The Lie of Cannabis Prohibition

Why is marijuana illegal? Why is it called marijuana instead of its proper name of cannabis hemp? In the 1930's, a new machine was invented that made it much cheaper to use the pulp from the cannabis hemp plant. This threatened the profits of William Randolph Hearst from his forest paper pulp business and the DuPont company from their bleaching and plastic making chemical processes. They teamed up with Harry Anslinger in the U.S. government and invented marijuana out of whole cloth. Hearst's newspapers ran sensationalist stories about the harms of this evil weed, and those stories were used as evidence in congress to pass a tax on marijuana. The congress people who voted for this legislation didn't even realize that marijuana was the same cannabis hemp that they were growing in huge quantities in their states.

This disgusting, criminal lie started the cannabis prohibition industry. Prohibition has continued based on more lies. There is not a shred of truth in any of it. In fact, smoking or eating cannabis is nearly harmless, as anyone who has used it knows from personal experience. In the history of the world, noone has ever died from a cannabis overdose. In every way, cannabis is safer than alcohol, tobacco, and aspirin.

Not only that, cannabis hemp has a myriad of useful industrial and medical uses. It makes cheaper and better paper than trees, it can be used to make building materials, you can burn the seed oil as fuel and eat it on your salad or in your baking. The seeds are a complete protein on a par with or better than soy as a vegetable source of protein. Cannabis is the best known medicine for treating nausea due to cancer or AIDS drugs. It not only eliminates the nausea completely, it restores appetite (you know, the munchies). And the list goes on. I have only scratched the surface of its uses.

By any rational standard, cannabis should be available over the counter, in bulk in your local health food store for a few bucks an ounce.

This is not the point, however. Even if cannabis were a potent poison, adults have the absolute right to put anything into their bodies that they please. Doing so is not a crime. It has never been a crime. It will never be a crime. Crimes have victims. Smoking and selling cannabis has no victim. Only the initiation of force against another person or their property is a crime. Crime may not be legislated into being.

So who are the criminals here?

Criminals: the legislators who make the prohibition laws. Criminals: the lie enforcement officers who arrest people for possessing vegetables. Criminals: the judges who disallow medical evidence and jury nullification. Criminals: the juries who convict these peaceful people. Criminals: the jailors who lock them up. They are all guilty of assault and kidnapping or conspiracy to commit assault and kidnapping. Serious felonies. Kidnapping is a capital offense...

But even this isn't the point. The war on some drugs has nothing to do with drugs. It is a war on freedom. A war on the Bill of Rights. A war on America's soul. Drug sellers and users are to modern-day America what the Jews were to Nazi Germany. A focus for hate. A reason to make fascist laws that are rapidly destroying our constitutional republic. Stop this madness before Amerika's final solution makes the holocaust look like a romp in the woods.

End the war on freedom. End it today. Stop the lie while you still can.

Bill St. Clair, 10 March, 2001
http://billstclair.com/hemplie.html
email: bill@billstclair.com

Remember kids: God works better than drugs. There are no old speed freaks. Your brain makes the best drugs on the planet, for free.

Most of the information in the first three paragraphs of this essay came from Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes (PDF, EPUB)

This document is in the public domain. I encourage you to copy and distribute it far and wide.
If you change it, I request that you remove my name and my web and email addresses.