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HEMP POLITICAL MATTERS ROOM
USA Hemp Museum
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ROOM GUIDE |
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Obama, You're No Stranger to the Bong: An Open Letter to the President
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1. WELCOME TO THE HEMP POLITICAL ROOM. "Any way you slice it, there is no denying that this politically declared war has been just about as effective as the war on poverty, the war on crime and the war on cancer put together, which is to say, a complete defeat for William Bennett and his warriors." -William R. Hearst III, 1990. It has been decades since Hearst's editorial (printed in full below) called for an end to the drug war. Ten years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, and with tens of millions of American citizens arrested for drug offenses, the war is more of a failure than ever. It is ironic that one of the key players in the early 1900's in whipping up public opinion about this new drug marijuana was none other than William Randolph Hearst, grandfather of the above Hearst. The elder Hearst hated the Mexicans for nationalizing his timber holdings in Mexico, and popularized the idea of the violent producing drug from south of the border. He had large timber holdings in the West and knew of the potential of hemp in the paper industry.
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Pot label for a 1980's brand of marijuana (More Labels throughout the Hemp Museum) |
The War on Drugs heated up in 1972 when Nixon rejected the report of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (below) to de-criminalize marijuana possession for personal use in private. Stepped up control of the borders was one of the recommendations he did follow. |
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MARIJUANA: A Signal of
Misunderstanding. 1972. The National Commission on
Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The New American Library, Inc.,
New York, NY. 233 pages. Book size 7 X 4 inches. Also called the Shafer Commission report after its chairman. "The most comprehensive study of marijuana ever made in the United States. A landmark report that cannot be ignored." Of course it was ignored. The Commission called for the removal of marijuana from the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, because it was mislabeled and not a narcotic at all. |
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The Curator ran for U.S. Congress in 1986 as an admitted pot grower, from the first Congressional district of California. He lost to the incumbent in a Democratic primary. A year before, 1985, local activists started the Mendocino County Greens. |
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When it came to medical
marijuana, Governor Davis was a real disappointment.
Where are you, Dennis? |
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A local political candidate who understood the meaning of hemp prohibition, but unfortunately lost the election bid. |
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The Libertarian Party is consistently behind the movement toward freedom to use drugs responsibly. |
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It is the educated voter that will
make a difference in the struggle to re-legalize the plant.
Proposition 215, California. Proposition 200,
Arizona. Prop. G, Mendocino County.
CNN YOUTUBE REPUBLICAN DEBATE QUESTION
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It is time for each one of us to take voting much more seriously. Bush v. Gore was close, but only because 50% of voters did not bother to vote. |
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At the U.S.A. Hemp Museum it is always time for hemp. |
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President Clinton gave us eight more years of a hopeless drug war. But then he had his own agenda to take care of, his own drugs to take (cigars & alcohol). I think his toll was something like 4 million arrests for pot in his eight years, and $17 billion a year for eight years equals $136 billion. The average politician is just as guilty for not ending this mess. |
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The U.S.A. Hemp Museum truck with lots of Hemp on the steps of the Capitol of California in Sacramento, where we logged 20 eight hour days in the early 1990's. |
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Governor Pete Wilson never came out to see the Hemp Museum, although he did sent his Chief of Staff to take a look. |
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LA WEEKLY. Vol.23 No.33. July 6-12, 2001. Blowout Issue. Prophetic? |
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Kentucky lost a great opportunity by not electing Gatewood Galbraith for Governor. Instead, the Canadians are growing hemp and have been since 1995 experiments. The whole world will be making hemp products and selling them to us, as is happening, before we wake up and do something like obey the law that says the people control agricultural production. See U.S. v. Butler. |
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VOTE GRASSROOTS! |
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A PEACEFUL SOLUTION USA Hemp Museum Videos For A Peaceful Solution - Peace Research Institute Song by Willie Nelson Production Amy Nelson & Rattlesnake Annie
2. COMMENTARY: AN END TO THE DRUG WAR WRITTEN BY RICHARD M. DAVIS, CURATOR U.S.A. HEMP MUSEUM, 1992. We must free Cannabis sativa. As a grower and smoker of the Cannabis hemp/marijuana plant for the past 25 years, I am the one who can put your worst fears to rest. The war on Cannabis is a cruel hoax. The facts, as I read them in books as well as my personal experience, say that Cannabis sativa should never have been made illegal, and was made illegal through lies, yellow journalism, and racism by leaders of industry and government for their own economic gain and advantage. As long as we voters remain ignorant of the facts of hemp, we continue to force our police and judges to enforce bogus Cannabis hemp/marijuana laws. Indeed, the modern "War on drugs," led by "Drug Czars" George Bush (1981-1988) and William Bennett, appears to be a continuation of suppression of the economic potential of hemp. But then maybe they didn't know. HA! As far back in history as we can look, there is Cannabis in a small plot next to the human's cave. This is the most important plant in the history of much of the world (including ours); history about hemp that has been covered up, destroyed, distorted, and created by the prohibition people (See Hemp History Room). Look at the present criminal model and what we see is a second prohibition, starting in 1937, only four years after the repeal of the first prohibition -against alcohol. Let us take a look at that first prohibition, after all Americans have been through this all before. Let me make a point by repeating Amendment XVIII(18) to the Constitution of the United States: Prohibition -States Given Concurrent Power to Enforce Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, transportation of intoxicating liquor within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. And of course Amendment XXI (21) to the Constitution of the United States: Repeal of Prohibition: Repeal of 18th Amendment Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. My point here is that our right to be intoxicated by liquor is one of our freedoms, guaranteed by the Constitution, and not included in the Eighteenth Amendment. There was nothing included that said you couldn't drink, that clearly would have been unconstitutional. The concept of liberty implies choice; why is it so difficult for us to see that the freedom to be intoxicated by our own choice of drugs, might be implied here. Am I wrong or was the purpose of prohibition to control intoxication, not alcohol which has legitimate uses, medical uses, or grapes which make great jam and jelly. I want you to look very closely at this paradox as seen from my perspective. Cannabis/hemp/marijuana as a drug is kinder and gentler than drugs that we are free to use by law or lack of it, as we will see below. This makes no sense. This makes NO sense! In my 25 years of smoking marijuana daily (somebody had to do it, except for a few months off to run for congress) and living where everyone smoked, I never saw a fight (physical) between two people who were only smoking pot. Think what this safe mild intoxicant/medicinal herb could do to reduce stress and tension in our prisons, thereby increasing the safety of prisoners, guards, and other prison personnel, and people in our streets, by replacing alcohol and other more dangerous or violent drugs, and in our homes by decreasing domestic violence. In this day and age we need to party (you, yes you, have an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Use it or lose it. We need drug peace and respect for diversity in ways of living. We need a consistent drug policy, one based on truth and compassion: So that the police who come to my home and pull my Cannabis/hemp/marijuana plants can see the hypocrisy in their having a few beers after work; So the newscaster condemning marijuana, can see the hypocrisy in advertising a coffee maker; So that the minister or housewife or president of a company who believes the drug lies, can see the hypocrisy in their use of Valium; and, so that the judges who rule to retain prohibition, see the hypocrisy in their 'eight-a-day' Placidyl habit (See The Emperor.p.88), and juries like Ed Rosenthal's will be better informed and vote their conscience on stupid laws. Let's compare illegal Cannabis hemp/marijuana with legal alcohol, and believe me I don't favor another alcohol prohibition, from The Emperor.: "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 teenage deaths. About 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). In fact, the U.S. government/police statistics confirm the following strange numbers: The mortality figures for alcohol use are 100,000 annually compared with ZERO marijuana deaths in 10,000 years of consumption. From 40% to 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. Herald Examiner. Alcohol is also indicated in the majority (69% to 80%) of all child rape/incest cases; wife beating incidents are in the great majority (60% to 80%) alcohol influenced. Heroin is indicated in 35% of burglaries, robberies, armed robberies, bank robberies, grand theft auto, etc. And there were 324,000 arrests for simple marijuana possession in the U.S. in 1988, according to the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (P.83.) Latest figures are about 700,000 arrests in 2002 If this is what the Bush-Quayle synthetic drug people push as consistent drug policy, spending five to ten billion dollars each year (for many years) to eradicate the most important plant on earth and to enforce the big lie, it is no wonder our nation is suffering. We need a plan to establish drug peace, take the crime out, use a public health model to supply and treat addictions without the crime, and educate us all to the reality of drug use. American farmers like myself all over this nation know how to produce and are producing a safe (zero deaths), non-toxic alternative to whatever drug might be causing you harm -legal or illegal. Indeed, Cannabis/hemp/marijuana is such a great stress reducer, etc., it will be highlighted in the section on our health crisis. I am convinced that we have won the drug war; we have the truth on our side, George Bush (the first one) just won't admit it. Let's just vote him out! (We did and it didn't help, Clinton was just as bad). Again from The Emperor. (In case you were wondering why Dan Quayle is Vice President) we give you: THE BUSH-QUAYLE-LILLY PHARMACEUTICAL SELL OUT "In America, marijuana's most outspoken opponent is none other than President George Bush, former Director of the CIA, under Gerald Ford (1975 to January, 1977) and past director of President Reagan's "Drug Task Force" (1981 - 1988). It is a little known fact that, after leaving the CIA in 1977, Bush was made director of Eli Lilly (drug company) by none other than Dan Quayle's father and family who owned controlling interest in the Lilly company and the Indianapolis Star. The entire Bush family were large stockholders in Lilly, Abbott, Bristol and Pfizer, etc. After Bush's disclosure of assets in 1979, it became public that Bush's family still has a large interest in Pfizer and substantial amounts of stock in the other aforementioned drug companies. In fact, Bush actively lobbied illegally both within and without the Administration as Vice President in 1981 to permit drug companies to dump more unwanted, obsolete, or especially domestically-banned substances on unsuspecting Third World countries. While Vice President, Bush continued to illegally act on behalf of pharmaceutical companies manufacturing in Puerto Rico. In 1981, Vice President Bush was personally ordered to stop lobbying the I.R.S. on behalf of the drug companies by the U.S. Supreme Court itself. He did --but they (the pharmaceutical companies) still received a 23% additional tax break for their companies in Puerto Rico who make these American outlawed drugs for sale to Third World countries. OUTRAGEOUS!!" We must plan to stop the madness, bring us all back to the natural cycles of Cannabis hemp/marijuana. This is one truth in natural cycles, that with nature life can go on and on. We must ask the Food and Drug Administration to produce a list ranking all drugs, legal and illegal, prescription and non-prescription according to their danger to us in deaths, overdoses, addictive power, complications, side effects, accidents, and so on. The legal-illegal designation is just part of the big lie. "Alcohol is more devastating to the human body than heroin," according to Dr. Dean Edell, KGO Radio, San Francisco, CA(7/20/1990, 1:30 p.m.). We need a brand new approach to drugs. Repression to the tune of $10 billion each year ($5 billion for a harmless drug like hemp), will never work. We can cut the U.S. crime rate by 80% if we change our focus from that of illegality and repression to that of education, treatment, maintenance, and rehabilitation. According to Arlo Smith, District Attorney of San Francisco, 80% of crime is drug related. Fifty percent of crime is directly related to drugs -users, sellers, and thirty percent as burglary, theft, etc., for drug money. We can do better. The President, should swiftly remove Cannabis sativa from its Schedule I designation (dangerous substance with no known medical value) where it was placed by Nixon and retained by Bush in 1989, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I'm sorry you two, Cannabis hemp/marijuana is medicine, and we the people are going to use it. And the other remarkable uses of this plant that have been held hostage by bogus marijuana laws. One of the corporate men who worked to outlaw Cannabis hemp/marijuana was William Randolph Hearst. His main fear about hemp in the 1920's and 1930's was competition with Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division whose raw material was timber. Hemp lost, and since 1937, 70% of our forest that were cut were for paper. From The Emperor.: "In the 1920's and 30's, Hearst newspaper chain led the deliberate new yellow journalism campaign to have hemp outlawed. From 1916 to 1937, as an example, the story of a car accident in which a marijuana cigarette was found would dominate the headlines for weeks, while alcohol-related car accidents (which outnumbered marijuana-connected accidents by more than 1,000 to 1) made only the back pages." I will close this section with the following editorial by the
grandson of Hearst.
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3. EDITORIAL BY HEARST. In the August 12, 1990, San Francisco Examiner, edited and
published by William R. Hearst III, ran a bold editorial titled:
Laws have not Stopped and Cannot Stop Drug Use. "Now that federal troops have declared victory and withdrawn from Humboldt County, it is reasonable to look again at the war on drugs (in which this two-week operation was a mere skirmish).Any way you slice it, there is no denying that this politically declared war has been just about as effective as the war on poverty, the war on crime and the war on cancer put together, which is to say, a complete defeat for William Bennett and his warriors. Let 's face it: No amount of laws, no amount of interdiction, no amount of courts, no amount of jails, no amount of anything has reduced the craving for or the use for drugs. Drug prohibition has accomplished exactly what alcohol prohibition accomplished in the 1920's. It has enabled crime to flourish, along with its attendant violence. It has created a worldwide organization of dealers and smugglers who are getting rich by selling illegal substances. Organized crime makes an estimated $50 billion a year through the sale of drugs.This policy is wrong. The craving for mind-altering substances is as basic to humans as the need for food, sleep and sex. It cannot be legislated away, and armies cannot smash it. The criminal justice system is grinding to a halt under the crush of drug cases. Prison cells cannot be built fast enough. One-third of all federal prisoners are in jail for drug-law violations. The federal drug war next year will cost $10 billion. It is a colossal waste of effort, money and human resources. At this time of pressing social needs, this expenditure is criminal. It used to be that only hippies (remember hippies?) Spoke of legalizing drugs, but in the last two years, a number of Establishment figures have reached the same conclusion. William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet of New York, George Shultz, Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore and others have said that decriminalization is the best policy. The time has come to legalize the sale and use of drugs. Treat them all like alcohol, which is legal through its sale is subject to controls. Immediately, the alarms go off. We 've heard the arguments. "With legalization," drug czar Bennett says, "drug use will go up, way up." Not so, says Baltimore's Schmoke. "I believe that over the long run you would have decreased use." Who is deterred by the current laws? People who want drugs can easily get them now. They're sold on the street in broad daylight. Legalization can hardly make them more available than they already are.Another argument is that legalization is an effort by whites to inflict genocide on blacks, who are presumed to be the most numerous drug users. "That is ridiculous," says Kildare Clarke, a top New York City hospital official. "People who say that, prominent black leaders, don't understand that the real genocide is going on right now among teenagers, mostly black teenagers, who are killing each other off on the streets in a fight for turf and drug profits."" Even if there were a slight increase in addiction -and there is so much addiction now anyway, with drugs being illegal -this genocide, the killing on the streets, would end. Children would not be able to sell crack for money. They would be forced to stay in school, get an education and learn a trade."There is no point in continuing the war on drugs. It has not worked, and it cannot work. It can be waged only with the kind of repressive tactics that were used during Operation Green Sweep in Humboldt County. A class-action suit charging civil-liberties violations has already been filed against the government in U.S. District Court here. And what did the government get for its efforts? Some 1,400 pot plants. Not enough to put a dent in the supply of marijuana. All anti-drug laws should be repealed. The war on drugs should be called off. Just declare victory, play "76 Trombones " and march out. It always gets applause."***** |
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This bumper sticker was in protest of Operation Green Sweep by the U.S. Army, in 1990, in Humboldt County, California. |
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18. READINGS ON HEMP POLITICS Books, etc.
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MARIJUANA: A Signal of
Misunderstanding. 1972. The National Commission on
Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The New American Library, Inc.,
New York, NY. 233 pages. Book size 7 X 4 inches.
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