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…
There’s something wonderful and human in SO MANY people coming together in an annual act of peaceable, generous anarchy. It happens, and it’s over. There’s no problem here.
Here are a few photo pages:
http://www.ThirdTablet.com/2008/CU-420/
Hemp or marijuana will never be legalized because it is a threat to the oil companies. The seeds contain a high quality combustable oil. No other reason.
Perhaps if the government spent less time going after those who use hemp for economic purposes and more time going after those who commit atrocious war crimes for economic purposes, we’d have a safer world.
Interesting to note that the disaster at Chernobyl was mitigated by growing Hemp on the affected land. The Hanford disaster in the US is still leaking radiactive waste into the Columbia river. It is truly time to end the hubris and make a positive change.
It’s basically legal in California. There are pot stores all over LA. It’s called medical marijuana. Mostly comes from Humboldt. That doesn’t mean it’s cheap, tho.
I, am an original Reefer Raider. We started the first California Marijuhana Initiative in Van Nuy’s, Ca. at Heads & Highs Shoppe.
Ed Adair, Capt’n Ed, and about seven of us began to solicit signatures for getting it on the ballot.
We succeeded. It was made legal, by popular vote but,the government decided that we, the people, do not have the ability to say what we want to use.
Funny, huh? A government that is supposed to be by, for, and of, the people does not care what we want or think. Do it anyway! Plant it! Smoke it! Eat it! Use it for anything you want, and tell the government to shove it. Demand the use of hemp in as many products as can be instead of oil,trees, man-made substances and much more.
@Shaze: Very nicely put.
sry, jst to clear sumtin up:
“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.”
yes there is obviously lung damage taking place because of the ’smoke’, but cigarette smoke is MUCH worse than marijuana smoke. marijuana is a plant. cigarettes have tobacco (yes, also a plant) but they’re also filled with hundreds of different chemicals, not to mention nicotine (to inflict addiction, (its impossible to get addicted to weed)) and TAR!!! and a lot of other harmful substances.
but i personally believe sumtin should be called a “crime” only if it inflicts pain onto OTHERS, not urself. who cares what u wanna do to urself, but you? it’s my body, i wanna do wat i want with it.
What’s great about this event is that they reached a critical mass where they simply couldn’t be punished. Whatever you think about marijuana, you have to admire people organizing themselves into such a powerful group force that they essentially achieved immunity for a day.
The lesson here is that for any context & for any issue, if people organize themselves effectively, you can reach a critical mass that may enable you to take on problems that seem unchallengeable. Imagine if half the nation stopped paying the portion of their taxes that go to the Iraq & Afghanistan wars? Probably there are a lot of people who would like to see that happen but are scared to act alone. So the question is….how are we going to coordinate ourselves people?
I believe that the reason farmers are having such difficulty legalizing hemp is because the pharmaceutical industry has a powerful lobby in Washington DC. They do not want the public to find an easy to grow, legal, potent pain killer. Although hemp used for materials isn’t very potent, it could be deliberately bred to become so. That makes even hemp a threat to a multi billion dollar industry that influences numerous Congressional Representatives. Big business owns our government. Common sense doesn’t matter.