The history
The history of the plant includes some very surprising and enlightening facts about its original uses.
Also known as cannabis, was once very much legal. What also may strike you as odd, Is that it was also one of the largest agricultural crops in the world, including the U.S.
Cannabis can also be hemp, which does not produce a high when smoked. Hemp is the most durable, natural, soft fiber on the face of the earth.
Up until 1883, Cannabis was the largest agricultural crop in the world. It had thousands of uses, and products. The majority of fabrics, lighting oil, medicines, paper, and fiber came from hemp.
The first marijuana law to be passed in the states, in 1619, was a law ordering farmers to grow hemp.
Benjamin Franklin used it to start his first paper mills.
The first two copies of the declaration of independence were written on hemp paper.
Up until the 1800s, most of the textiles in the states were made with hemp. 50% of the medicine marketed within the last half of the 19th century was made from Cannabis. Even Queen Victoria used the resin extracts from hemp to alleviate her menstrual cramps.
A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres, in case you didn't know.
Although, the funny thing about industrial hemp was, you could not get high from it, yet it was lumped in with the following which also made a little sense:
Reefer Madness. In the early 20th century, yellow journalism had surfaced, and depicted blacks and Mexicans as frenzied beasts who would smoke marijuana, play devils music, and heap disrespect and viciousness on the readership - a majority of which were white.
Some offenses included looking at a white woman twice, laughing at a white person, or even stepping on white mans' shadows.
This ended up leading to a law in 1937 called the Marijuana Tax Act: a tax stamp that would not only include marijuana, but also hemp and Cannabis medicines.
It's speculated that hemp's potential for an abundance of new products was going to be in direct competition with other sources. This, added with the Reefer Madness, led to the eventual downfall of all forms of Cannabis.
Popular Mechanics Magazine had actually prepared an article entitled New Billion-Dollar Crop. Hemp was boasted being able to produce more than 5,000 textile products from its thread-like fiber and more than 25,000 products from its cellulose, ranging from dynamite to cellophane, which is a transparent paper-like product that is impervious to moisture (used to wrap candy, cigarettes, etc.).
Its superiority as a source for paper was also becoming known, especially with the development of hemp-processing equipment.
The new marijuana tax act was fine, except for one thing - if you wanted to grow hemp, you needed to buy a stamp, but the government was not giving any out, to anybody.
And so, in effect, all forms of cannabis became illegal. The first conviction encompassed a man with two joins, equaling four years in jail.
Things pretty much stayed that way until world war two, when the government decided that hemp, once again, was a good thing, and even produced a video called Hemp for Victory. But by the time the war was over, hemp again, became bad.
In 1948, when the marijuana law once again came into question, congress recognized marijuana was made illegal for the wrong reason - it didn't make people violent at all, it made them pacifists. The communists would use it to weaken America's will to fight. Congress now voted to keep marijuana illegal for the exact opposite reason they had outlawed it in the first place.
And all through the years, report after report, commissioned by everybody, from the major of new york in 1944, to the president of the united states in 1972, has come back with a view that marijuana should have no illegal penalties attached to it.
Yet, marijuana remains as illegal today as it did 70 years ago...
Marijuana has become big business, both in Canada and in the United States. But why has it become such a big business?
In British Columbia alone it's speculated that the illegal marijuana trade brings in upwards of seven billion dollars annually. Up to 85% of that product heads south, to the states.
Having become an international issue, when did the lines blur?
How does a massive underground market like this survive while remaining illegal?
Why is marijuana illegal in the first place?
And if prohibition is meant to protect us, does it work?
Senator Larry Campbell, Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005, Former member of RCMP drug Squad: "If prohibition worked, if you could just wave a magic wand and say this is gone away, I'd be all over it. The fact of the matter is that prohibition has never worked."
Jack A. Cole, Director of L.E.A.P., Former undercover narcotics agent - 14 years: "You know we've been here before. You remember the first prohibition right? [the prohibition of alcohol?] No, no, I'm talking about the FIRST prohibition. Thou shalt not partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Who was the big cop? *points up* And how many people did he have to watch? Two."
What are the goals of this prohibition?
I assume the goals of prohibition are to reduce the amount of drugs available, and to reduce the demand for those drugs. In both instances, Cannibis prohibition is an utter failure.
Has the prohibition stopped people from using marijuana?
Jeffrey Miron, Visiting Professor of Economics, Harvard University:
"You get a phone call and it says, 'I'm from the federal government, I wanna know whether you've been using cocaine or marijuana recently.' - Presumably you might be getting a little bit of an underestimate."
Ed Rosenthal, Grow Expert - Faced 100 years in prison:
"In 1937 there were estimated to be 55,000 marijuana users. Now there are an estimated 50,000,000+ users. That is a 100,000% increase."
Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia Provincial Health Officer:
"Whether the drug is criminalized or decriminalized does not effect the rates of smoking of Cannabis. Either of uptake or discontinuation."
Common thoughts regarding marijuana:
Marijuana kills your brain cells:
Joe Rogan, Comedian, Fear Factor & UFC Host:
"I thought the same thing. I didn't start smokin' pot until about 5 years ago. I thought pot made you stupid. I bought into it just as much as anybody did. I realized when I was like 30 years old that I was tricked. I was like you gotta be f*cking kidding me."
1974 - The Heath/Tulane Study:
Ronald Regan announces: The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana.
Monkeys pumped full of marijuana, apparently 30 joints a day, had begun to average die after 90 days. Brain damage was determined after counting the dead brain cells of both monkeys that had been subjected to the marijuana, and those who had not.
This study became the foundation for the government and other special interest groups claiming that marijuana kills brain cells.
Here is what they DIDN'T tell you:
After six years of requests, how the study had been conducted were finally revealed. Instead of administering 30 joints a day for one year, Dr. Heath used a mask method of pumping 63 Colombian strength joints through a gas mask within five minutes over three months.
Todd McCormick, Author of 'How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana':
"They suffocated the monkeys. What they did is they put these gas masks basically on their face and they pumped pot into it, but without additional oxygen. So after X amount of time, the brain shut down. Well, if you suffocate, the first thing that is going to happen is your brain cells are going to die due to lack of oxygen. So what they did is they suffocated the monkey, showed all these dead brain cells, and then went on to associate it by saying that Cannabis use causes your brain cells to die. And how many people, not knowing the origin of the study, have gone to quote it, and re-quote it, and now people believe it."
Studies since have shown no signs of any brain cell damage.
Xia Zhang, University of Saskatchewan, Reported in the Journal Of Clinical Investigation:
In 2005, new research suggested that marijuana could possibly stimulate brain cell growth.
This new study did not receive the same attention.
Another common belief - Marijuana causes lung cancer:
Todd McCormick, Author of 'How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana':
"In the 1999 study produced by the institute of medicine that was payed for by the United states government, they had to use words like may, and should, cause cancer."
Rielle Capler, Policy Analyst - BC Compassion Club Society:
"We've been hearing for years, them trying to say that it causes lung cancer, and we say 'really that's interesting, because you can't even show us one case of cancer being caused by Cannabis use alone.'"
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"You definitely have to do it moderately because it does paralyze the cilia, but if it's not radioactive, you're probably not going to get cancer from it."
Dr. Paul Hornby, PhD, Biochemist & Human Pathologist:
"Smoking can be harmful because of the properties of smoke..."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"...Not as a result of anything in the Cannabis plant, but because they're in-taking heated plant matter into their lungs."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"People said, well you don't know, we haven't been smoking it long enough. Look at what happened with cigarettes. We have had more than four decades of experience. If this was gonna show up, it should have shown up by now."
Rielle Capler, Policy Analyst - BC Compassion Club Society:
"Finally the study came out, just in the last month, verifying that Cannibis smoke does not cause cancer, it's different than nicotine. And the elements in the tobacco smoke do cause cancer, and elements in the marijuana don't."
The study mentioned above was performed by Dr. Donald Tashkin, UCLA: Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study.
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"There's no cases of marijuana only smokers getting brown lung syndrome. There's no cases of marijuana only smoker getting emphysema. Strange for a plant that's so dangerous."
Dr. Donald Tashkin, M.D., UCLA:
"Marijuana use does not cause or potentiate emphysema in any way."
Stephen Bloom, Former High Times' Editor:
"Marijuana is bad for you or worse than tobacco, IMPOSSIBLE. If they had the evidence, they'd be putting emaciated bodies, or emphysema, or lung cancer, black lungs; they would be parading them throughout the media. They don't have one, yet people somehow are to think that it might cause the same thing."
In fact, if you look at the straight gaps from substances, a different type of picture starts to appear. The number one killer in the country - it beat out AIDS, heroin, crack, cocaine, alcohol, car accidents, fire, and murder COMBINED - was tobacco.
With an average of 430,000 deaths per year, considering it's the number one killer, it's interesting to know that tobacco receives government subsidies and is grown with radioactive fertilizer.
Number two on the list, if we don't include poor diet and physical inactivity, with well over 85,000 deaths a year, is alcohol.
As we continue to look further down the list there are others that may surprise you. Caffeine weighs in with 1,000 to 10,000 deaths a year, and some of our most popular pain-relievers such as aspirin still make an appearance with over 7,500 deaths annually.
Where does Marijuana lie in this? What kind of staggering number do we find?
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"THERE ARE NO DEATHS FROM CANNABIS USE ANYWHERE, YOU CAN'T FIND ONE."
Joe Rogan, Comedian, Fear Factor & UFC Host:
"In 10,000 years of known use of marijuana there has never been a single death attributed to marijuana. There's 400,000 annual deaths in America alone that are directly attributed to tobacco."
Dr. Paul Hornby, PhD, Biochemist & Human Pathologist:
"I've heard that you have to smoke something like 15,000 joints in 20 minutes to get a toxic amount of Tetrahydrocannabinol. I challenge anybody to do that."
Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia Provincial Health Officer:
"And even in the animal studies where people have loaded the animals up with doses that would be hundreds of times what a human could possibly be exposed to."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"I mean, you can die from ingesting too much aspirin. You can die from ingesting too much coffee."
Jack A. Cole, Director of L.E.A.P., Former undercover narcotics agent - 14 years:
"The drug warriors who say we have to protect society and save these people, are being just a little bit disingenuous."
Not one university or medical facility has ever recorded a single death directly attributed to marijuana. But forget about that, there are other reasons to fear it. Take addiction for example:
There are more kids in addiction clinics for marijuana than any other substance. This must mean that marijuana is the most addictive substance today.
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"It's undoubtedly true that more teenagers and kids are in treatment for marijuana than all the other drugs combined. What the DEA never tells you is WHY that's true."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"A kid is caught possessing or smoking marijuana. He is taken to court. He is given a choice: either some horrible penalty or you go to a treatment center - obviously chooses the treatment center and goes to treatment where he is considered an addict."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"But then the DEA goes to point to that stat and they look at all these kids in treatment for marijuana - it must be because today's marijuana is not the marijuana that your parents were smoking."
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"As far as I understand, only 3% of the people in treatment for marijuana are there voluntarily. The other 97% were told to by their guardian or told to by a judge - 'you can choose between jail or treatment,' and people would choose treatment."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"It provides no basis for speaking about addiction. Anybody who is at all sophisticated about marijuana would rate them the way two researchers were asked to rate drugs in order of addiction. Nicotine was one, alcohol was two, then heroin, and cocaine, and then coffee, and then marijuana. There may have been a couple of other drugs, but marijuana was at the very bottom [laughing], below coffee."
"Subject Narcotic",1951, presented by The Narcotic Educational Foundation of America:
"This narcotic, unlike the opiates, the synthetics, and cocaine, is non-addictive. By non-addictive it is meant that the user of marijuana, when deprived of the drug, will not experience the agonies of withdraw. Its use can be discontinued."
