10,000 Pot Smokers Have Marijuana Smoke-Out While DEA Says No To Industrial Hemp
Anyone See The Irony Here?
You’ve probably read the story about an estimated 10,000 people gathered on the University of Colorado’s Norlin Quadrangle Sunday, puffing joints till the air turned blue. University police stood by to maintain order, but no one was busted for smoking pot.
In the meantime, the DEA is staunchly defending its policy against American farmers legally growing industrial hemp, citing the law that says all hemp is marijuana.
How’s your war on drugs coming along, anyway, DEA? The sun is shining, and if you’d pull your heads out, you’d see it. Pot is here, lots of it available, if this number of people can show up and get loaded on just one day in one city and no one is arrested.
Where did these pot-heads get their stuff, it surely didn’t come out of a couple of bags, and there was apparently enough to go around to get some 10,000 heads high. How many more smoke-outs were held on April 20th, the annual, internationally recognized celebration of marijuana? How many tons of pot went puff?
Now I’m not in favor of marijuana, primarily because of its affect on the lungs. Pot heads will tell you there’s no danger, but the cigarette companies told us that decades ago, and a lot of us are dying of COPD everyday.
My point here is that while these young people are getting loaded on an illegal drug in public as cops stand by, two farmers in North Dakota are trying desperately to legally grow industrial hemp. Their fight is now in Federal Appeals Court, hoping to overturn a lower court’s decision upholding the DEA’s position.
You can read more about the campaign to legalize industrial hemp cultivation in the U.S. at Vote Hemp.
Farmers in Vermont are ramping up their efforts to the the government to allow farmers there to grow hemp, and other states have passed, or are considering legislation to change the law.
Currently before congress is H.R. 1009, (PDF) the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2007″
Why have legal hemp? It’s one of the most useful plants on earth. It’s been cultivated for thousands of years and used for everything from food and medicine to clothing and automobile parts. It’s grown legally in many countries, except in the US, so to take advantage of the many products made from hemp, we must import them.
So what can we do to get the government to change it’s position on hemp? Do you think it will ever change?
Source: Daily Camera
Breathe Mother Nature, Breathe
UPDATE: We’re so pleased that so many of you are chiming in on this topic, and have created a discussion forum for this topic. Come by, and continue to chime in…
yeah man, right on dude…
you make us sound like geniuses.
God’s plant, eh? Presumably you feel the same about God’s poppy providing us with heroin and God’s coca plant and God’s microwave providing us with crack, Horsewoman. But I digress… there’s always one crazy making everyone else look bad.
Don’t expect the DEA to act logically, though. Hemp is a clearly a useful plant, but remember this government will happily carpet bomb a whole Iraqi village to get a few suspected militants. I don’t wish to go off-topic, but it’s just the same philisophy applied in a different way, isn’t it? And isn’t the War on Drugs about as realistic as the War on Terror anyway?
First of all, Horsewoman, God is not here to determine what we do with our planet. 2nd, that would never hold up in court, there was a reason we added separation of church and state…
however, the DEA says they keep marijuana, and hemp illegal is to keep people off of drugs. This really makes no sense though, because the DEA allows cigarettes and alcohol to be legal. Those two drugs combined kill over half a million people a year, marijuana kills 0. The fact that it may be bad for a persons lungs is no reason to keep it illegal, people should have the choice to put whatever they want in their body, once they are legal adults.
The fact that industrial hemp is illegal is just ridiculous.I cant even comment on it, because it simply makes no sense. Farmers can grow hemp that contains little to no amounts of THC. meaning, if someone were to smoke it, they really wouldnt get high, making it worthless to even smoke.
I am an avid pot smoker, first off. However if it came down to it i would much rather see industrial hemp and medical marijuana legalized before recreational use is decriminalized. i will say that if the only reason the author of this article is not in favor of smoking pot because of lung damage, I hardly think that should keep it illegal. However if i have to continue to illegal posses something that grows in the ground, i dont mind as long as industrial and medical can be legalized. When this country was founded farmers were required to grow a certain portion of hemp on their land because it is so damn useful. George Washington even said that “Hemp is the backbone of American innovation”.
I think it is very interesting that the majority of comments focused on cancer because the writer mentioned he is against pot smoking only because of it’s bad effects on the lungs. He said nothing about cancer. There is a chronic, irreversible, terminal disease called COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease which includes asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Besides which, I think the point of the story is concerning the DEA, industrial hemp and marijuana and the refusal to differentiate between the two. It is ridiculous that because of a 1938 law,(thanks to the oil conglomerate and the U S Congress) we have to pay other countries to obtain the wonderful products made with hemp.
I double the notion that vaporizers nearly eliminate ALL of the negative effects from marijuana. Secondly there is a HUGE movement of people who eat their cannabis. Thereby ALSO eliminating any possible health dangers. SO as of 2008 everybody has a choice if they want to use cannabis the healthy way or burn it. In europe their are medical insurance companies that will PAY for and provide marijuana vaporizers. as well as the ganja to go with it. I like this blog, but i wanted to get the facts straight.
The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution states that the States are to be self governed on everything that the Constitution specifically does not state. This means that a Federal ban on any kind of substance is %100 unconstitutional. That is why they put prohibition of Alcohol in the US Constitution because there was not other way to legally make it illegal. We repealed the prohibition of Alcohol so how does it make sense to continue the prohibition of drugs.
In July of 2007, the law covering possession (in Canada) was shot down. The supreme court said it is not constitutional to charge a person with possession of small amounts for personal use.
However, the likelihood pot will ever be totally legal in this country is slim because - and this is the same in the US - our country’s national police force and the municipal police forces get an absolute TON of funding for anti-drug departments. Were it not for that funding, our police forces would become seriously understaffed.
The reality is that the underground pot trade is very beneficial to a variety of police and political agencies.
More on this subject?
The Union: The Business of Getting High. http://www.theunion.com
This film as been screened at a large number of film festivals for the last two years and has won a variety of awards. There will be DVDs soon. Make a request on the site.
For the record, I am not affiliated with this group, but I am a supporter of people knowing the truth about why marijuana is illegal in Canada and the US (much to do with immigration and nothing to do with health or anything like it) and who benefits from a weed being illegal.
More at The Stupid Files in archives if you’re interested.
Ummmm…
“In the meantime, the DEA is staunchly defending its policy against American farmers legally growing industrial hemp, citing the law that says all hemp is marijuana”
Once their is a law against something, doesn’t it become illegal? Or is this just a terribly written sentence?
Moonsafari, Heroin is (scientifically) DERIVED from the poppy flower. Marijuana is grown, and placed straight into a smoking apparatus. there’s a difference