Column by Johnny Hickman
Posted March 23, 2011 at 7:26 p.m.
Everyone knows that the American drug war is a total failure.
Having spent $1 trillion in the last 40 years, we now find that marijuana is cheaper, more potent and readily available to anyone who wants it. During the past 10 years, polls show that public school students consistently say that marijuana is easier to get than cigarettes or alcohol. It is high time to end the insanity. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol and it won't work with drugs either.
The drug war is all about greed, power and control. The government and law enforcement lose more credibility every day that they maintain their irrational, narrow-minded stance against legalization. We the people need to stand up and speak out for full legalization of marijuana and industrial hemp as soon as possible.
Marijuana should be legalized for several reasons. We need cannabis hemp for medicine, food, fuel and fiber. Marijuana is good medicine for many ailments and lately has been shown effective against cancer.
We should stand up for our rights. We should be allowed to light up a joint for relaxation and recreation. It's no different from the average Joe kicking back and having a couple of beers after a long day's work. What we do in private is our own business, not Big Brother's. No one has died from a marijuana overdose; it is not toxic to the human body. Alcohol and tobacco are bad for you, and addictive too, but they are legal. Think about how many people die each year because of alcohol and tobacco abuse. Cannabis is no more addictive than coffee.
Ever wonder why marijuana is illegal? Greed, yellow journalism, racism, outright lies and vicious, misleading propaganda were used by William Randolph Hearst (newspaper publication, timber and paper industry), the DuPonts (plastics made from oil), the Rockefellers (big oil) and our government to get hemp banned in the first place. They were afraid of the competition then and they still are. The drug czar when the federal government declared war on marijuana in 1937, Harry Anslinger, used lies, racism and underhanded politics to further the agenda of the rich and powerful. Every drug czar since then has followed in Anslinger's footsteps. Nowadays, $18 billion is wasted each year on marijuana prohibition. Our government forces marijuana prohibition on other nations, causing hardship and increased crime.
Want to talk about addiction? Our government is addicted to the profits from the drug war. It is a sad fact that our own government no longer has the best interests of the American people at heart.
The federal government's insistence that we must not grow hemp because there is no way to discern industrial hemp from marijuana is absurd; they have different growth habits and appearance. Inspectors in other nations that do grow industrial hemp have no problem figuring out the difference.
The powers that be who are pulling the strings that control our federal government are doing everything they can to keep knowledge about the benefits of marijuana and industrial hemp from you because Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Lumber, Big Law Enforcement, Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol realize that their cash cow (the lost drug war) is at stake.
Big Pharma knows marijuana is good medicine but doesn't want you to have it unless they can control it; they're after the money. But they can't patent a natural plant. Many medical organizations agree that marijuana is good medicine for a wide variety of ailments.
Big Brother knows that legalization would put the power and the money back in the hands of the people and they hate the very thought of that. They are willing to be heavy-handed, to use blackmail and to lie to the American public to keep marijuana from being legalized. All those hundreds of thousands of men and women (many of them very young) who have been incarcerated for cannabis should be released so that they can resume their productive lives.
Within three or four years, we could be making enough alcohol from hemp to allow us to almost completely quit using gasoline. Fuel prices would go way down. Hemp oil is an excellent lubricant. That's why Big Oil fears cannabis hemp mightily. It would cause them to lose their stranglehold on us and nations of the world.
Hemp will grow anywhere, from deserts to mountains to rain forests. It is much better for our environment than other crops such as cotton and makes much better products. Small farmers would have a way to make a better living. We could stop cutting down our old growth forests.
The huge amount of money being made by organized criminals will suddenly be reduced significantly; crime would decrease; Mexico finally would be allowed to legalize. The drug cartels in Mexico would lose a huge portion of their business overnight.
Cannabis hemp is the world's premier renewable resource. Legalize it, regulate it, tax it at a reasonable rate. Keep it illegal for minors, just like alcohol. This new income would provide a much-needed boost to our economy.
It is no longer a question of if cannabis will be legalized but when. Recent CNN polls show that close to 95 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing medical marijuana and a Pew poll shows that 46 percent of Americans favor full legalization of marijuana and that support is growing.
If you are not sure whether cannabis should be legalized, inform yourself; study everything you can find out about it, then you will be convinced that legalization is the right thing to do. God put this herb on the earth for us to use. Let's use it wisely.
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