September 22, 2008
Enough is enough. This truly is an emergency and we must move ahead with doing the possible to effect climate change. This plan has been brewing for sometime and was put together in the book I sent you on using hemp for an agricultural solution to global warming- HEMP FOR VICTORY: A GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTION.
Twice now hemp farming bills have come to your desk and twice you vetoed them. I believe that there are not many people in California that know what hemp farming would mean to California. Finally the legislature gets it. The USA Hemp Museum spent 25 eight hour days on the steps of the State Capitol in the early 1990’s promoting hemp.
This is my plan. There was circulating this year an initiative petition that would legalize both hemp and marijuana in California. Enclosed is a copy of that initiative.
The Attorney General’s summary on this petition says that tens of millions of dollars could be saved on incarceration and supervision costs alone. What the AG did not do was give the people the facts about the billions of dollars in new farm hemp production in California. This could have been a fatal mistake on his part, but the AG should take heart.
The California Cannabis Hemp and Health Initiative needs to live on and both the Governor and the Legislature have it in their power to put what is literally a survival issue on the ballot. Make no mistake about it; in California the people have all the power. This is a momentous decision but is the right one, to let the people have the facts and decide. And there are reasons why we should decide and not the government.
I believe that the way to get the job done is to let the people do it. As was said before, in California the words of the Constitution are plain: “All political power is inherent in the people.”
To prove my point look at the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, passed by the people as Proposition 215. Twelve years after the people gave themselves the right to grow and use marijuana as medicine; the federal has not taken the people to court to overturn those rights.
How can that be? Here is what happened. What the people of California did was legal in every sense of the word. We followed the law. The people have the power to make law - to give ourselves rights and powers. What is true is that the Federal Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land and limits the Federal Government. Those rights to medical marijuana are not enumerated in the federal constitution and therefore through the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Federal Constitution those rights are up for grabs. For twelve years medical marijuana has been bringing relief to tens of thousands of California citizens despite the thug tactics of the federal drug lords. Twelve years. Isn’t this a done deal? Didn’t we win?
What this means is that we hold the power to legalize the growing of both hemp and marijuana. The California Cannabis Hemp and Health Initiative has worded a Ninth and Tenth Amendment challenge based on the above arguments. One U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled agriculture is a state right (U.S. v. Butler, 1936). Medical marijuana is both an agricultural crop and a state right already, why not hemp.
The marijuana laws are in disarray. I have been to court twice challenging marijuana laws and ran for congress as a marijuana grower. I am Curator of the USA Hemp Museum and a court stipulated expert on hemp and marijuana. Seventy years have gone by since an illegal prohibition started in 1937. Too many growing seasons lost. Enough is enough. Let’s get back to hemp. With marijuana legal there will be no need for restraints on breeding varieties for various agricultural needs such as food, fuel, paper, wood, medicine, plastics, weed suppression, burn recovery, etc. Research money will flow to California with such a commitment from the people. Hemp can save water, to plant more hemp. Hemp is a renewable and sustainable crop that must be given a priority. Both the Governor and the Legislature can recognize and act on this priority. This initiative is well thought out by those who care about hemp and its future. We cannot let that future be slowed or plowed under by some marijuana scare. There is not one reported death from marijuana consumption in 5000 years of recorded use. We must stop the lies, but understand my fellow citizens that I have inalienable rights to “enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and pursuing and obtaining privacy, safety, and happiness” as do you. You cannot give up these rights.
Another reason the people’s hemp and marijuana initiative should be put on the ballot is that the Legislature owes the people for passing an obviously unconstitutional medical marijuana system, S.B. 420. The words of the CA Constitution are mandatory and prohibitory. The words have to be followed; the States medical marijuana system had to be approved by the voters and was not. It is no law. The Appeals Court of California told me that S.B. 420 did not apply to me as did the Attorney General. The fact that it is being represented as law is an injustice that will be corrected by the people’s initiative.
You owe us this chance to bring new commerce and savings to California. If we can do medical marijuana, we can do hemp and recreational marijuana use. Recreational use will bring tourism, look at Amsterdam. Hemp can start to do its wonders with total freedom. Every hemp plant grown is a non-fossil fuel carbon source superior to fossil oil, coal, and natural gas. Hemp for paper, building materials, plastics can reverse global warming. Carbon offsets and credits can go to the farmer. The world needs hemp. For hemp we don’t have to start from scratch, as some 30 countries are using hemp and developing techniques and equipment for planting, harvesting and processing for the 50,000 viable uses of hemp.
Thirty-three biomass plants now operate in California that could immediately use any excess hemp production. Any farm subsidies controlled by California should be applied to further this plan to develop a hemp economy.
Thank you,
Richard M. Davis, Curator
USA Hemp Museum www.hempmuseum.org
E-mail: rmdavisx@yahoo.com
Cc: Mark Leno
PRINTED ON HEMP PAPER
No comments:
Post a Comment