WOW! This is a crazy thread...2 very different topics but somehow it is all staying together. I would like to add my .02 on a couple of things...1st Gateway drug?? Total and complete BS. Right wing propaganda. For every one smack junkie there are 10,000 responsible adults that use cannabis either recreationally or medicinally. If it were the big bad gateway drug it is said to be why is less then 5% of the DEA's annual budget spent on anything other than cannabis eradication?
@KINGROW..sorry about your friend but it is NOT your fault he is dead because you gave him his first hit of weed.
The simple historical fact is Harry Anslinger, William Randolph Hurst, and Dupont chemicals created cannabis prohibition. Anslinger had HUGE financial motivation from the other 2 and many others (Big Pharma, tobacco, alcohol etc not too mention being a major racist) William Randolph Hurst (Patty's Daddy) was a newspaper mogul with monstrous money tied into lumber production (i.e. paper, building materials etc.) the last thing he wanted was to see hemp stay legally mass produced. It takes 20-30 years to replenish a forest but hemp can renew 3 times in a year, so who needs trees for paper, right! Dupont Chemicals... Again, hemp can be eaten, worn, written on, used for fuel, textiles, rope, you name it. Most of these things were then and are now mass synthesized by chemical conglomerates...hemp would have it's hand in their pockets. We all are aware of how big pharma feels about cannabis as a medicine. Anyway, Anslinger (the U.S. 1st 'drug czar') W.R. Hurst and the several other corporate stooges that wanted to make and keep the world's most useful and misunderstood plant illegal and make people want it too stay illegal. why? CASH of course! So they put together all kinds of fear mongering campaigns aimed at the citizen's of a country that were battle weary from 2 world wars, the crop was ripe there...what better mode than to play on the fears of people who were suspicious and in some cases terrified of other races. They targeted Americas Youth creating more fear amongst the populous. They publicized 'facts' that young white women would have sex with multiple black men...that their children would murder them with axes, their kids would certainly go insane from 1 hit of the most 'notorious and menacing drug in history' BLAH BLAH BLAH. Ever see 'Reefer Madness'? That and several other anti-cannabis films were financed by Dupont chemicals.. There was a time in our country's history when if you owned a certain amount of farm land, it was actually illegal to NOT produce hemp! During the 2nd World War there was a "Hemp for Victory" campaign, talk about hypocrisy!
Anyway, CASH is the number 1 motivation in making and keeping the oldest and most widely used medicine in history, pre dating pharmacology, Illegal.
As for local authorities not being at fault for 'making the rules' they are meant to 'Serve and Protect' NOT to terrorize and incarcerate. The days of lost little kids eating ice cream while sitting on a cop's lap are OVER! Any idea how many cops are earning a living through playing both sides of America's unwinnable war on drugs? Privatized prisons have deals with State governments to keep their jails full. Are they filled with murderers, rapists, criminal psychopaths?..a few yes BUT most of the prison population in the U.S. (and btw we have more people in jail in the US than any other country in the world) are cannabis offenders. If you are looking for shear numbers...who else would you bust?
But all of this is academic and I am preaching to the choir. But, the tide is turning my friends! The antiquated ideas of the ignorant and duped politicians (who have also made BILLIONS from the war on drugs) are dying out. Soon there will be a shout of freedom the likes of which the world has never heard. "We are tired of having to fear growing a plant and we are NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!!
Geeze who got me started?? LOL! Time to get off the soapbox...you may resume your regular viewing...
