[Tuco]

I wanted to start a topic regarding cannabis because of some of the posts I read in the Bush weed thread. I fully expect this thread to potentially diverge into many subtopics, but I wanted to start by exploring why cannabis is illegal to begin with.

Most people, including myself at one time, thought it was an issue of public health. However, in fact, the roots of prohibition stem from outright racism and corporate special interest.

Timber, synthetic fiber, and plastics industries didn't like the competition that the hemp fiber threatened. After all we couldn't have environmentally friendly and easy to cultivate hemp replace trees as a paper source. All you have to do is perform a search on hemp and look at the myriad of products it can provide from fuel to fabric to food.

The other more sinister reason for cannabis being made illegal was that it was being used by Mexican immigrants and blacks, especially black performers and jazz musicians. Consider a few quotes from Harry J. Anslinger
the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics...

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."

"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

So prohibition has nothing to do with addiction or health. I would also argue that the costs to society caused by prohibition greatly outweigh having cannabis legalized and regulated just like cigarettes and alcohol.

What say you?

[linskyjack]

Bunch of nonsense---read some of the medical studies on the long term effects of smoking weed.

[izme]

Originally Posted by Tuco

What say you?

Sounds racist and reefer paranoid to me

[jcroix2002]

Pot and Hemp are both cannabis;you can smoke pot and get high but I seriously doubt you can get high by smoking hemp (well maybe you could if you smoked a truckload).Hemp is actually a versatile and sort of eco friendly
plant and I'm all for cultivating it more.
As for why pot is illegal it's looked upon as a hallucinogen and a "gateway" drug - gateway to more illegal drugs. (my neighbor is a pharmacist..I don't know if that qualifies him as an expert)).
I believe someday it may be made legal but controlled.My personal view is that it should be an end stage drug ....just like dying people are put on morphine drips to ease pain.

jc2002

[Mulderator]

Think you may be going off the deep end a little there Tuco--this is the frist I've ever heard that pot is illegal due to racism and corporate special interests! You are correct that there were irrational fears expressed about pot in the 20s and 30s but then Cocaine was also legal in the early part of the century and deemed a miracle drug. So its not at all surprising pot would be banned once the dangers of Cocaine became apparent.

While it may have initially been banned for irrational reasons, the reasons it remains illegal have nothing to do with racism or corporate interests. I wouldn't support legalization of it for any other purpose but medicinal. However, I would support de-criminalization of marijuana as well as many other recreational drugs. The disctinction being the drugs would remain unlawful, but one would not be charged with a felony for use (sale would still be a felony). We have far too many drug addicts taking up prison space--ridiculous.

[hermes]

I can only speak from my perspective but its been a widely held belief for years that marijuana was demonized through its link to Black people. That may be incorrect but until someone gives me a better explanation it sounds about the norm to me. Its all very well to attribute modern standards of equality to the past but we all know deep down that things were very different. As an example, the year Dear Leader Thatcher was elected head of the conservative party they had a slogan for a local by-election that went "If you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote labour".

Cocaine was legal while Cannabis was not, but a lot of the reason for that was the blind acceptance of Freud's theories on curing dependency to Opium built up by soldiers injured in the war of 1914-18. Coincidentally this was the period when large tracts of trackside land in the US was planted with Hemp to be used for rope, which was a valuable commodity in wartime. Hemp has virtually no THC content and so is not narcotic.

I used to hope it would be decriminalized in the Uk as in the Netherlands but as I have got older I have realised that not everyone adopts the same standard of behaviour as I hope I do. I can see teenage boys blowing clouds of smoke in the faces of police officers to try and get a rise out of them and have to accept that the New British public is too immature for a move like this.

One point raised that confuses me is why reading a report on the long term effects of smoking cannabis should lead you to learn why it was made illegal. At the time it was made illegal there were absolutely zero reports on the effects of smoking anything.

[barfly]

Originally Posted by izme

Sounds racist and reefer paranoid to me

Spooky, I'm just watching reefer madness on America Free tv

[izme]

Originally Posted by barfly

Spooky, I'm just watching reefer madness on America Free tv

it's a phychic thing, like you would understand

[hermes]

"pass me my reeeeeeefer", he screams while manically plonking away on the piano

[izme]

Originally Posted by hermes

"pass me my reeeeeeefer", he screams while manically plonking away on the piano"

[LANMaster]

Click here

[dugq]

Originally Posted by Mulder

Think you may be going off the deep end a little there Tuco--this is the frist I've ever heard that pot is illegal due to racism and corporate special interests! You are correct that there were irrational fears expressed about pot in the 20s and 30s but then Cocaine was also legal in the early part of the century and deemed a miracle drug. So its not at all surprising pot would be banned once the dangers of Cocaine became apparent.

While it may have initially been banned for irrational reasons, the reasons it remains illegal have nothing to do with racism or corporate interests. I wouldn't support legalization of it for any other purpose but medicinal. However, I would support de-criminalization of marijuana as well as many other recreational drugs. The disctinction being the drugs would remain unlawful, but one would not be charged with a felony for use (sale would still be a felony). We have far too many drug addicts taking up prison space--ridiculous.

The trouble with decriminalisation is that is doesn't address onr of the key problems. The current laws hand a massive industry worth billions to criminals, this has lots of negative consequences. It increases the power of organised crime, especially their ability to corrupt politicians, police and judiciary. It create gang conflict where innocents get caught in the cross-fire. It brings non-criminals into the criminal world, and makes the police into the enemy. Neither does decriminlisation break the supply link between soft and hard drugs. We've had practical decriminalisation for a while now, and none of the problems associated with cannabis have been reduced.

In my example, I grew up as a pretty straight kid, middle-class and all that. Never in trouble with the police. But because of my interest in drugs I ended up meeting some very dodgy people, the kind of people who I never would have met otherwise.

Besides, legalising and taxing dope is just about the only way Bush is ever going to balance the budget

[LANMaster]

Click here

[MSM Hobbes]

Mulder, you've really never heard of the industrial corp issue cause of the ban of hemp??? In any case, first off, I've never smoked this or any material, so have no vested interest in that aspect. However, what little bit of studying I've done of the hemp plant has revealed to me is very much in line w/ what Tuco posted.

http://www.ylana.com/hempartc.htm

For over 3,000 years, hemp has made a significant contribution to the economic and social fabric of societies around the world. However, since hemp is of the same species as the marihuana plant, Cannabis sativa , its production was made illegal in some of the developed countries in the mid-1930s. In response to American legislation, Canada prohibited production in 1938 under the Opium and Narcotics Control Act.

Hemp is different from marihuana. The hemp plant contains only .09% THC, whereas drug-quality plants contain 7 to 10% of this notorious chemical. The hemp stalk, which is the source of pulp used for paper production, contains no psychoactive elements. Historically, hemp has been used to produce rope, cloth, paper, food and medicine. The mature plants even look quite different -- the marijuana plant is a shrub; the hemp plant is a stock that grows to between 6 and 16 feet tall.

So why was it banned?

It seems likely that it was banned for purely economic reasons. Markets for paper, textiles and medicine were well established. New harvesting technology made hemp more economical than ever. In the wake of these developments, the plant was poised for record levels of cultivation. Enter the two men who were largely responsible for hemp's prohibition. Lamont DuPont's company had just patented the chemical processes for making paper from trees, and for making textiles from petrochemicals. William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate, owned 800,000 acres of forest and wanted to use the DuPont process to turn his trees into newsprint. His control of the media allowed him to exploit drug hysteria and orchestrate the "Reefer Madness: campaign. In 1937, it helped him persuade the US Congress to pass the Marihuana Tax Act, prohibiting hemp production. Hearst and DuPont stood to lose billions of dollars if hemp had become widely used.

Again, the ban was made against hemp and marijuana in for the most part one broad swoop... yet these are two different [yes, related] varieties. Its like asbestos: all asbestos was given a black eye, yet... there are two main varieties of that material: one (amphibole) that is bad, one (chrysotile) that you can drink, eat, smoke, etc. [of course, as in all things, in moderation ] w/o getting the harm that the other varieties would cause.

Other good hemp resources are:
http://www.dpeg.org/hemp/hempquestion.htm

and

http://mit.edu/thistle/www/v13/2/history.html

The main crisis for Hemp arose in America during the 1930’s due to propaganda created from companies with vested interest from the new petroleum based synthetic textile companies and the large and powerful newspaper / lumber barons who saw hemp as the biggest threat to their businesses. The 1930s coalesce, unsurprisingly, with the DuPont patenting their new “plastic fiber”. By the 1930s, new machinery, which separated the fiber from the rest of the plant, was available and affordable. These innovations simplified the harvesting and production, making it more cost-effective. Manufacturers were also interested in byproducts such as the seed oil for paint and lacquer, and hurds for paper. According to the February 1938 issue of Popular Mechanics (written early 1937), hemp was then on the verge of becoming “the billion-dollar crop.” However, in September 1937, the United States government, under the influence of the lobbying of synthetic textile companies (like DuPont) and several other powerful groups who saw hemp as a big threat to their businesses, proposed prohibitive tax laws, and levied an occupational excise tax upon hemp dealers. Later that year hemp production was banned altogether. The Canadian government, following the American lead, prohibited production under the Opium and Narcotics Act on August 1, 1938.

However, the ban on growing hemp remained after the Second World War. Hemp, which has historically had over 25,000 diverse uses ranging from paints, printing inks, varnishes, paper, Government documents, bank notes, food, textiles (the original ‘Levi’s’ jeans were made from Hemp cloth), canvas (artists canvases were used by the great masters) and building materials still remains banned in this country whose Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. With modern technical developments, uses have increased to composite boards, motor vehicle brake and clutch pads, plastics, fuels, bio-diesel and Eco-solid fuel. In fact anything that can be made from a hydrocarbon (fossil fuel) can be made from a carbohydrate, but the strong lobbies still manage to keep the growth of this useful crop banned and the public disillusioned.

BTW, [and keep in mind that hemp is not the same as weed, but for fun let me ask this question ] honestly, and with a total open mind, which do you think is more dangerous, beer or maryjane?

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by dugq

The trouble with decriminalisation is that is doesn't address onr of the key problems. The current laws hand a massive industry worth billions to criminals, this has lots of negative consequences. It increases the power of organised crime, especially their ability to corrupt politicians, police and judiciary. It create gang conflict where innocents get caught in the cross-fire. It brings non-criminals into the criminal world, and makes the police into the enemy. Neither does decriminlisation break the supply link between soft and hard drugs. We've had practical decriminalisation for a while now, and none of the problems associated with cannabis have been reduced.

Actually, dugg--decriminalization DOES eliminate much of the profit in drug sales. Right now doctors can't write prescriptions for Cocaine, heroine, etc. and very very few companies are allowed to manufacture or import anything. I would significantly loosen that and allow companies to import and manufacture drugs for medicinal or drug treatment programs and allow doctors to write prescriptions in conjunction with drug abuse treatment. The practicality of that would mean that there would be much more legal stuff coming into the country and being manufactured, thereby significantly reducing the profit in illegal trafficking of drugs.