Source: ladybud.com
The following is an excerpt of a speech John Dvorak gave at the Hartford, Connecticut HempCT Marijuana Awareness Event:
We all owe our presence here today to one person who’s worked tirelessly and countless hours organizing, planning, cajoling, lining up the speakers, the vendors, the sponsors and working with the city of Hartford to get the permits. We wouldn’t be here if is was not for Cindy Day. All right Cindy! Cindy’s not doing this so she can sit around and smoke pot all day. She’s not. That’s not what Cindy’s all about. She’s not doing this for the money, either. Believe me, she’s not making any money on this. She’s doing this because she loves helping people and she hates what cannabis prohibition is doing to society.
Cindy’s doing this so we’ll remember people that can’t be here with us today. People like Frank Fulgieri. Frank was a Connecticut resident and medical marijuana patient who tragically passed away last year. Today is Frank Fulgieri Day. So thank you Cindy for making this Frank Fulgieri Day so that we’ll remember him and everybody else that can’t be here with us today that paved the way for our success.
Cindy’s doing this for the children. She knows that cannabis is very, very good for a number of ailments including epilepsy. There’s a young girl in Connecticut, Cyndimae Meehan. Actually, she’s in Maine now because her family had to move her to Maine just to get her medicine. This is not right. So, Cindy Day is helping Cyndimae get her medicine. So thank you very much Cindy Day and good luck to you Cyndimae. I hope you can come home soon.
Connecticut is very restrictive with their policies on medical marijuana. You have to have one of eleven qualifying conditions before you can get your medicine. This is just not right. It is too strict. Our politicians are treating cannabis like plutonium. It’s not radioactive. It’s a safe, natural herb that can be easily grown. So Cindy’s working with the legislators to expand that list. It’s what I call aCatch-422. Our politicians put so many obstacles and barriers in front of us. We have to recognize those obstacles and work around them.
Cindy is doing this for the elderly: our parents, our grandparents that need medical marijuana. She knows that its good for arthritis, Parkinson’s Alzheimer’s and depression. She’s trying to make sure that our senior citizens can get medicinal cannabis so that they can use less of those hard core pharmaceuticals with a laundry list of side effects. They will live longer, healthier and happier lives and who doesn’t want that for their grandparents? And, if we can convince them that medical marijuana is good and prohibition is bad, then they can help us pass laws to end prohibition because old farts vote. So thank you Cindy for helping our senior citizens become more aware of this great medicine.
Cindy is holding this rally for my brother. My brother live in Oklahoma. Cindy doesn’t even know him, but she’s still organizing this rally for him. He’s disabled. He needs medical marijuana, but he can’t get it because he’s in Oklahoma and they have bass-ackward laws. Cindy’s holding this rally to raise awareness at the state and national level so that we can end the federal prohibition of marijuana so that my brother can get his medicine. So thank you Cindy for that. I appreciate it and you will meet him one day too, I promise.
Cindy’s doing this for all of the pot prisoners that can’t be here today to protest prohibition with us. She’s doing this for Todd Stimson, a young man in North Carolina that was growing marijuana for patients. He was doing this very openly, providing medicine, paying taxes. They threw him in jail. Todd Stimson is in a cage right now for providing medicine and that’s not right. We have to release Todd and we have to release all of the pot prisoners and that’s what Cindy wants to do, so thank you very much.
Cindy hates discrimination. She knows that prohibition is a racist policy that’s decimating our inner cities and communities of color. She knows that the riots right now in Baltimore are a direct result of the racist war on drugs and the way that minorities are treated by police. She’s holding this rally for a friend of mine that spent three years in prison for a non-violent drug offense. Three years of his life taken away and stolen. Oh yeah, did I mention that my friend is African American. I’m sure his race had something to do with his severe sentence. She’s doing this for him and I really appreciate that. Cindy is the Rosa Parks of the marijuana movement. That’s right. Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus and Cindy is refusing to sit in the back of the Canna-bus. All right!
Cindy’s doing this for people that are addicted to dangerous substances. That’s right. She’s doing this for me because I’m an alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink in almost eight years thanks to marijuana. Marijuana also helped me quit cigarettes. Anybody here ever try to quit cigarettes? It’s brutal. You want to talk about you dangerous and addictive drugs. Cannabis helped me quit cigarettes. Our opponents say that there is no scientific evidence that marijuana is good for you, that everything is anecdotal evidence. Well, I’m not an anecdote. I’m a real person and I can tell you that, along with the love of a good woman, marijuana/cannabis saved my life. So thank you Cindy for caring about me and for loving me. I love you too.
A lot of our opponents say that marijuana is a gateway drug. The mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, he says that if you smoke marijuana, boom, you’re gonna be doing heroin the next day and that’s just not right. Marijuana is an exit drug. I’ve been smoking marijuana for 35 years and I’ve never felt better. I’ve never done heroin, I’m never going to do heroin and I don’t want to do heroin. It is not a gateway drug. It’s an exit drug away from alcohol, away from tobacco and away from Oxycontin. States with good medical marijuana laws are seeing a decline in overdose rates for opioid drugs like Oxycontin. This is a good thing.
States with good medical marijuana laws are seeing a reduction in the suicide rate. This is very important for our veterans. Cindy loves our veterans and I know you do too. But tragically, 22 veterans commit suicide every day. This is horrible. Cannabis is very good for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cindy wants to make sure our veterans can get this safe and effective medicine. They fought for us, so it’s time for us to fight for them. So thank you Cindy.
Who likes hemp here, anybody like hemp? I love hemp! Guess who else loves hemp? Cindy loves hemp, yes she does! That’s why they call her the Harvest Honey. She’s all over hemp. She loves the environment. She knows that hemp is the Green Buffalo. Native Americans used the entire buffalo to survive; hair, snoot, balls and all. And you can use the entire cannabis plant to make all sorts of essential products: food, fuel, building materials, biodegradable plastic, tree-free paper and medicine. That’s why we call hemp the Green Buffalo.
Cindy knows that you can make all sorts of environmentally friendly products out of hemp. You can actually build an entire house out of hemp. You can make hemp concrete, tree-free hemp particle board, hemp insulation that is much better than that pink, fiberglass, scratchy crap and hemp composite shingles. You can even heat your house with hemp seed oil biodiesel fuel or you can compress hemp stalks into pellets for your wood burning stove. So, if you’re in construction or if you’re going to build a new house, build a hemp house. That would be awesome!
Cindy wants you to be healthy. She wants you to eat healthy. Well, guess what? Hemp is the new superfood. That’s right, hemp! The humble hemp seed is chock full of protein, fiber and essential fatty acids. You always hear on the news: if you want to get your omegas, eat fish they say. Eat fish, eat fish. No! Eat hemp, eat hemp, eat hemp! It’s better for you and it’s much better for the fish.
So we’re up here, we’re talking the talk. That’s great. But I want you to walk the walk. I want you to buy hemp, support the hemp industry. I want you to eat hemp and be healthier. I want you to wear hemp. I’m covered with hemp today fromhurd to tow. I want you to write on hemp. This speech was printed on tree-free hemp paper. That’s tree-free-mendous!
I want you to invent hemp. We’re at a special time right now. We are creating several industries from the ground up: the industrial hemp industry, medical marijuana and the recreational market is going to be huge. I’m talking huge, people. We’re talking about a trillion dollar crop. Tens of thousands of jobs are going to be created. That’s right. You’ve heard of the dot.com era, right? Well, this is the dot.bong era and it’s going to blow that away.
Making money is great. But we can’t forget why so many of us fell in love with marijuana in the first place. IT’s not about the money. It’s that feeling created by our tie-dyed forefathers. It’s about peace, love and personal freedom and Cindy embodies that. As marijuana goes mainstream, we have to make sure we don’t lose that spirit. We cannot throw the hippie out with the bongwater.
It’s going to take time to reverse over 70 years of Reefer Madness. Our politicians say that marijuana is bad. We know, that when used responsibly, marijuana is very, very good. So we need to turn Reefer Madness into Reefer Gladness!
We’ve got a long road ahead of us. There’s so much to do, but every journey starts with a single step and Cindy is helping us take this step together. She has planted the seed that is growing into the Tree of Life. Cindy is leading by example. She’s showing what one person can do. Now, one person can’t everything, but everyone can do something, so we all need to pitch in and do something.
This rally is great. This is the 3rd year. Every year it gets bigger and bigger. Now, some people might be disappointed by the size of the crowd today. I don’t see disappointment. I see opportunity. I see potential. I know that one day, we’re going to have 50,000 people right here, celebrating the end of prohibition and we’ll have Cindy to thank for that. But, next year’s rally might not even happen. It’s so much work, she needs help. She needs people to step up and work with her and help her. Do whatever you can to promote cannabis.
Cindy doesn’t want me to be up here preaching to the choir. She wants me to preach to the preachers. She wants you to go out there and let everybody know how great cannabis hemp is and how truly devastating its prohibition is. Thank you very much for coming out today and one more time, thank you so much Cindy! Keep up the fight and peace.
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