The Hemp Industries Association, Vote Hemp, several American manufacturers, and allied companies and organizations have declared May 17 to May 23 to be Hemp History Week. So with the up and coming commemoration on the horizon, I will take this time to reflect on the outright idiocy of marijuana laws and enforcement. Nobody who is against the use and cultivation of marijuana and industrial hemp should call themselves an American. Regulating someone's individual freedom while simultaneously oppressing an entire clean energy, clothing, paper, plastic, medicinal, and composite material industry is not only un-American, it is downright fascist. It is no wonder that the Constitution is under so much attack from today's bureaucrats; for it is written on hemp, the very enemy of the authoritarian personal liberty regulators. The attached video shows a SWAT team raiding a family's home. The father is thrown on the floor and beaten, the kids are taken, and their beloved family dog is brutally gunned down. This family was obviously a threat to society because they were in possession of a grinder, a pipe, and a small amount of marijuana. When will we realize that the enforcement of laws designed for victimless acts (aka personal choice) only hinders freedom and in fact creates a senseless string of victims as a side effect?
Never in the history of man has anyone, ever, died from marijuana. Even in studies involving lab animals that were given 100's of times more marijuana than a human could possibly intake, did they die. At any one time, 59,300 prisoners charged with or convicted of violating marijuana laws are behind bars. Of those, 17,000 are behind bars for possession ONLY, not trafficking. Enforcing marijuana laws costs an estimated $10-15 billion in direct costs alone. Not to mention the sustained costs of incarceration of the individual who has done nothing to harm anyone. It is estimated that the money spent enforcing useless marijuana laws is double what we spend on education in this country.
The prohibition of marijuana drives the black market for it. The laws that are in place to make it illegal actually CREATE CRIME by allowing criminals to profit from the underground, unregulated distribution. It in essence creates a monopoly for the ones willing to risk the cultivation. The exact same thing happened with the prohibition of alcohol in the early part of the 20th century. It allowed for organized crime to rise and prosper by supplying the demand for alcohol through underground transactions. The prohibition of alcohol was reversed and it was made legal again, so why hasn't this happened with marijuana?
Marinol is a pharmaceutical chemical drug produced by Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. It contains the exact molecular structure of the THC molecule and has the same effects of marijuana. However you cannot grow Marinol in your backyard. You cannot make obscene profits from the patent of a plant, because you cannot patent nature. The contradiction here is that you can make nature illegal, and then recreate nature in a lab using chemicals, put that illegal part of nature, available for profit, into a pill and make millions. Do you see the inconsistency here?
The hemp plant is quite possibly the most useful plant ever grown by mankind. There are literally hundreds of uses for the hemp plant ranging from paper to bio-fuel. The Declaration of Independence is written on hemp and is still in the same shape now as it was when the founders wrote on it over 200 years ago. Hemp is the strongest natural fiber known to man. Hemp hurds, the woody stalk, can be made into paper, fuels, and even plastics and far cleaner and safer for the environment than petroleum. Hemp would stop deforestation, provide renewable fuel, provide clean plastics, and highly nutrition foods. However, in the United States, you can purchase, import, export, wear, eat, sell, and use hemp, but it is completely illegal to grow. By the way industrialized hemp has no drug properties whatsoever, it CANNOT get you high. Does this make sense?
Marijuana has been proven over and over again NOT to cause any damage to brain, whatsoever. Never has anyone ever contracted lung cancer from marijuana smoking. It has benefits and uses that are extremely advantageous to mankind, from medicinal, to spiritual, to industrial, and it is ILLEGAL. We must ask ourselves why. Why, since the inception of the "war on drugs" has the prison system become privatized and increased almost 1000 percent? Why does this country have 5 percent of the world's population, and 25 percent of the world's prison population? Why is it legal for pharmaceutical companies to sell mind altering dangerous chemicals, yet we cannot grow a plant in our backyards? Why is it that cigarette related deaths top 400,000, pharmaceutical deaths top 100,000 annually, and they are completely legal, while marijuana has never ever ever killed anyone ever? Why?
-Matt Savoy - Domestic Terrorist
Annual Causes of Death in the United States
Tobacco 435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000
Alcohol 85,000
Microbial Agents 75,000
Toxic Agents 55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes 26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000
Suicide 30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000
Homicide 20,308
Sexual Behaviors 20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect 17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600
Marijuana 0
Doesn't it make complete since that marijuana is illegal?