They sure fooled/screwed us. 50 year old hippie

Apparently, etymologists confirmed that 'kineboisin' (also spelled 'kannabosm') referred to cannabis used in a holy ointment. Therapeutic uses were described in Indian medical texts before 1000 BC and in Chinese herbal Ry-ya in the fifth century BC. It was listed in the Pharmacopeias of several countries including the USA, until its demise in the thirties. It has analgesic, anti-emetic, anti-inflammatory and sedative properties; it is also a laxative and hypertensive. An excellent nutritional source, it has a delicate, nutty taste and is great in salads and Tabouli. Must be kept refrigerated and best used within six months. Hemp was once grown widely in North America, until the thirties; Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were both hemp farmers. It has a long history of use and is a valuable commercial crop; the seeds have excellent nutritional value and the foliage can be used as cattle fodder. In the textile and paper manufacturing industries, the cloth is extremely durable and versatile. The cellulose pulp for paper products is far more environmental than that of wood, due to its fast growing nature. How many more forests do we have left!? Hemp can also be used in building materials and the car manufacturing industry and before the invention of electricity; hemp oil was used in lamps for lighting. Its cultivation, unlike cotton, is extremely environmental as it requires no special fertilizers or insecticides. Its long roots reach down into the soil and draw nutrients and minerals to the surface, so conditioning the soil.

The value of hemp as a plant cannot be stressed enough. So why isn't it widely grown commercially anymore? It is mainly due to a huge industrial conspiracy (Jack Herer; The Emperor Wears No Clothes-Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy 1991). Technology had put hemp in a position were it could have replaced wood as a raw material for paper. In 1937 DuPont patented a new process for making paper from wood. They were also involved in synthetics, munitions and processing cellulose. The newspaper giant Hearst, also had interests in timber/paper. The two industrial giants set about launching a massive smear campaign against hemp. Calling it Ô the killer weed from Mexico Õ and renaming it 'Marijuana'. Their combined political clout soon turned public opinion against hemp and laws were enacted to entrench their vested business interests. The growing of hemp became illegal and still is, in North America. Hemp oil and steamed (to prevent germination) seeds are legal. A member of the Cannabinaceae family, native to Asia and the Middle East, it can grow up to two meters high.

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THE ORIGINS OF CANNABIS AND CIVILIZATION.

Cannabis hemp has been an adjunct to the growth and development of the human race for the last ten to twelve thousand years. It has occupied a central position in the history of civilizations, past and present. It¹s known to have provided fiber from 8,000 BC with medicinal uses being recorded in 4000 BC. Other sources confirm that hemp textiles have been dated from 10,000 years ago,(approximately the same time as pottery was invented and preceding metalworking). Up until the 1900¹s hemp remained the world¹s primary agricultural commodity. Hemp has been inextricably related to human development and well-being throughout history. Professor Hui-Lin Li, an economic botanist from the University of Pennsylvania states: textile fibers are next to cereal grains, in importance to the founding of human culture. Carl Sagan in the Dragons of Eden agrees, and speculates that the cultivation of hemp may have led to the invention of agriculture and thereby to civilization. The Encyclopedia Britannica of 1856 supports this idea: It is not as a narcotic and excitant that the hemp plant is most useful to mankind; it is an advancer rather than a retarder of civilization, that its utility is made most manifest. Its great value as a textile material, particularly for cordage and canvas, has made it eminently useful; and if we were to copy the figurative style of the Sanskrit writers, we might with justice call it the "accelerator of commerce" and the "spreader of wealth and intellect." For ages man has been dependant upon hempen cordage and hempen sails for enabling his ships to cross the seas; and in this respect it still occupies a most important place in our commercial affairs. THE

HISTORY OF HEMP.

Cannabis sativa is a tall, robust, dioecious annual that grows from three to fifteen feet high and is one of the oldest cultivated plants. Originally native to Central Asia, it has since spread to every inhabited continent, region and country. Herodotus, a Greek historian, circa 450 BC mentions it, talking of the hempen garments, made by the Thracians, as equal in fineness to flax. He makes further mention of the Scythians¹ use of the plant to "purge themselves after funerals". Other classical writers to mention it include Homer, Ovid, Pliny, Virgil, Livy, Martial, Gallien and many others. First classified botanically by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus in 1753 in Species Plantarum . The 1856 Encyclopedia Britannica demonstrated the ubiquitous nature of cannabis. In China it is known as ma; in Sanskrit it is known as goni, sanu or shanapu; Persic, canna; Arabic, kannah or kinnub; Greek, kannabis; Latin, cannabis; Italian, canapa; French, chanvre or chanbre; Danish kamp or kennep; Lettish and Lithuanian, kannapes; Slavonic, konopi; Erse, canaib; Scandinavian, hampr; Swedish, hampa; German, hanf; Anglo-Saxon, haenep; and English hemp. Other terms for hemp include the Japanese, asa; Bulgarian, kenevir; Turkish, nasha; Syrian, kanabira; Polish, konopi and penek and Albanian, canep. Hemp is common to the "New World" as well, having been introduced early in the European colonisation of Central and South America. Jamaica (ganja, kaya) Mexico, (mota), Guatemala, Belize, Columbia and Brazil (diamba or maconha) all have long histories of production and use. It has played a significant role in the traditional cultures of at least one tribal group in Brazil, the Tenetehara, since their first contact with African slaves from Angola at least ten generations previously. Its use in Africa is widespread, in Nigeria and West Africa, Egypt, Morocco (kif), the Middle East, Malawi, the Congo and Southern Africa (dagga).

THE HEMP INDUSTRY

The development of the hemp industry in America can be traced from the time of the Puritans, who noted it grew "twice so high”. The industry was stimulated by legislation in Virginia in 1619 ordering farmers to grow hemp. Massachusetts followed in 1631 and Connecticut in 1632. During shortages in Virginia between 1763 and 1767 you could even be jailed for not growing it! Hemp was legal tender from 1631 till the early 1800¹s so as to encourage its cultivation; the colonists could even pay their taxes with it! By 1850 there were 8,327 hemp plantations (of a minimum size of 2,000 acres). The situation was similar in other parts of the world. In 1533, Tudor King Henry VIII imposed a stiff fine for not growing hemp with Queen Elizabeth I licensing agents by Letters Patent to form drug squads "in reverse" in 1563. , whilst Russia was the worlds¹ largest exporter and major supplier to the British Navy from 1740 to 1800. Hemp was vital to the British Empire, as it underpinned its naval power till the age of steamships. Between 1851 and 1855, the UK imported about 245,000 tons of hemp in addition to domestic production. It is unsurprising therefore that the suitability of the new Australian colonies for hemp was considered early on.

In 1845, Francis Campbell, a notable academic of the day, conducted small scale experiments. From this he determined that the loamy soils of the river flats from the Hunter river to Grafton provided an ideal climate. Cultivation continued in NSW until the mid 1890¹s at least. Hemp¹s importance had diminished in England by the beginning of the 19th century: following the decline of local independence and the destruction of the village economy, which resulted from enclosures of the common lands, engrossing of farms and the rising power of manufacture and centers of capital Unable to take advantage of industrial scale processes, it left its mark on the landscape with names like Hempstead and Hempnall, reflecting village life and industry that were intimately related to hemp cultivation. This is common in American place names also. The labor intensive hemp industry suffered throughout the world in the early 1900¹s as the newly mechanized cotton industry, synthetic products and cheaper Asian imports of inferior fibers undermined it. The introduction of decorticators capable of harvesting, stripping and separating the fiber from the pulp promised to overcome this however. By 1937, the hemp industry was undergoing a resurgence following mechanization, with acreage planted to hemp, having doubled every year since 1930. That year, against the wishes and advice of the American Medical Association and others, it was effectively banned in America, with the introduction of the prohibitive $100/oz Marijuana Transfer Tax Act (HR 6906).

THE PROHIBITION OF CANNABIS

Cannabis hemp was never prohibited because of any real "drug problem" in the U.S. When banned in Australia its use recreationally was almost unheard of. The prohibition and attempted eradication en masse of non-psycho-active fiber hemp, along with the drug variety, suggest more sinister motives. The available evidence points to vested interests, cooperatively acting together, to pressure legislators into banning cannabis to suit their own ends. These included the Du Pont corporation, Randolph Hearst and his tabloid newspaper chain (both with mutual interests in wood-based pulp technology and forest resources), and Harry J. Anslinger, the former Assistant U.S. Commissioner for Prohibition, and the newly promoted head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He was appointed by none other than his uncle-in-law, Andrew Mellon. Mellon was then the owner, and largest stockholder of the sixth largest bank in the US; The Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, Anslinger and Hearst began a vitriolic, racist and sensationalist propaganda campaign in Hearst¹s papers (of which Reefer Madness, Marijuana: Assassin of Youth and Weed with it's Roots in Hell were just a part to whip up a climate of fear and hysteria regarding this "devil weed". Unsurprisingly, it was sponsored by the United Brewers Association.

In 1937, Anslinger testified before Congress saying: Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind. Anslinger¹s testimony included racist remarks such as "colored men with big lips", luring white women with jazz music and marijuana, "with the result of pregnancy" and shocked the Southern dominated Congressional Ways and Means committee who enacted the Marijuana Transfer Tax Act in 1937.

This was fuelled by racism against Hispanic and black minorities, and conflict surrounding the "medicalisation" of the patent medicine industry.

Meanwhile, nylon fibers had been developed between 1926-36 by Wallace Carruthers, a noted Harvard chemist working with an open-ended research grant from Du Pont. The process to convert coal and oil to nylon was patented in 1937, the same time as Du Pont developed new sulfate/sulfite processes to make paper from wood pulp. According to corporate records, this would then account for 80% by volume, of all its¹ railroad freight for the next 50 years. The President of Du Pont, Lammot Du Pont, had this to say:
Synthetic plastics find application in fabricating a wide variety of articles, many of which in the past were made from natural products..... Consider our natural resources; the chemist has aided in conserving natural resources by developing synthetic products to supplement or wholly replace natural products "

Coincidentally" at the same time high volume machinery to separate the bast fiber from hemp hurds became state of the art, available and affordable, "marijuana" was outlawed.

 

double posting a thread is a no no....

 

I was a jail house lawyer for 13 years and it all started when I got popped for drugs, a victimless crime, unless you count me.I spent since 1977 studying Constitutional and Civil Law to help poor people like me who couldn't afford lawyers. So I try to find as many ways as possible to show people that we all got burned. I fight hard for decriminalization and have even had the FBI at my house. After I got a letter posted in the local news exposing the illegal act of IDing (profiling) in my old neighborhood I got arrested and beat up by the police three times in two days, I have the pictures of my face and I'm a 50 year old man with Heart disease, Emphesyma, and brain damage from cop and guards kicking my head in. Did you know that in 1986 when I left super-max after 9 1/2 years flat they still had a dungeon in CB-6.
So sorry I try so hard to get the word out. We all smoke, everyone we know smokes, our last two presidents smoke. So why don't we "Question Authority"
Joseph
P.S.
Marijuana Arrests For Year 2003 Hit Record High, FBI Report Reveals Pot Smokers Arrested In America At A Rate Of One Every 42 Seconds

Washington, DC: Police arrested an estimated 755,187 persons for marijuana violations in 2003, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 45 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said Keith Stroup, Executive Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 42 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources, costing American taxpayers approximately $7.6 billion dollars annually. These dollars would be better served combating serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88 percent - some 662,886 Americans - were charged with possession only. The remaining 92,301 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses - even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, approximately 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.

"Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana's availability or dissuade youth from trying it," Stroup said, noting that a majority of young people now report that they have easier access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.

The total number of marijuana arrests for 2003 far exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

 

woah man that blows....you should post a link to it instead though plus include that post in your first post of this thread so it won't be double posting...i know it sucks but rules are rules, despite whether breaking them is for a good cause or not. at anyrate, yes america is a police state, its sad

 

Hey lawyer buddy, I'll hopefully be meeting you some day... I've already been officially busted with weed once, unofficially 4 times... damn that devil weed!

This part made me laugh/glare at the screen...

Yeah...fucked up.

 

Why must we OUTLAW NATURE?!?!?!

 

cuz one of the dumbest and cruelest men alive has been chosen as our leader

 

Good point.

 

Ummm... Yeah, it's been illegal for quite a bit longer than he's been in office, so....

 

But it's fun to blame things on him, because he's "GOD'S CANDIDATE!"