Adios, Brian McCray... and Thank You

From the dark recesses of the Cave on Seneca's South End, to the Via Ferrata in Nelson Gap, to the resoling and phenomenal routing he did in New River Gorge, on to the rock and adventures of the West, "Flyin'" Brian McCray left his mark on climbing and climbers across the nation and the globe.

This past weekend, for reasons that were his own, Brian chose to end his life.

I did not know Brian well- we were not close buddies and did not climb together (mainly because I am no superhero, and thus am incapable of hanging upside down on crimpers and heel-hooking for an entire day) or hang out.

But Brian touched everyone around him, in conversations at the foot of the crags, on the front porch, or encountered at random in the New.  We had, on more than one occasion, passed the time chatting about everything from dogs at the crags to the best rope bag to all the places we'd ever stolen a shower while on the road.

He was a climbing ambassador, a genuinely great person, and a bright soul to his friends and acquaintances.

Our lives and days will be a bit darker, without his quirky humor and laughter.

For What It's Worth...

So it comes down to this: Cannabis is not a drug. 

Oxycodone and Valium and Zanex and Zoloft are drugs. 

Cannabis is addictive. Like power and money and sex and chocolate, Assassin's Creed and Halo and Oprah, the Home Shopping Network and Jersey Shore and NCIS are addictive. Going through rehab is something thousands of juvenile cannabis consumers do each year, earning private rehab centers millions of dollars in the process and guaranteeing healthy bonuses for administrators and equally healthy stock dividends for investors, many of whom are judges and government officials.  

However, checking into a rehab center does NOT prove that anyone is actually "addicted", since the alternative is often to have uninvited conjugal visits from a your fellow inmates and the trustees during your year in state lock-up, the fist inside the glove of judicial compassion dispensed to those who fail to recognize their addiction to the evil weed.  

Ironically, one of the conditions of release is often rehab, so they get you coming or going, in the end.

Cannabis and its cousin hemp have probably been the subject of more government disinformation, more cultural frenzy, more religious hyperbole and more unjust persecution that any other plant in history, bar none.  To paraphrase a statement once made about Appalachia, there is more known about cannabis that is not true than any other plant on earth.

Cannabis is a plant, one with an incredibly long history that winds throughout most of the nations on earth, making it pretty distinctive in that one detail alone. Various parts of the cannabis plant have been used by people the world over, throughout history, to build houses, make paper, weave clothes and make rugs.  It has been smoked and eaten as an intoxicant, prescribed as an analgesic and has been included in hundreds if not thousands of herbal medicines for over seven thousand years- all without a single recorded fatality.

Right now, there are some incredibly important people in my life who could benefit from open, unrestricted, unprejudiced research into the medical properties and applications of this amazing, misunderstood plant. A man who admittedly used it strictly for recreational purposes, a man who still reached the highest office in this land, says that the Federal Government will not persecute the users and possessors of this plant in two out of the fifty United States, Colorado and Washington, as the Federal government waits to see how the will of the people plays out and reels back from grassroots efforts that have resoundingly rejected recent politically-expedient legislation.

But the rest of us are on our own. The former cannabis user on Pennsylvania Avenue refuses to order the DEA to reschedule a drug that is classified as having no medical benefits despite the paradox that the government he heads holds two medical patents on drugs incorporating elements of this plant. 

Despite the fact that even the most conservative polls show that well over 60% of the country wants a change in the dialogue and focus of the Drug War, the man elected to lead our government in interpreting and obeying our collective will instead refuses to shift the focus of the DEA to stopping the flow of methamphetamines and oxy-/hydrocodone along the East Coast and throughout the Southwest.  Between three and fifteen people die each day from each of these drugs, and the associated costs in terms of property destroyed and law enforcement is counted in the millions.  But well over half of the budget of the Drug Enforcement Agency still goes toward the harassment, arrest, and imprisonment of people who simply choose another system of healing, another perspective on life or another vector of recreation. 

Supported by a Congress whose integrity has long since been compromised by large contributions from major pharmaceutical companies and other special interests, former Choom Ganger Barack Obama refuses to restore the right of American farmers to grow hemp, the non-intoxicating cousin of cannabis indica that is a historic cornerstone of American agriculture, having grown on the farms of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln; a crop that turned the tide durring World War Two as farmers were urged to "Grow Hemp for Victory!"  

Hemp actually has as much if not more medical potential than its THC-rich cousin, due the high levels of cannabinoids and cannabidiols, compounds that are opening new doors to natural healing every day, as we recover knowledge long-lost to prejudice and ignorance.  Hemp is an incredibly hardy, versatile crop that could single-handedly reverse the fortunes of hundreds of small farming communities and thousands of small farms and farm families. In this continuing Prohibition, Obama is continuing a tradition established by both Democrat and Republican Presidents before him back to Richard Nixon... promising America freedom and liberty, and leaving her wrapped in chains.

We are less free than the colonists before the revolution, less free than the citizens of this nation before the Civil War.

How long do we watch our loved ones suffer and our nation decline because we cannot get past this one simple point? How long do we turn a blind eye to raids, beatings, and shootings right here on our own soil, while we are distracted with wars decades in the planning, misled from the pulpits and inundated with canned events carefully staged and in some cases even orchestrated by our intelligence communities, the media, the politicians and the puppet masters behind them who pull the strings of stock market and public opinion?

With the economy and public confidence still at an all-time slow, why are we attacking- sorry, "sending in advisers and training freedom fighters"- in yet another Middle Eastern country, setting the stage for incrreasing involvement and another decade or so of killing hundreds if not thousands of our sons and daughters, and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, spedning billions of dollars we don't have to defend rebels who mostly hate us and who admit to using the same weapons from which we are supposedly trying to defend them? 

If defending people from an unjust government is the goal of our military, they have work to do a lot closer to home.  As far as I know, Syria isn't selling meth, running guns and putting 12 year old hookers on the streets of America, unlike some of the people so recently armed by Eric Holder and his boss.  Maybe those are more worthy targets for an application of our military might.  

Wouldn't putting the family heads of the cartels and the officers and thugs of the dictatorships and regimes six feet under strengthen border security and stabilize the region directly attached to the United States?  Wouldn't encouraging democracy and improving economic conditions in Latin and South America increase literacy, reduce birth rates, decrease illegal immigration, reduce federal law and INS budget needs, reduce the flow of guns and drugs in both directions across the border, and encourage tourism and businesses on both sides?  

Why are we attacking old people, veterans, and sick people in this nation, killing seniors who refuse their medications and imprisoning patients who seek their own answers, rather than respecting their choices and giving them the tools to avoid a lifetime of addiction and half-measured treatments?

Why is cannabis the ONLY thing the American Cancer Society won't try to use in its "Fight for the Cure"?

Why allow research labs to try to find a way to CAUSE avian flue to cross over into humans, but deny researchers the right to investigate the properties of cannabis and hemp, and the ways in which THC, CBD, and CBN could be used to improve the quality of life, to heal and cure?

Why must cannabis users die so that corporations and police unions can live?

Forward- The Day of the Raids

Angry.

Meth is rampant in Washington State.

Drunk driving is rampant in Washington State.

Political corruption is rampant in Washington State.

Police corruption is rampant in Washington State.

The taxpayers spoke and do you know what the cops of Washington and of Washington, DC said to us?:Fuck you. We do what we want.

The last I heard, cops were supposed to be public servants.

The taxpayers spoke and do you know what the doctors said to us about obtaining our meds: Fuck you. Do it MY way or suffer. 

The taxpayers spoke and the politicians said to us: Fuck you. We will do whatever we want to you whenever we want-with YOUR tax money.

How did the citizens of Washington State get this way? Complacent with being abused? Complacent with being told how to live?

Complacent with having their own tax dollars used against them?

WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

How many people think that the politicians are going to create the jobs needed to get Washington State back on track by January 1, 2014?

The politicians can’t create any jobs while the taxes from our disability and unemployment checks go to pay their salaries. They’ve shipped our jobs away and refuse to replace them.

So when we try to survive by being healthier with MMJ they STILL try to shut us down.

They are wrong and they have to go.

Then we have the corrupt dispensary owners who turn on their neighboring dispensaries because of greed. They don’t give a shit about their patients.

[TimesOfMalta.com]

At the top of all of this are the fake patient advocates who have been pretending to be friends with the patients in order to collect data that is used to deprive them of their medicines — to make them suffer.

When people cannot have their chronic pain medications or end-of-life medications they become angry, depressed, and bedridden.

When people cannot have their meds, they cannot work, properly raise their kids, help their elders, help their churches, or fight for social justice; this is exactly what the politicians want in order to stay in power.

How dare these people try to take away our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Washington citizens are retreating into booze, prescription pain meds, and methamphetamine at astonishing rates.

How do these people sleep at night knowing that their perverse need to control other peoples’ lives is ruining entire cities?

[The Feronia Project]

It’s time for these people to go. It’s time to call the special election necessary to relieve these people of their jobs.

In the meantime, this is what you do:

Start having neighborhood meetings. Learn to grow your own. Rely only on word-of-mouth referrals and trusted sources.

Find every journalist and alternative media outlet you can and scream off the rooftops what has been done to you. Drop any doctor that has supported this nonsense in favor of pro-mmj doctors.

File Referendum Measure petitions. The last day is July 27, 2013.

http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/initiatives.aspx

The citizens of Washington State did everything that was asked of them and were knifed in the back.

Now go underground, increase your numbers, make a plan of attack, and come back out swinging. 

Put them ALL out of work in 2014. They must have forgotten that the citizens outnumber the cops and politicians.

It is now time to remind them.

~ Anna Dawn Garland

• • • • • • • • •

Editor’s note: This post was taken from Steve Elliott's Weedblog at tokesignals.com  Dispensaries across the Puget Sound area were raided by federal DEA agents on July 24.

Ronin's Road

Some pics from the Ronin's Road

The Price of Prohibition

Check out the evolving cost of the Drug War at http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock

All Else is Silence

Saw a news broadcast last night telling me that the Congressional "Gang of Eight" are working on a visa system to allow "thousands of low tech workers into America to fill labor demands."

Apparently, I missed the nationwide announcement and ensuing celebration when unemployment for our own citizens fell to 0%.  I definitely missed the call from whoever it is that has my new job and paycheck just waiting, from the housing authority with a ready apartment or home or even corner room in the barn that my wife and I can move into immediately, no background check or interview required.

We just released over one thousand detainees, some of them guilty or suspected of crimes far worse than illegal immigration, some of them linked to the cartels we are claiming to battle, some repeat offenders with a half dozen kids and thousands of dollars in unmade child support payments, children who will be taking grants and filling spaces in our universities as well as our job market, because apparently it the fault of American citizens, not their parents, that they were born here to illegal aliens.

And we just put those illegals right back into that job market, while Americans in that same store roam the aisles with empty carts, amid slim prospects, trying to mortgage their dreams with the worthless promises of a corrupt administration.

Eight states and the district of Columbia allow gay marriage, and most people really couldn't care less, would certainly never suggest that resolving the issue will stabilize the economy or unite the country.  The government is not currently spending a single thin dime to interdict gay marriage, prevent gay people from crossing the border, arrest gay pastors, seize the furniture and assets and buildings of churches where gay marriages are being performed, or using the RICO Act to prosecute people who have made a career of planning gay weddings.

But this topic dominated every newscast, every discussion panel and forum, on the internet, radio and television for the last week, as the SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES considered a question "newer than cell phones or the Internet", whether or not the "right to marry" and thus, gay marriage, was a human right, instead of merely a codified piece of civil registration and fee schedules that makes county and city governments a tidy little revenue from the happiness of couples in their jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, EIGHTEEN states have decriminalized medical uses of cannabis, Colorado and Washington State have legalized it entirely for recreational or medical use by responsible adults, the District of Columbia is getting ready to open its first dispensary and ten more states are discussing legislation to regulate, decriminalize, or legalize.  TRILLIONS of dollars have been spent, millions of man hours used, and the lives of tens of thousands of American citizens have been ruined.

But this same Supreme Court refused to even hear arguments for why the Federal Government should consider rescheduling or removing from the schedule an herb that has not caused a single fatality in the history of mankind.  There is no dialogue for differentiating between this herb and its cousin the industrious hemp plant.  There is no support or tolerance for an exchange of ideas that would let us rejuvenate our nation and end a war on our own people to protect corporate profit margins.

And while they continue the siege, these mountebanks, these autocratic, self-important, overfed, overweening fools have the audacity to come to the nation and say, with the emotionally-wrought pleas of an easily-manipulated crowd of idealists echoing behind them, that we must now give up our small arms because the United Nations, an organization to which we have not regularly paid dues or even attention in decades, now insists we do so, even as it insists that we continue the war on drugs and the failed racist policies of prohibition.

Free will cannot die in this deluge of irrational acts, no matter how deeply bowed by the anchor chains of regret, no matter how suffocated by the shroud of despair.  It can only catch fire, burning brightly, unafraid of the cost of speaking out, of speaking true.  If illegal immigrants need a "path to citizenship", if their children need a nation with opportunity and a future, then LET THEM GO HOME AND FREE THEIR OWN NATIONS!

And if the government of the United States is considering withdrawing troops from the Middle East, might I suggest that, instead of the Korean theater you have quite obviously been preparing ever since we chose to go to war with a country that "might" have Weapons of Mass Destruction (Iraq... oh, and Afghanistan????) instead of the one that had just proven their possession of the same by setting one off for the whole world to see, might I instead be bold enough, to have the crass audacity to suggest that we invade South America, kill the juntas and the tribunals and the narcolombians and CIA cash cows and that we wipe MS13 from the face of the world?

Or would that just get rid of too many boogeymen at one time, leaving virtually nothing to divide the United States, or the new United Hemisphere of Independent States?  No need for the prisons, the cops, the SWAT teams, no more material for COPS or candidates for American Midol, REAL lives to lead instead of a narcotic haze of vague fear and dissatisfaction?

Keep dreaming.

But this final word of promise, and all else is silence.

Keep sticking it to us, Washington, Wall Street, assorted state legislatures and police forces and extremists on the left and right.  Keep reaching through the bars with a long, sharp stick, poking at that vaguely-glimpsed shape that grumbles and stirs but still slumbers, slowly waking to rage, in the back corner of the golden cage you have built around mankind.

You will not rest, for you have sown the wind, and the wasteland in your heart hungers for that harvest.  You will not cease, until you wake the Dragon.

And on that day, in the hour when one burning eye finally opens and fixes you with its unwavering hunger, its unforgiving judgement and unquenchable rage, you will rest, this I promise you, for my hands will join the rising tide of millions who will put you to rest.

In peace, or in pieces.

Reason Lies Far From Home

"Seriously ill persons who need marihuana to treat their symptoms are forced to choose between their health and their liberty. If they choose their health, they must go to significant lengths to obtain the marihuana they need, including lengthy trips to purchase the drug, resort to the black market, and living with the constant stress that at any time they could be subject to criminal prosecution.

These already sick individuals must further cope with the added stress of the stigma and social rejection of friends, family and members of the public who see them as criminals.

This is not to mention the real fear of losing one's doctor simply by inquiring about the drug and damage to the patient-doctor relationship."

While our Supreme Court refuses to even entertain evidence to change the scheduling of cannabis, Ontario's Supreme Court struck down all that province's medical marijuana laws until such time as the government sees fit to create a functioning structure instead of an obstacle course.  The Court put the Government on 30-day notice to resolve the issue before the law took effect.

Hey, Mister Obama, assorted Justices... Why don't we "create a path" for citizens to get their meds, like Ontario, before we worry about giving away any more jobs or spending money instead of making it?

http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2011/04/13/Ontario-Judge-Rules-Canadas-Marijuana-Laws-Unconstitutional

The State of the Union: SSDD

Anyone else watch Backflip Obama's State of the Union speech? 

Can anyone name a single REAL issue Obama is going to confront in the next four years? 

With 18 states passing laws to legalize cultivation, distribution, and use of hemp and medical cannabis, and TEN more with pending legislation to do the same (that's twenty-eight, potentially), as well as two (Washington and Colorado) that have passed laws to tax and regulate recreational cannabis use just like tobacco and alcohol, our cutting-edge, will-of-the-people-minded lame duck president and game-playing Congress moved quickly to do... NOTHING about addressing the question of cannabis, or patient and states' rights.

No new ideas, no new information, and absolutely NO acknowledgement of the fact that there is only one bi-partisan, bi-gender, multiracial, multi-generational idea that is sweeping America: the end of racist-based Prohibition; a war on its own citizens that is ruining American lives and communities. 

How could hemp/cannabis legalization affect the issues the President did talk about?

We need better schools- which can be paid for, in part, with taxes from sales and certifications, application and permit fees from equipment sales, growers, dispensaries, teachers, doctors, training centers and clinics.

We need to reduce the strain on Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare.  I actually believe the answer to this is to start by cutting off everyone with an annual income or net worth over $250,000 who currently receives payments or benefits from these programs, as well as making sure we are only sending checks to real, living people and actual U.S. citizens.

But to return to the benefits and potentials of hemp and cannabis: it has been demonstrated, repeatedly, that the disabled and seniors benefit from interaction with growing things.  A healthy garden crop of cannabis will reduce the need for narcotics and experimental meds with their numerous side effects, allowing patients to produce their own medicines in a positive feedback loop as well as earning a tidy nest egg for both the grower and the state when sold to local dispensaries or at festivals, concerts, and seasonal tasting events.  And a co-op or senior center that produces an acre or ten of hemp will quickly find every bit of its product, root, leaf, and stem, in demand from a fiber-hungry public.

We need equal opportunity for women- Plants grow for anyone, regardless of gender, and most of the bud tenders and dispensary staffers I've met in the West were females who were quite well paid for providing informed choices and supporting the local economy. Cannabis and hemp technologies are cutting edge, with no limits on who can participate or how high they can rise, save for those draconian measures instituted by the federal government to limit profits on the herb to those lobbyists and corporations footing the bill for re-elections.

We need to help our school children compete on a global scale, preparing them for jobs before they leave high school by grounding them in advanced knowledge... but we fill their heads with outright lies regarding the properties of cannabis and actually obstruct investigation into the potentials of one of the most ancient of medical herbs, or the potential uses of its COMPLETELY NON-PSYCHOTROPIC cousin, hemp, a plant that once formed the backbone of agriculture and the textile industry and led ALL U.S. exports.

We need to ensure that our returning veterans will have not only jobs but adequate medical and psychological resources to deal with their traumas. Only cannabis can treat PTSD with NO CHANCE of addiction or overdose, two things that have claimed so many of our returning veterans. Dealing with growing things has been demonstrated to be invaluable in PTSD therapy, as well, so let's put some of our returning heroes into grow operations, tending the plants they also use, and patrolling the National Forests for illicit grow-ops.

Veterans uniquely solve the security issues of dispensaries and delivery services... who is going to attempt a hold-up with a pair of armed veterans behind the counter or the wheel? No one with a high chance of surviving the first ten seconds of that encounter... thus reducing the mostly-wasted cost of processing, jailing, then rehabilitating the perpetrators.

Let us return to those illicit grow-ops. 

How is it that our government leases vast tracts of public land to ranchers whose cattle create massive erosion, devour scarce native vegetation, and foul the waterways, to private corporate recreation interests who hunt the baited game inside their boundaries with 4WDs and dogs, spotlights and sniper rifles, to timber companies that buy hundred-year-old trees for a dollar apiece and to mines that level our mountains and erase historic landmarks as they export our mineral wealth right out of the country, and yet that same government does NOT allow its poorer citizens to use land managed by the Department of Agriculture to grow useful and marketable crops?  If hemp and cannabis were legalized and regulated, thousands of acres of fallow land could be planted and made useful, small farmers would once again have a guaranteed cash crop (if we are smart enough to stop subsidizing farming operations whose clear profit is over $100,000/yr or who are corporate or foreign owned).

We need to rejuvenate our cities. To do this, the Federal Government needs only do what it is so good at: NOTHING. 

As in NOT raiding self-supporting education centers where caregivers and patients are taught how to grow and utilize hemp for fiber and cannabis to produce their own medicines, small business owners are educated in the process of setting up dispensaries, smoke shops, and hemp clothing stores, and MILLIONS of dollars pour into the surrounding communities as a result.

As in not arresting and destroying the business efforts of a man whose only crime was that he was more successful than Lilly-Squibb because he was selling natural remedies instead of narcotics, or breaking down the doors of seniors and families and veterans to kill their pets and ransack their homes for a false tip or a half-ounce of a plant that has never killed anyone... unlike the police. 

Our President has threatened to use Executive Order to enact gun controls, against the will of the majority, which would cost this country jobs and tax revenues, closing businesses and driving away industry, all while dividing the electorate.  Obama has already used this power to invade another country and kill a dangerous terrorist without due process.  He signed the Indefinite Detention Act into law in a secret move at midnight of New Years, something America did NOT need.

But Obama"cannot" use this same power to stop imprisoning and killing American citizens for having cancer, MS, or PTSD.

Cannot... or will not?

When will this black-and-liberal-as-he-needs-to-be tool of multinationals corporations finally admit he is just a puppet?  Will he ever acknowledge the fact that more people want an end to Cannabis Prohibition than the number who favor gun control, immigration reform, or the re-election of Barack Obama?

One good thing did come out of last night's speech and the previous weeks. Joe Biden is in charge of the effort to implement gun control. Does anyone else remember that "Happy Hour" Joe was also put in charge of the original War on America... sorry... War on Drugs, back in the Reagan/Bush heyday?

Let's look at the progress that particular effort has made:

We have spent several billion dollars, incarcerated any number of non-violent patients, veterans, music lovers and teens, destroyed families and communities, shut down tax-paying, local law abiding businesses small and large, created a corporate rehabilitation industry, log-jammed our courts and filled our prisons.

We have oxy- and hydrocodone clinics in Florida that dispense narcotics like breath mints, killing 17 people every day and filling the jails and hospitals of the surrounding states with addicts. We have meth labs that no longer require even a single room... the cartels can cook up a batch in a 2 liter soda bottle in a half hour that will ruin the lives of hundreds of people, with commonly-available materials.

We have a host of "potpourris" and "bath salts" (artificial cannabis and cocaine substitutes), both of which can lead to psychosis and death, available in convenience stores across the country to anyone, regardless of age, because as fast as the DEA makes up special laws to interdict them, the formula is changed enough to make them legal again and a whole new round of emergency room visits and psychotic reactions begin, with the government chasing its tail like a rabid dog.

Ecstasy and blue moly are as easy to get as a cold, and college students are consuming both, along with a sea of booze (oh, but that's Joe's drug of choice, so no problem), as well as carrying on a thriving trade in pharmaceutical speed, street-quality meth, and good old heroin.

Given this level of success for Joe's past efforts, I predict that his participation in gun control will mean that, in the next decade, MS13 and the cartels will have streetcorner sales points for automatic weapons (likely purchased from Fast and Furious Eric Holder), and 95% of North America, Mexico, Central and South America will have either a fully-automatic weapon, body armor, an armored vehicle, or their own weapon-bearing drone, if not ALL OF THE ABOVE.  

Which will be the only thing protecting us from whichever tyrants replace the one currently languishing in the Oval Office.

Don't Let Go, and You Won't Fall Off of The Fiscal Cliff, either.

Posting this again, because given Washington State and Colorado's recent VOTER initiatives to legalize cannabis and regulate it in the same fashion as alcohol and tobacco, I think it is a crime that NONE of the major news outlets on the right or left has shown much interest in a historical moment in American politics. Focusing on immigration due to Latino turnout? Millions of white, black, brow

n and red voters turned out , and in November, and a significant number of them spoke far more loudly to the issue of a trillion-dollar war on our own people than the rapidly-diminishing illegal immigrant problem, which is down to 10% of 2000 levels.

How about you focus on the issues, Congress and Mister Obama, and stop trying to win the next state elections before you deal with the current problems?

AVOID THE FISCAL CLIFF.

One simple step: Executive Order (like the one for Bin Ladin's execution) decriminalizing hemp and cannabis, releasing all non-violent offenders, dismissing all pending cases for simple possession with or without intent, legalizing personal production and growing co-ops.

Results: compassion and dignity for patients and caregivers, reduced stress for the same, lower Medicaid and Medicare doctor and prescription costs, lower infrastructure costs (hospitals and clinics), lower enforcement and incarceration budgets, no new prison costs, increased jobs and tax revenues across the country (Washington estimates 2 billion in the next 5 years just from new taxes, stores, patients, clinics, and dispensaries. I've estimated a savings of almost 2 million PER YEAR for Medicaid and Medicare; http://roninsroad.blogspot.com/2012/06/no-value.html).

Decriminalization also means exponential reduction of the profit margin of the cartels and black markets, reduction of inner city crime levels, revitalization of urban and farm communities, and an increasingly competitive America.

So how 'bout instead of partisan politics and special interest accomodation as usual, we all join in on a solution that offers immediate relief and forward momentum?  Or is that too much to ask from a group of lifelong bureaucrats?

Foundations

So, here are the hard, cold facts.

95% of your world was created by people using cannabis.

Right now, if you are sitting at a computer, or holding an iPhone or a Kindle or in some other way interfacing with the Internet and the World Wide Web of data sharing, you are enjoying the fruits of the intellectual and physical labors of a group of cannabis-using scientists.

If you are enjoying some music with your surfing, starting your morning, during your commute or throughout your day, anything from classical to light jazz to country to, yes, even a few gospel tunes, you are listening to the work of folks who routinely used hemp, cannabis, and hemp flower extracts to deal with stress and pain.

(Quite of few of them also used laudanum, opium, morphine, absinth and cocaine, which were then accepted as natural remedies, just as citizens of voting age were considered mature enough to determine those remedies’ use in their lives.  There was, oddly enough, no drug problem, no multi-billion dollar prison and drug enforcement system.  My, how the times have changed…)

If you enjoy the paintings, sculptures, poetry, literature, or craftworks of 95% of the last three centuries, you are, in fact, enjoying the effects of cannabis and other mind-altering substances on the real world.

Have any number of these artists died of addiction or the diseases that come with it?  Yes, many if not most of the greats that we know did indeed succumb to their appetites and the dark inner flame that lit their world in the first place.

Not one of them died from cannabis.

In fact, in seven thousand years of recorded history, including the incredibly detailed records of the dynasties of Asia, not one person has ever died from the effects of cannabis; smoked, brewed into tea, eaten, or rubbed into the skin.  It is humanly impossible to consume the amount of cannabis it would take to deliver enough THC to disrupt bodily function.  Imagine trying to smoke a bail of marijuana in an hour.  That’s how much it would take.

But I digress.

If you live or have lived in a house, or a condo, or an apartment that you did not construct from ground to doorbell with your own two hands, there is a good chance that someone using marijuana created the materials, was involved in their shipping and/or delivery, and installed or assembled them into the structure that kept the rain and snow from your head. 

The streets you drive on, the shops you patronize, the restaurants you eat in, all built and staffed and possibly owned by cannabis users or their relatives or friends.  The town you live in, the state in which it is located, and the country in which that state exists, all discovered and founded by cannabis and hemp growers and users. 

For hundreds of years, cannabis users have been laying the foundation stones of your world.

Cannabis and hemp; twined branches of the same tree.  Useful for paper, cloth, a wide assortment of building applications, fuel, protein, and a thousand potential applications to replace and preserve our depleting fossil fuels, forests, drinking water and arable land.  Jobs for literally millions; farming, harvesting, processing, breeding strains for food, fuel, medical and textile applications, packaging, manufacturing, warehousing, transport, security, logistics, marketing, education, outreach, clinics, research… the list grows as rapidly as the reasons to rethink our long-held, misguided views on this beneficial plant.

Why, out of so many useful plants, is this one demonized?  I’m not talking about opium poppies or cocoa leaves or psychedelic mushrooms, although medical science has found uses for all three- morphine and cocaine have been accepted as legitimate painkillers for hundreds of years, and new research into the use of psilocybin for post-traumatic stress and hospice care as well as a host of other mental disorders, is yielding amazing results.

No, I’m talking about a plant that our government has not once but twice encouraged all citizens who could do so to produce in bulk quantity.  During colonial times, it was a mandate that “every household plant at least one teaspoon of good Indian hemp seed”, and hemp formed one of the principle exports of the colonies. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper , and most of our early money was printed on fine hemp paper.

Somehow, a century and a half later, this foundation stone of American life and agriculture suddenly became the demon weed.  There are any number of reasons why one can see this happening; a racist reaction to white teens mixing with other races to listen to jazz, a response to the continuing influx of laborers from countries with long cannabis associations, and of course the well-documented government manipulation by corporate interests to ensure proper development of their investments.  

Yet our government and the corporations that increasingly control it are adept, if nothing else, at reversing themselves without batting an eye.  During the Second World War, when our supply of hemp from the Philippines was cut off, American farmers were exhorted by the US government to grow “Hemp for Victory!” 

But when soldiers in Korea seemed disinclined to rush out and kill the enemy after discovering cannabis, and with the burgeoning music scene in London and Germany on the rise, American authorities once again labeled cannabis the “gateway drug” and filled schools and theaters with propaganda, little if any of it based in fact.

Such as the fact that NOT ONE Presidential research committee into cannabis/marijuana has ever uncovered ANY permanent, negative side effects from its use.

Right now it is costing American taxpayers 5 billion dollars every year just to fund the DEA.  Well over 80% of that money is for cannabis interdiction.  95% of the victims of that interdiction are NOT criminals.  They are parents and young people, seniors and veterans, patients and mechanics, carpenters and plumbers and roofers and electricians, teachers and writers, painters and musicians and mentors, foster parents and cab drivers, shopkeepers and janitors.  They are the thousands of people who hold this society upright and together.

We have so many battles ahead.  Worthy battles; to restart our economy, to clothe and feed and house and employ our people, to bring hope to the downtrodden and redemption to the broken and lost right here in our own homeland.   

Together, we have come so far, and accomplished so much.

Isn’t it time to end the war on our own people?

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