Below is a great letter from Richard M. Davis, founder and curator of the USA Hemp Museum, a private museum with over 1,700 hemp related items. Richard has dedicated his adult life to ending hemp prohibition while researching 50,000 plus uses for the dynamic hemp plant. He is the author of two hemp books, HEMP FOR VICTORY: A GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTION and the soon to be released HEMP FOR VICTORY: THE WONDER HERB. In this letter Richard's TELLIN' OLD ARNOLD, LET OUR HEMP GO!!!
Tuesday, December 12, 2008
Dear California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,
It is a waste of our tax money to enforce cannabis prohibition when we have so much violent crime and a budget deficit.
The U.S. Supreme Court this Monday upheld the California’s 4th District Court of Appeal’s ruling that patients enjoy a federally protected property right to their medical marijuana. The main point I would like to make here is that this federally protected property right also applies to hemp. One strategy here is to report this new ruling has changed your mind about hemp and the Feds, and for the cause of global warming you can now support industrial hemp.
What we find in the aftermath of the 1937 Tax Act, is that agricultural production of Cannabis hemp was the probable big target of the law. Hemp (same species as marijuana, different variety) was poised to become the first billion dollar agricultural crop in 1938. Hemp has multiple uses: clothing, textiles, paper, fiberboard, clean biomass fuels, seed protein and oil, and plastics. Hemp had 25,000 viable industrial applications in 1938. We now estimate 50,000 uses for hemp. Now with agricultural production necessary for medicine, what possible reason do we now have to prohibit farmers from growing hemp which may have a medical response, but can not even get you a little high?
Our NAFTA trading partner Canada is now in its tenth year of growing hemp. California would benefit greatly by being the first state to return hemp growing to the American farmer free of the drug war scare. To ignore the bigger picture is to languish in the mistaken belief that the federal government controls everything a state does through the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Our state has the sixth largest economy in the world. California would benefit greatly by forging ahead with hemp growing and research of industrial potential, which is allowed by Article 28, of the Single Convention Treaty on Narcotic Drugs (U.N.), 1961. This is the very treaty on which our federal Controlled Substances Act is based.
All over the world and the United States, the truth about hemp and marijuana is flooding our information highways. We must correct the industrial/political conspiracies, misinformation, and overall mistakes of the 1930’s and legalize hemp and marijuana. Especially considering that “marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man,” as ruled by DEA law judge Francis Young, in September of 1988.
To be ignorant of the history of Cannabis is to invite bad lawmaking. Cannabis sativa is a plant, not a synthetic compound. Any plan to provide for “safe and affordable distribution...” must take into account that it must be grown as an agricultural crop. Not all people have back yards or extra rooms in which to grow plants, or time to grow with a surprise illness. Given that agricultural production is necessary, history suggests we look deeper into the reasons for the morass of law we find ourselves in now.
The plant Cannabis sativa was illegally controlled by the government, through lies and deception, in passing the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Depicted as a fatal and dangerous drug marijuana in the hearings of this Act, Cannabis medicine had been used in western medicine since the 1840, and was known to have never been responsible for a single death in 1927 medical literature. Court review by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1988, stated, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” (DEA Docket #86-22). Medical use in China started more than 5000 years ago.
Finally, we have to look at the legal due process questions of putting people in jail for using such a safe, natural herb for personal recreational purposes, while allowing the proven poisons of alcohol and nicotine to be legal. It is obvious to me from a public health standpoint that we would be better off by replacing both these death dealing drugs with a safer alternative. Competition not prohibition is the American way. Prohibition of alcohol produced a black market, prohibition of marijuana produced a black market, and prohibition of tobacco will also create a black market.
Regulation and freedom will reduce criminal activity, and return a valuable medicine called Cannabis to the California community. And of course even the legal drugs are illegal for children.
The barriers to industrial use of hemp for food, fuel, and fiber damage our environment, our farming industry, and our entire economy. They must be removed at once. I appreciate your taking whatever action is necessary to bring clarity and justice to this enviro-economical, constitutional travesty. I would also appreciate a written reply.
Sincerely,
Richard M. Davis, Curator
USA Hemp Museum
Los Angeles, CA 90046
From the movie a/k/a Tommy Chong
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