric, soaps, shampoos, cosmetics,
body oils, machine lubricants, plastics, and a wide variety of foods of the
highest nutritional value.
I am optimistic that cannabis medicines will soon be legal
federally and join this list, as it has become legal medicine in 10 states
through voter initiatives and in two states, Hawaii and New Mexico, through
state legislation. New Mexico’s law went into effect this month, July 2007.
International firms like The Body Shop, with its approximately 1,600
stores, have put their full weight behind hemp, and manufacturers like Hanf
Haus, Two Star Dog, Hempstead and Hempy’s, et al., are becoming more prominent
every day.
But despite all the positive changes these days, it doesn’t take
a weatherman, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, to know which way the wind is blowing.
I’m sitting here in Northern California amidst the hottest
decade on record ~ after 15 consecutive years of worldwide record breaking
heat. My legal medical marijuana joint is in my hand. Global warming and the
Greenhouse Effect, because of the arrogant indifference of government
scientists, is increasing by the day, the month, the year.
The Antarctic ice cap, which contains 90% of the world’s ice, is
said to be melting 10 times faster than was estimated just 25 years ago. If
this continues at the present rate, our oceans won’t be just 1-3 feet higher in
30 years, but as much as 20 to 40 feet higher! Shades of the Kevin Costner,
1995 film Waterworld!
I am very deeply saddened and outraged by the thought that this
senseless, exponential destruction of our environment could long ago have been
avoided, and possibly even stopped by simply cultivating hemp for our paper,
plastics, fiber and energy needs, as the U.S. Government advised us in 1916 to
do in Bulletin 404, pages 150-155, and in the February 1938 Popular Mechanics,
and in 1942 in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s war movie, Hemp For
Victory.
In 1970, the major media outlets were bemusedly tolerant of pot.
The youth culture was on the upswing and the meek seemed poised to inherit the
Earth from the military-industrial complex. By 1983, avaricious, conscienceless
“me-generation” capitalism had turned back the humanist tide. Now in 2007,
because of the internet, we once again have hope!
In 1978, after 202 years of Nationhood, there were approximately
300,000 Americans in state and federal prisons and another 150,000 in county
jails (for all crimes)! There were only 45,000 prison/jail guards nationwide;
approximately one guard per 10 prisoners. At that time, the construction of
schools and universities was a thriving growth industry. At least five times
more was being spent on building schools than on building prisons.
Suddenly, amazingly, in 1978, the new prison guard trade
publication led the new leadership in prison guards unions and correctional
officers associations, etc. and molded the previously ineffectual guards into
one of, and in some states, the most politically powerful lobbying blocks in
the country.
What the new leadership guards wanted in 1978 was longer and
longer determinant sentences for less and less serious crimes, and with
virtually no time off for good behavior to assure rapidly growing prison
populations. In the Reagan years they got
their wish.
their wish.
In the last 29 years, these powerful correctional officers
unions became the largest single contributors to state legislators ~ and mostly
to the Republican Party. Now in 2007, there are almost 2 million people in
prison, 800,000 in jail and the penal system supports 300,000 jail guards,
approximately 1 guard per 8 prisoners!
In the last two decades, prison construction and prison
employment have been among the largest growth industries in the U.S., while
federal and state spending for new schools has dwindled to less than one-fifth
that of prison building expenditures.
The United States of America (the Land of
the Free) has only five percent of the world’s population. And yet, out of all
the people incarcerated throughout the world, 25 percent are incarcerated in
the U.S. The percentages are out of balance.
What kind of society would rather build jails than schools?
In 2007, the courts are endeavoring to fill up prison cells ~
literally cramming them full ~ faster than they can be made available. On
average, these mostly non-violent offenders are being held (depending on
individual state law) for 2, 3, and 4 times longer than they were in 1978, and
2, 3, and 4 times longer than violent offenders in their state.
In November 1996, California passed the statewide Medical
Marijuana Initiative Prop 215 by 56 percent, despite the non-stop personal
urgings (on radio, TV, newspapers and magazines) of presidents Ford, Carter,
Bush and Clinton, along with Nancy Reagan and Drug Czar, General Barry
McCaffrey, who traveled up and down the state imploring Californians to reject
the measure. Despite their efforts, the measure passed, giving rise to a
multitude of cannabis growers clubs. Today, these clubs have almost all been
closed at one time or another by the federal government in blatant defiance of
state law and the California voters’ overwhelming majority mandate! Almost all
of these clubs have re-opened, after huge legal expenses. Now in 2007, there
are over 600 legal medical marijuana clubs in the state of California, and more
opening every day.
IN NOVEMBER 1998:
The voters of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Arizona (for the
second time) passed by large majorities, similar medical marijuana initiatives
to that of California’s, which passed in November 1996.
Nevada passed the first of two initiative elections in 1998 for
medical marijuana. (By Nevada law, you must win initiatives twice.) It passed
again in 2000, and became law in 2001.
Medical marijuana won in Colorado too, but the Colorado
Secretary of State refused to certify the petition because of disputes about
signature-gathering methods. In June of 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
the signature gathering had been legally done. It passed in November 2000.
Washington, D.C. voted on a comprehensive medical marijuana
initiative. However, former Representative Bob Barr (Rep. Georgia) added an amendment
to a 200 billion dollar catch-all spending bill in late October 1998 that no
money from any source whatsoever could be used to count the votes of the
Washington, D.C. medical marijuana initiative. Representative Barr and the
heavily Republican legislators of both the U.S. House and Senate deliberately
and consciously ordered, for the first time in all of American history, that
the votes not be counted in an American election…
…Incredible, unbelievable, unconscionable!
Finally, a federal judge ordered the November 1998 D.C. votes to
be counted in September 1999, almost one year later, and it officially passed
by 69 percent of the vote. In October 1999, Representative Barr asked
Republican legislators to again vote to refuse to allow the law to be implemented.
Now, in 2007, Bob Barr has flip-flopped 100 percent and is a
lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project! The Cox News Service reported March
30, 2007 that Barr, whom the Libertarian Party once called the “worst drug
warrior” during his eight years in Congress, has now joined the Libertarians
and is working with MPP. One of his jobs will be to lobby against the “Barr
Amendment” ~ legislation he introduced in 1999 to prevent the legalization of
medical marijuana in the District of Colombia. Barr did not comment on taking
the MPP job, but said he had left the Republican Party because of its move
“toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties.”
On June 30, 1997, the Oregon legislature voted to end 24 years
of decriminalization and to recriminalize cannabis for as little as a seed.
“Liberal Democratic” Governor Kitzhaber “reluctantly” signed it into law July
3, 1997. After he signed it, Kitzhaber said, “I think this law is more about
search and seizure than it is about marijuana use.”
On July 4, 1997, at a campfire at the National Rainbow Gathering
in Eastern Oregon, a number of marijuana/hemp activists including myself, Jack
Herer, put up the money to hire petitioners to gather signatures for a
referendum to stop cannabis from being recriminalized. The Portland Oregonian,
the largest newspaper in Oregon, originally predicted, by their polls, that we
would lose by a 2 to 1 margin. What had to be done was to gather enough
signatures, approximately 100,000 in the next 87 days, to negate the vote of
the legislature and the signature of the governor, thereby keeping cannabis
decriminalized until the November 1998 election. The Oregonian, the largest
newspaper in Oregon, originally predicted, by their polls, that we would lose
by a 2 to 1 margin. In fact, we won by a 2 to 1 margin, defeating
recriminalization!
On November 2, 1999, the voters of Maine approved a statewide
initiative by an overwhelming 61 percent to make medical marijuana legal by
doctor’s recommendation. Medical marijuana is now legal on the entire West
Coast, and the East Coast is beginning to follow suit.
On April 25, 2000, the Hawaii Senate passed a bill to remove
state level criminal penalties for seriously ill people who use marijuana with
their doctor’s approval. It is the first of its kind to be enacted by a state
legislature rather than through a ballot initiative. Hawaii’s Governor,
Benjamin J. Cayetano signed it into law on June 16, 2000.
COMMON SENSE ~ A WORLDWIDE TREND
On July 6, 2000, the Portuguese Parliament voted to
decriminalize the consumption of illegal drugs such as cannabis and heroin and
treat drug users as sick people in need of medical help. Until now, drug users
and those convicted of possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use
could be sentenced to up to one year in jail. Spain and Italy have already
decriminalized the consumption and possession of small quantities of drugs.
Even though there have been statewide changes in the medical
marijuana laws, there seems to be county by county implementation and
interpretation of these same laws. Each county seems to establish their own
tolerance level and guidelines for prosecution.
For example, in California alone, we have cities and counties
like Oakland allowing 144 plants,
Arcata 44 plants, Tehama 18 plants, Mendocino County 25 plants
and Lake County 6 plants (unless your doctor states otherwise on your note),
and the list goes on and on.
Since the passage of Prop 215 in California, the arrests of
non-medical patients for marijuana possession and cultivation have increased by
12% over their already high, record levels.
Medical patients are still being prosecuted for their choice of
medicine. Here is a story of a friend of mine. I am sure you all have stories
like these. The persecution of the innocent goes on. That is why we must stand
up for our rights by changing the laws.
QUALITY OF LIFE SHOULD NOT BE DENIED
THE SICK AND DYING!
Todd McCormick, 36, suffered from cancer between the ages of 2
through 15, which resulted in his top five vertebrae being fused. In 1978, when
Todd was 9 years old, Ann McCormick, Todd’s mom, read in the Family Doctor’s
column of the Good Housekeeping magazine, about the use of marijuana for
glaucoma and cancer patients taking chemotherapy. The article stated that
marijuana helped with nausea and appetite stimulation. These were Todd’s
symptoms! He couldn’t eat, felt sick, food made him sick, and the lack of food
made him weak.
A few months went by and Todd’s tumors acted up, and
chemotherapy began again. After a chemotherapy treatment, and on the way home,
his mom told the then listless Todd to get on the floor of the car and smoke a
joint. Remember now, and keep in mind, Todd was only 9 years old then. They got
home and, for the first time, Todd could actually get out of the car by himself
and walk to the house with crutches. Then he even sat down and ate dinner!
He
actually had an appetite! He hadn’t had one in a long time…
The next day, after the next treatment, Ann again told Todd to
sit on the floor of the car and smoke a marijuana joint. Again, Todd showed the
same results. It was the marijuana! So ecstatic, Todd’s mom went to see the
doctors to tell them what happened. They all got quiet and advised her that the
process of obtaining medical marijuana would take too long to be a benefit. In
reality, it was the fear of federal law, repercussions, penalties and the
threat to their medical licenses and livelihood if they recommended the use of
marijuana that motivated their advice, even though marijuana would really help
Todd.
As she walked away, a doctor came up to her and asked her if she
could get more? She was confused, thinking that maybe he wanted some, but said
yes. He told her to continue what she was doing and to just shut up about it!
That was exactly what she did. Todd used marijuana from that day
on to alleviate his pain and suffering. In 1997, in Bel Aire, California, Todd
was engaged in experimentation utilizing many varieties of cannabis to discover
which plants at which stage (e.g. before they budded, after they budded, in the
vegetative state? from the roots? seed? what plant age? and on and on) were
most effective for various pains and illnesses; which chemicals in the
marijuana plant (e.g. cannabinoids, cannabidiolic acid, and
tetrahydrocannabinol, etc.) was effective and was writing a meticulously
researched book on the subject when he was arrest-ed by the DEA on July 29,
1997 for federal conspiracy and manufacturing (cultivation) charges.
On November 3, 1999, Todd McCormick was denied any medical
necessity defense in court, so on November 19, 1999, he pled guilty, and on
March 27, 2000, he was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
In addition, Todd’s publisher, Peter McWilliams, the author of
35 books (five of which made the New York Times Best Seller List), who since
1996 suffered from AIDS and cancer, was himself arrested in July 1998 by the
DEA allegedly for conspiring to subsidize Todd’s marijuana “operation” and for
manufacturing marijuana with the intent to sell to local buyers’ clubs, all of
which ~ had it been true ~ would have been his legal prerogative within the
state of California. McWilliams flatly stated, and all of his associates, and
even enemies, confirmed that he had never grown marijuana nor profited from the
sale of even one joint.
Peter was forced to make a plea bargain and faced sentencing in
July 2000. He faced 0 to 5 years, with no appeal rights. On June 14, 2000 Peter
McWilliams died.
Under the terms of his release on bail (which was secured by his
mother’s home of 50 years), he had to abstain from the use of marijuana, which
was the only medicine which would alleviate the nausea caused by his treatments
for AIDS and cancer.
Without smoking marijuana, Peter, along with hundreds of
thousands before him, could barely hold down the “cocktails” of chemotherapy he
was required to take on a daily basis. Because he wasn’t allowed medicinal
marijuana, he got sick and ended up choking on his own vomit and died.
He was in a sense murdered by the government because of the
terms of his release on bail. The sick and dying should not be denied the
quality of their lives!
On August 9, 1999, the DEA requested that U.S. Customs seize all
shipments of hemp seed or hemp seed products at the Canadian border and have
them tested for any THC or trace element of THC (10 parts per million). This
caused an undue financial burden on the hemp seed companies, putting some of
them out of business because of the financial impact of the seizures.
All shipments and carloads were then being seized by U.S.
Customs. In December 1999, American politicians got the order overturned and
Customs agreed not to hold the products with trace elements, whether it be
shampoo, soap, bird seed, hemp food, etc. The products were released in theory,
but were still in the U.S. Customs warehouses. On January 12, 2000, the U.S.
White House Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, overrode the D.E.A., who had withdrawn
their reason for seizing shipments. McCaffrey then personally ordered Customs
to seize any product with even a trace amount of THC. Barry McCaffrey says zero
tolerance is zero tolerance, even though it would take 39,000 pounds of hemp
seeds to obtain enough THC to be equivalent to a joint.
URINE
TESTING FOR HEMP SHAMPOO
According to General McCaffrey, through the urine testing and
hair testing of job seekers, employees, parolees, probationees and prisoners,
they can detect if these people eat hemp seed or candies or even use hemp
shampoo. McCaffrey’s reasoning for the prohibition of hemp products is that it
will make the current testing procedures for THC invalid by creating a false
positive for THC.
Companies spend millions of dollars on drug testing which will
no longer be accurate and therefore the American public is thereby denied the
single most healthy food source, not to mention the best paper, fuel, and fiber
on Earth, while other nations are using more and more of this nature enhanced
God given blessing for humans, birds and fresh water fish.
Positive marijuana research has been deliberately prohibited in
the United States since December 1976. Other countries in the world realize
medicinal benefits of marijuana and are aware that research must continue.
On November 11, 1998, the House of Lords Select Committee on
Science and Technology, Cannabis, the Scientific and Medical Evidence (9th
Report, HL Paper 151 Session 1997-98) made recommendations that “clinical
trials of cannabis for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and chronic pain
should be mounted as a matter of urgency,” and that the government should take
steps to transfer cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2, so
as to allow doctors to prescribe an appropriate preparation of cannabis, albeit
as an unlicensed medicine and on the named patient basis and to allow doctors
and pharmacists to supply the drug prescribed.”
In keeping with U.S. policies and practice, the U.K. Government
rejected the Lords’ report. In spite of the initial rejection, in April 2000,
the clinical trials of cannabis forms and chronic pain began.
In March 2000, the House of Lords recommendations were borne out
by the announcement by Pharmos, an Israeli pharmaceutical company, that
dexanabinol, a marijuana constituent, can protect healthy brain cells after a
stroke by blocking the production of glutamate, the neurotransmitter of this
poison.
A team lead by the British born biologist Aidan Hampson at the
U.S. National Institute for Mental Health, in Maryland, discovered that two
active components of cannabis, compounds called THC and cannabidiol, will act
to prevent damage to brain tissue placed in laboratory dishes. (Hampson, A.J.,
et al., 1998 Cannabidiol and Tetrahydrocannabinol are Neuroprotective
Antioxidants; proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 (July 7).
It has since been proven that cannabidiol is the best treatment
for other neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
The NIMH reported that marijuana smoke is the only medicine we
currently know of on Earth that can fully stop the brain damage after a stroke
occurs,
(1) by causing the arteries to enlarge and allowing virtually any clot to flow harmlessly through the brain and(2) by stopping the production of glutamate, which poisons and kills brain cells after the blood clot is in place.
About 600,000 Americans have strokes every year, while worldwide
more than 5 million people suffer each year from stroke, head trauma or other
conditions associated with neuronal cell death.
About 350,000 of the 5 million happen during or just after an
operation because of the thickening of the blood and the anesthesiologist’s
slowing down of the metabolic rate, etc. Yet, just one puff of a marijuana
cigarette right after a stroke could stop the severe damage which may occur.
Even ditch weed from Iowa will stop the aftereffects of 95% of all strokes,
virtually ending paralysis, speech loss and coma resulting from strokes.
Strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States.
People usually don’t realize they are having a stroke because of
confusion from the brain damage.
About one hundred fifty thousand people die in the U.S. as a
result of strokes or complications from these strokes each year! This number
could be theoretically reduced to 7,500 with the use of medicinal marijuana.
150,000 more will become paralyzed or partially paralyzed and have to use canes
or walkers.
All because they didn’t have access to a joint right after the
stroke.
It is the only medicine on Earth that STOPS the damage from a
stroke, on the spot, within one second! What they are using now takes six hours
or longer to begin working, and by then the damage is already done. In March
1999, the Institute of Medicine Report (IOM) stated that there is “no clear
alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved
by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting!”
The opponents of medical marijuana have been saying that it
should not be used medically because it is “addictive.” This argument is
totally irrelevant because many highly addictive drugs are used in medicine and
the IOM in their report found that marijuana has no significant addictive
potential. The report notes that “few marijuana users develop dependence “and
if there are withdrawal symptoms, they are “mild and short-lived.”
GATEWAY THEORY IS A SOCIAL THEORY
The IOM report also stated that “the gateway theory is a social
theory. The latter does not suggest that the pharmacological qualities of
cannabis/marijuana make it a risk factor for progression to other drug use.
Instead, it is the legal status of marijuana that makes it a gateway drug.” In
other words, the real “gateway” to hard drugs is marijuana prohibition, not
marijuana!
The IOM also says that, despite considerable research, marijuana
has not been shown to cause immunocological damage in humans. Despite their
obsessions with the hazards of smoking, they had to admit that marijuana still
has not been proven to cause lung cancer, or any other type of malignancy.
Alison Smiley, a University of Toronto researcher, did a study
which shows that marijuana is not a factor in driving accidents. Her findings
were presented at a symposium of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in
Florida in February 1999. Her paper was also published in Health Effects of
Cannabis, a publication of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, in
March 1999.
Recent research into impairment and traffic accident reports
from several countries shows that marijuana taken alone in moderate amounts
does not significantly increase a driver’s risk of causing an accident ~ unlike
alcohol, says Smiley, an adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical and
Industrial Engineering.
While smoking marijuana does impair driving ability, it does not
share alcohol’s effect on judgment. Drivers on marijuana remain aware of their
impairment, prompting them to slow down and drive more cautiously to
compensate, she explains.
“The safety hazards of smoking marijuana and driving are overrated.” ~ Alison Smiley, University of Toronto
“Both substances impair performance,” Smiley says. “However, the
more cautious behavior of subjects who received marijuana decreases the drug’s
impact on performance. Their behavior is more appropriate to their impairment,
whereas subjects who received alcohol tend to drive in a more risky manner.”
Smiley says her results should be considered by those debating mandatory
drug tests for users of transportation equipment such as truck or train
drivers, or the decriminalization of marijuana for medical use. “There’s an
assumption that because marijuana is illegal, it must increase the risk of an
accident. We should just try to stick to the facts.”
A team led by scientists from the University of California, San
Diego (UCSD) has demonstrated the prevalence of cannabinoid receptors in the
retina, indicating an important role for cannabinoids, a family of compounds
which includes the psychoactive components of marijuana and hashish, in retinal
function and perhaps vision in general.
In the December 7, 1999 issue of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the UCSD researchers described for the first time
the specific distribution and effects on retinal function of the cellular
receptor proteins activated by cannabinoids.
These findings may provide a missing link in efforts to unravel
the complicated and fascinating machinery by which the retina turns light into
meaningful information in the brain.
.
.
In the March 2000 issue of Nature Medicine, a research team from
Complutense University and Autonoma University in Madrid, Spain announced the
findings of a study on rats and mice and stated that marijuana’s active
ingredient called THC, killed tumor cells in advanced cases of glioma, a rare
malignant cancer which heretofore has been 100 percent fatal.
Researchers injected the active compounds, called cannabinoids,
directly into the brain cancers. Lead researcher Manuel Guzman says, “We
observed a remarkable growth inhibiting effect.” The THC, for the first time,
eradicated the brain tumors in one third of the treated rats and about one
third of the treated rats lived “significantly longer” than those given no drug,
some up to about three times as long.
Laboratory studies showed that THC killed glioma cells while
leaving normal brain cells unharmed. The drug caused a build-up of a fat
molecule called ceramide, which provoked a death spiral in the cancer cells.
Guzman tested THC at very low doses and at a late stage, when
untreated mice were already starting to die. He predicts that THC should work
better if given earlier.
It seems that the more research that is done relating to the
medicinal value of marijuana, the more we realize how valuable marijuana is as
a medicine (for Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, cancer tumors, glaucoma, multiple
sclerosis, pain, nausea, and as an appetite stimulant, muscle relaxer, and who
knows what else). We need to demand that research be allowed on marijuana. If
it can save a life, or even improve the quality of life of any human being,
this medicine must be studied. We must throw away all the years of
misinformation and disinformation and seek the truth.
I have talked with so many people who have stated that before
using marijuana as a medicine they felt that they were dying of their AIDS or
their cancer, yet with marijuana as a medicine they feel they are living with
their cancer or their AIDS.
In 2007, while many events on the hemp horizon seem promising,
the government and DEA’s insistence in doggedly maintaining Anslinger’s absurd
and oppressive laws of 1937 are continuing to inflict pain and suffering upon
all Americans despite the fact a recent CNN poll indicates that 95% of U.S. citizens
support the legalization of medical marijuana! An earlier poll of Californians
showed 40% in sup-port of legalization of industrial, medicinal, nutritional
and personal use by adults 21 years and older..\
My fervent hope is that
we are merely seeing the darkness
before
the inevitable dawn.
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