The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer - read it HERE

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The Official Story
Debunking "Gutter Science"

After 15 days of taking testimony and more than a year's legal deliberation, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana. In a September 1988 judgement, he ruled: "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision . . . It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."

Yet former DEA Administrator John Lawn, his successor, Robert Bonner, and current DEA Administrator John Constantine - non-doctors all! - have refused to comply and have continued to deprive persons of medical cannabis, according to their own personal discretion.

Wasting Time, Wasting Lives

More than 100 years have passed since the 1894 British Raj commission study of hashish smokers in India reported cannabis use was harmless and even helpful. Numerous studies since have all agreed: The most prominent being Siler, LaGuardia, Nixon's Shafer Commission, Canada's LeDain Commission, and the California Research Advisory Commission.

Concurrently, American presidents have praised hemp, the USDA amassed volumes of data showing its value as a natural resource, and in 1942 the Roosevelt administration even made Hemp for Victory, a film glorifying our patriotic hemp farmers. That same year, Germany produced The Humorous Hemp Primer, a comic book, written in rhyme, extolling hemp's virtues. (See appendix I of the paper version of this book.)

Yet even the humane use of hemp for medicine is now denied. Asked in late 1989 about the DEA's failure to implement his decision quoted above, Judge Young responded that administrator John Lawn was being given time to comply.

More than a year after that ruling, Lawn officially refused to reschedule cannabis, again classing it as a Schedule I "dangerous" drug that is not even allowed to be used as medicine.

Decrying this needless suffering of helpless Americans, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Family Council on Drug Awareness quickly demanded Lawn's resignation. His successors, Bonner, and now Constantine, retain the same policy.

What hypocrisy allows public officials to scoff at the facts and deny the truth? How do they rationalize their atrocities? How? They invent their own experts.

Government Doublespeak

Since 1976, our federal government (e.g., NIDA, NIH, DEA*, and Action), police sponsored groups (like DARE*), and special interest groups (like PDFA*) have proclaimed to public, press, and parent groups alike that they have "absolute evidence" of the shocking negative effects of marijuana smoking.

* National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Drug Enforcement Agency, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Partnership for a Drug Free America. All subsequent researchers found Heath's marijuana findings to be of no value, because carbon monoxide poisoning and other factors were totally left out.

When U.S. government sponsored research prior to 1976 indicated that cannabis was harmless or beneficial, the methodology of how each study was done was always presented in detail in the reports; e.g., read The Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana (1976) and you will see exactly what the methodology of each medical study was.

However, when our government bureaucrats deliberately sponsored negative marijuana research, time and time again Playboy magazine, NORML, High Times, etc. had to sue under the new Freedom of Information Act to find out the actual laboratory methodology these "experiments" employed.

What they found was shocking.

Dr. Heath/Tulane Study, 1974

The Hype:

Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys

In 1974, California Governor Ronald Reagan was asked about decriminalizing marijuana.

After producing the Heath/Tulane University study, the so-called "Great Communicator" proclaimed, "The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana."

(L.A. Times)

The report from Dr. Heath had concluded that Rhesus monkeys, smoking the equivalent of only 30 joints a day, began to atrophy and die after 90 days.

And ever since, dead brain cells found in monkeys who were forced to smoke marijuana has been given maximum scare play in federal booklets and government sponsored propaganda literature against pot.

Senator Eastland of Mississippi used it throughout the mid-1970s to horrify and stop national legislators from supporting NORML's decriminalization bills in Congress, mostly sponsored by the late Senator Jacob Javitts of New York.

Reports of the study have also been distributed by the hierarchy of drug rehabilitation professionals as part of their rationalization for wanting to get kids off pot, based on supposed scientific studies. It is used to terrorize parent groups, church organizations, etc., who redistribute it still further.

Heath killed the half-dead monkeys, opened their brains, counted the dead brain cells, and then took control monkeys, who hadn't smoked marijuana, killed them too, and counted their brain cells. The pot smoking monkeys had enormous amounts of dead brain cells as compared to the "straight" monkeys.

Ronald Reagan's pronouncement was probably based on the fact that marijuana smoking was the only difference in the two sets of monkeys. Perhaps Reagan trusted the federal research to be real and correct. Perhaps he had other motives.

Whatever their reasons, this is what the government ballyhooed to press and PTA, who trusted the government completely.

In 1980, Playboy and NORML finally received for the first time after six years of requests and suing the government an accurate accounting of the research procedures used in the infamous report:

When NORML/Playboy hired researchers to examine the reported results against the actual methodology, they laughed.

The Facts:

Suffocation of Research Animals

As reported in Playboy, the Heath "Voodoo" Research methodology involved strapping Rhesus monkeys into a chair and pumping them with equivalent of 63 Colombian strength joints in "five minutes, through gas masks," losing no smoke. Playboy discovered that Heath had administered 63 joints in five minutes over just three months instead of administering 30 joints per day over a one-year period as he had first reported. Heath did this, it turned out, in order to avoid having to pay an assistant's wages every day for a full year.

The monkeys were suffocating! Three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation causes brain damage "dead brain cells." (Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety Manual) With the concentration of smoke used, the monkeys were a bit like a person running the engine of a car in a locked garage for 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time every day!

The Heath Monkey study was actually a study in animal asphyxiation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Among other things, Heath had completely (intentionally? incompetently?) omitted discussion of the carbon monoxide the monkeys inhaled.

Carbon monoxide, a deadly gas that kills brain cells, is given off by any burning object. At that smoke concentration, the monkeys were, in effect, like a person locked in a garage with the car engine left running for five, 10, 15 minutes at a time every day!

All subsequent researchers agree the findings in Heath's experiment regarding marijuana were of no value, because carbon monoxide poisoning and other factors were totally left out and had not been considered in the report. This study and others, like Dr. Gabriel Nahas' 1970s studies, tried to somehow connect the THC metabolites routinely found in the fatty tissue of human brains, reproductive organs, and other fatty areas of the body to the dead brain cells in the suffocated monkeys.

Now, in 1999, 17 years have passed and not a single word of Dr. Heath's or Dr. Nahas' research has been verified! But their studies are still hauled out by the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Drug Enforcement Administration, city and state narcotics bureaus, plus politicians and, in virtually all public instances, held up as scientific proof of the dangers of marijuana.

This is U.S. government propaganda and disinformation at its worst! The public paid for these studies and has the right to the correct information and history being taught in our taxpayer sponsored schools.

In 1996, Gabriel Nahas, in France, sued Mishka, the translator of the French edition of this book, "L'Emperor est Nu!", for damages. Mishka wrote that Nahas' studies were viewed by the world as garbage. The French court, upon hearing all the testimony by Nahas, and after Nahas had spent an quivalent of tens of thousands of American dollars on legal fees, awarded him its highest insult: one franc, the equivalent of approximately 15 cents American for damages, and no legal fees!

Lingering THC Metabolites

The Hype:

It Stays in Your System for 30 Days

The government also claimed that since "THC metabolites" stay in the body's fatty cells for up to 30 days after ingestion, just one joint was very dangerous; inferring that the long range view of what these THC metabolites eventually could do to the human race could not even be guessed and other pseudo-scientific double-talk (e.g., phrases like: "might be," "could mean," "possibly," "perhaps," etc.)*

* "May, might, could, and possibly are not scientific conclusions." Dr. Fred Oerther, M.D., September 1986.

The Facts:

Government's Own Experts Say That Metabolites Are Non-Toxic, Harmless Residue

We interviewed three doctors of national reputation either currently working (or having worked) for the U.S. government on marijuana research:

- Dr. Thomas Ungerlieder, M.D., UCLA, appointed by Richard Nixon in 1969 to the President's Select Committee on Marijuana, re-appointed by Ford, Carter, and Reagan, and currently head of California's "Marijuana Medical Program;"

- Dr. Donald Tashkin, UCLA, M.D., for the last 29 years the U.S. government's and the world's leading marijuana researcher on pulmonary functions; and

- Dr. Tod Mikuriya, M.D., former national administrator and grant distributor of the U.S. government's marijuana research programs in the late 1960s.

In effect these doctors said that the active ingredients in THC are used-up in the first or second pass through the liver. The leftover THC metabolites then attach themselves, in a very normal way, to fatty deposits, for the body to dispose of later, which is a safe and perfectly natural process.

Many chemicals from foods, herbs, and medicines do this same thing all the time in your body. Most are not dangerous and THC metabolites show less toxic* potential than virtually any known metabolic leftovers in your body!

* The U.S. government has also known since 1946 that the oral dose of cannabis required to kill a mouse is about 40,000 times the dose required to produce typical symptoms of intoxication. (Mikuriya, Tod, Marijuana Medical Papers, 1976; Loewe, journal of Pharmacological and Experimental Therapeutics, October, 1946.)

THC metabolites left in the body can be compared to the ash of a cigarette: The inert ingredient left over after the active cannabinoids have been metabolized by the body. These inert metabolites are what urinary analysis studies show when taken to discharge military or factory or athletic personnel for using, or being in the presence of cannabis within the last 30 days.

Lung Damage Studies

The Hype:

More Harmful Than Tobacco

According to the American Lung Association, cigarettes and tobacco smoking related diseases kill more than 430,000 Americans every year. Fifty million Americans smoke, and 3,000 teens start each day. The Berkeley carcinogenic tar studies of the late 1970s concluded that "marijuana is one-and-a-half times more carcinogenic than tobacco."

The Fact:

Not One Documented Case of Cancer

There are lung irritants involved in any smoke. Cannabis smoke causes mild irritation to the large airways of the lungs. Symptoms disappear when smoking is discontinued.

However, unlike tobacco smoke, cannabis smoke does not cause any changes in the small airways, the area where tobacco smoke causes long term and permanent damage. Additionally, a tobacco smoker will smoke 20 to 60 cigarettes a day, while a heavy marijuana smoker may smoke five to seven joints a day, even less when potent high-quality flower tops are available.

While tens of millions of Americans smoke pot regularly, cannabis has never caused a known case of lung cancer as of December 1997, according to America's foremost lung expert, Dr. Donald Tashkin of UCLA. He considers the biggest health risk to the lungs would be a person smoking 16 or more "large" spliffs a day of leaf/bud because of the hypoxia of too much smoke and not enough oxygen.

Tashkin feels there is no danger for anyone to worry about potentiating emphysema "in any way" by the use of marijuana totally the opposite of tobacco.

Cannabis is a complex, highly evolved plant. There are some 400 compounds in its smoke. Of these, 60 are presently known to have therapeutic value.

Cannabis may also be eaten, entirely avoiding the irritating effects of smoke. However, four times more of the active ingredients of smoked cannabis are absorbed by the human body than when the same amount is eaten. And the prohibition inflated price of black market cannabis, combined with harsh penalties for cultivation, prevent most persons from being able to afford the luxury of a less efficient, though healthier, means of ingestion.

Lab Studies Fail to Reflect the Real World

Studies have proven that many of the carcinogens in cannabis can be removed by using a water pipe system. Our government omitted this information and its significance when speaking to the press. At the same time politicians outlawed the sale of water pipes, labeling them "drug paraphernalia."

How Rumors Get Started

In 1976, Dr. Tashkin, M.D., UCLA, sent a written report to Dr. Gabriel Nahas at the Rheims, France, Conference on "Potential Cannabis Medical Dangers." That report became the most sensationalized story to come out of this negative world conference on cannabis.

This surprised Tashkin, who had sent the report to the Rheims conference as an afterthought.

What Tashkin reported to the Rheims conference was that only one of the 29 pulmonary areas of the human lung studied the large air passageway Did he find marijuana to be more of an irritant (by 15 times) than tobacco. This figure is insignificant, however, since Tashkin also notes that tobacco has almost no effect on this area. Therefore, 15 times almost nothing is still almost nothing. in any event, cannabis has a positive or neutral effect in most other areas of the lung. (See Chapter 7, "Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis.")

(Tashkin, Dr. Donald, UCLA studies, 1969-83; UCLA Pulmonary Studies, 1969-95.)

Afterwards in 1977, the U.S. government resumed funding for ongoing cannabis pulmonary studies which it had cut two years earlier when Tashkin reported encouraging therapeutic results with marijuana/lung studies. But now the government limited funding only to research to the large air passageway.

We have interviewed Dr. Tashkin dozens of times. In 1986 I asked him about an article he was preparing for the New England Journal of Medicine, indicating that cannabis smoke caused as many or more pre-cancerous lesions as tobacco in "equal" amounts.

Most people do not realize, nor are the media told, that any tissue abnormality (abrasion, eruption, or even redness) is called a pre-cancerous lesion. Unlike lesions caused by tobacco, the THC-related lesions contain no radioactivity.

We asked Tashkin how many persons had gone on to get lung cancer in these or any other studies of long-term cannabis-only smokers (Rastas, Coptics, etc.)

Sitting in his UCLA laboratory, Dr. Tashkin looked at me and said, "That's the strange part. So far no one we've studied has gone on to get lung cancer."

"Was this reported to the press?"

"Well, it's in the article," Dr. Tashkin said. "But no one in the press even asked. They just assumed the worst." His answer to us was still that not one single case of lung cancer in someone who only smoked cannabis, has ever been reported. It should be remembered that he and other doctors had predicted 20 years ago, their certainty that hundreds of thousands of marijuana smokers would by now (1997) have developed lung cancer.

Another Fact:

Emphysema Suffers Benefit

During a later interview, Tashkin congratulated me on the tip I'd given him that marijuana used for emphysema produced good results among persons we knew.

He laughed at me originally, because he had presumed that marijuana aggravated emphysema, but after reviewing his evidence found that, except in the rarest of cases, marijuana was actually of great benefit to emphysema suffers due to the opening and dilation of the bronchial passages.

And so the relief reported to us by cannabis smoking emphysema patients was confirmed.

Marijuana smoke is not unique in its benefits to the lungs. Yerba Santa, Colt's foot, Horehound, and other herbs have traditionally been smoked to help the lungs.

Tobacco and its associated dangers have so prejudiced persons against "smoking" that most persons believe cannabis smoking to be as or more dangerous than tobacco. With research banned, these public health and safety facts are not readily available.

In December 1997, we asked Dr. Tashkin again, and he unequivocably stated that "marijuana does not cause or potentiate emphysema in any way." In addition, there has not been one case of lung cancer ever attributed to smoking cannabis.

. . . And So On

Most of the anti-marijuana literature we have examined does not cite as much as one single source for us to review. Others only refer to DEA or NIDA. The few studies we have been able to track down usually end up being anecdotal case histories, artificial groupings of data, or otherwise lacking controls and never replicated.

Reports of breast enlargement, obesity, addiction, and the like all remain unsubstantiated, and are given little credence by the scientific community. Other reports, like the temporary reduction in sperm count, are statistically insignificant to the general public, yet get blown far out of proportion when presented by the media. Still others, like the handful of throat tumors in the Sacramento area and the high rate of injuries reported in a Baltimore trauma unit are isolated clusters that run contrary to all other statistics and have never been replicated.

The spurious results of Heath, Nahas, and the pregnant mice and monkey studies at Temple University and UC Davis (where they injected mice with synthetic third-cousin analogues of THC) are now discredited in the body of scientific and medical literature.

Though these studies are not used in scientific discourse, mountains of DEA and pharmaceutical company-sponsored literature about the long-term possible effects of these metabolites on the brain and reproduction still goes to parent groups as if they were brand new studies. This disinformation is still very much alive in U.S. government, DEA, DARE, and PDFA reports.

(Read the 1982 N.I.H.; the National Academy of Science's evaluation on past studies; and the Costa Rica report, 1980.) No Harm to Human Brain or Intelligence Hemp has been used in virtually all societies since time immemorial as a work motivator and to highlight and renew creative energies.

Nahas' Prescription for Bloated Police Budgets

Incredibly, a famous study which found that cannabis reduces tumors (see Chapter 7), was originally ordered by the Federal Government on the premise that pot would hurt the immune system. This was based on the "Reefer Madness" studies done by the disreputable Dr. Gabriel Nahas of Columbia University in 1972.

This is the same Dr. Nahas who claimed his studies showed pot created chromosome, testosterone (male hormone) damage, and countless other horrible effects which suggested the breaking down of the immune system. Nahas' background is in the OSS/CIA and later the U.S. where he worked closely with Lyndon LaRouche and Kurt Waldheim.

In 1998, Nahas is still the darling favorite of the DEA and NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) yet no anti-marijuana studies of Nahas' have every been replicated in countless other research attempts. Columbia University specifically disassociated itself from Nahas' marijuana research in a specially called press conference in 1975!

Old, discredited Nahas studies are still trotted out by the Drug Enforcement Administration today and deliberately given to unknowledgeable parents' groups, churches, and PTAs as valid research regarding the evils of pot.

The dissemination of Nahas'* dangerous horror stories is paid for with your tax dollars, even years after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1976 specifically forbade Nahas from getting another penny of U.S. government money for cannabis studies because of his embarrassing research in the early 1970s.

* Nahas, in December 1983, under ridicule from his peers and a funding cut-off from NIDA renounced all his old THC metabolite build-up and unique chromosome Petri dish tissue damage studies, conclusions, and extrapolations.

Yet the DEA, NIDA, VISTA, the "War on Drugs," and now-deceased writer Peggy Mann (in Reader's Digest articles and her book Marijuana Alert, with foreword by Nancy Reagan) have used these discredited studies on parents' groups such as Parents for a Drug Free Youth, etc., often with Nahas as a highly paid guest lecturer, without a word of how his studies are really considered by this peers.

This, we assume, is done to scare parents, teachers, legislators and judges, using scientific terminology and bogus non-clinical statistics, ultimately aimed at selling more urine-testing equipment. Therefore, more profits are created for the drug-rehabilitation clinics and their staffs of professionals; and to maintain funding for the DEA, local police, judicial, penal, corrections and other government pork barrel, police state interests.

The "War on Drugs" is big money, so the shameless petitioning for more police and more jail cells continues. And we still have thousands of judges, legislators, police, Reader's Digest readers, and parents who have for years used and cited Nahas' studies in particular as the prime reasons to continue these unjust laws and to jail millions of Americans over the last decade.

The DEA, after Nahas' 1983 waffling renouncement, consciously and criminally continues to use his studies to polarize ignorant judges, politicians, press, and parent groups, who are unaware of Nahas' denouncement. These groups trust the government to tell them the truth their tax dollars paid for. Most of the media, press, and television commentators still use Nahas' 1970s, unreplicated studies as gospel, and much of the frightening folklore and street myths that are whispered around school yards spring from the deceitful "scientist's" work.

Refuted and never replicated results are still taught, while the honest researcher faces prison if he attempts to test any thoughts about the medical use of cannabis.

In fact, using Nahas' refuted and unreplicated synthetic THC Petri dish studies on the immune system, hysterical Families for Drug Free Youth, or "Just Say No" organizations have gotten the press to say marijuana could cause AIDS - which has no basis whatsoever, but the press published all this rhetoric creating more Reefer Madness!

Gabriel Nahas, in 1998, is living in Paris and goes around Europe teaching as gospel the same old lies to less informed Europeans. When asked to debate us (H.E.M.P.) on cannabis before the world press on June 18, 1993 in Paris, he first enthusiastically accepted until he found out that we would be speaking on all aspects of the hemp plant (e.g. paper, fiber, fuel, medicine). Then he declined, even though we met all of his requirements.

Radioactive Tobacco: The Untold Story

Tobacco smoking kills more persons each year than AIDS, heroin, crack, cocaine, alcohol, car accidents, fire, and murder combined. Cigarette smoking is as addictive as heroin, complete with withdrawal symptoms, and the percentage of relapses (75%) is the same as for "kicking" cocaine and heroin users.

It is far and away the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S. today. Tobacco smokers have ten times the lung cancer of non-smokers, twice the heart disease, and are three times more likely to die of heart disease if they do develop it. Yet tobacco is totally legal, and even receives the highest U.S. government farm subsidies of any agricultural product in America, all the while being our biggest killer! What total hypocrisy!

In the U.S. one in seven deaths are caused by smoking cigarettes. Women should know that lung cancer is more common than breast cancer in women who smoke and that smoking on the pill increases cancer and heart risks dramatically.

Seven million dollars a day promotes the tobacco business, and it is estimated that the cigarette industry needs about 3,000 new smokers a day to replace those who quit or die each day from smoking.

Kentucky's principal business and agriculture for 100 years (until 1890) was the healthful, versatile, and useful cannabis hemp. It has since been replaced by non-edible, non-fibrous, soil-depleting tobacco, which is grown in soil fertilized with radioactive materials.

U.S. government studies have show that a pack-and-a-half of tobacco cigarettes per day over a year for just one year is the equivalent to your lungs of what some 300 chest x-rays (using the old, pre-1980s slow x-ray film and without using any lead protection) are to your skin. But while an x-ray dissipates its radioactivity instantly, tobacco has a radioactive half-life that will remain active in the lungs for 21.5 years.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said on national television that radioactivity contained in tobacco leaves is probably responsible for most tobacco-related cancer. No radioactivity exists in cannabis tars.

(National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1964; American Lung Assn.; Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza, U. of Mass. Medical Center; Reader's Digest, March 1986; Surg. Gen. C. Everett Koop, 1990.)

Some Studies the Feds Don't Talk About

The Coptic Study (1981)

No Harm to Human Brain or Intelligence

Hemp has been used in virtually all societies since time immemorial as a work motivator and to highlight and renew creative energies.

(Jamaican Studies; Coptic Studies; Costa Rican Studies; Vedas; Dr. Vera Rubin, Research Institute for the Study of Man; et al)

In 1981, a study showed that 10 of American's heaviest pot smokers (from the Coptic religion and residing in Florida) actually believed that using 16 huge high potency spliffs* a day had improved their minds somewhat over a period of 10 years.

They were studied by Drs. Ungerlieder and Shaeffer (UCLA) and who showed absolutely no brain differences between them and non-smokers nor did it confirm any increase in IQ that the Coptics had claimed.

* One spliff is generally equal to five average American joints.

Longer Life, Fewer Wrinkles

Most studies (matched populations, past and present) indicate that everything else being equal an average American pot smoker will live longer than his counterpart who does no drugs at all; with fewer wrinkles, and generally less stress thereby having fewer illnesses to upset the immune system, and being a more peaceful neighbor.

(Costa Rican and Jamaican Studies)

Jamaican Studies

(1968-74, 1975)

Definite Benefits For Marijuana Smokers

The most exhaustive study of hemp smoking in its natural setting is probably Ganja in Jamaica A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use by Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas (1975; Mouton & Co., The Hague, Paris/Anchor Books, NY).

The Jamaican study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse, was the first project in medical anthropology to be undertaken and is the first intensive, multi-disciplinary study of marijuana use and users to be published.

From the Jamaican Study introduction: "Despite its illegality, ganja use is pervasive, and duration and frequency are very high; it is smoked over a longer period in heavier quantities with greater THC potency than in the U.S. without deleterious social or psychological consequences. The major difference is that both use and expected behaviours are culturally conditioned and controlled by well established tradition." "No impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual-motor performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style and test of memory."

Positive Social Attitudes

The study outlines the positive reinforcement given socially to ganja smokers in Jamaica, the universal praise for the practice among users, who smoke it as a work motivator.

Subjects described the effects of smoking making them "brainier", lively, merry, more responsible and conscious. They reported it was good for meditation and concentration, and created an general sense of well-being and self-assertiveness.

No Link to Criminal Behavior

Vera Rubin and her colleagues found no relation of cannabis to crime (except marijuana busts), no impairment of motor skills, and smokers and non-smokers alike had identical extroversion scores with no difference in work records or adjustment. Heavy use of ganja was not found to curtail the motivation to work.

From the psychological assessment the smokers seemed to be more open in their expressions of feeling, somewhat more carefree, and somewhat more distractable. There was no evidence of organic brain damage or schizophrenia.

No Physiological Deterioration

Marilyn Bowman, in a battery of psychological tests on chronic cannabis users in Jamaica in 1972, found "no impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual-motor performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability and cognitive style and tests of memory." These Jamaicans had smoked anywhere from six to 31 years (16.6 mean average) and the average age at the first puff was at 12 years and six months.

In the 1975 study between users and non-users, no difference was found in plasma testosterone, no difference in total nutrition, slightly higher performance on the intelligence sub-tests (not statistically significant), and "a basic measure of cell-mediated immunity was no less vigorous in the users."

Finally, "Users in our matched pair sample smoked marijuana in addition to as many tobacco cigarettes as did their partners. Yet their airways were, if anything, a bit healthier than their matches."

"We must tentatively conclude either that marijuana has no harmful effects on such passages or that it actually offers some slight protection against the harmful effects of tobacco smoke. Only further research will clarify which, if either, is the case."

No "Stepping Stone"/Gateway Effect

As to the stepping-stone or gateway drug charges leveled against cannabis: "The use of hard drugs is as yet virtually unknown among working class Jamaicans no one in the study (Rubin's) had ever taken any narcotics, stimulants, hallucinogens, barbiturates or sleeping pills."

In America during the late 1800s cannabis was used in treating addiction. Opiate, chloral hydrate, and alcohol addicts were successfully treated with potent cannabis extracts. Some patients recovered with less than a dozen doses of cannabis extract.1 Likewise, smoking cannabis has been found to be valuable in modern alcohol addiction treatment.2

Costa Rican Study (1980)

The Jamaican results were largely confirmed by another Carribean study, the 1980 Cannabis in Costa Ricah - A Study in Chronic Marijuana Use edited by William Carter for the Institute for Study of Human Issues. (ISHI, 3401 Science Center, Philadelphia.)

Again researchers found no palpable damage to the native population's chronic cannabis smokers. Alcoholic social problems, so evident on neighboring cannabis-free islands, are not found in Costa Rica.

This study makes clear that socially approved ganja use will largely replace or mitigate the use of alcohol (rum) if available.

The Amsterdam Model

Since adopting a policy of tolerance and non-prosecution of cannabis/hashish smokers (it is available in cafes and bars) and rehabilitation and diversion programs for hard drug users, Holland has seen a substantial reduction in cannabis consumption among teenagers2 and a 33% drop in the number of heroin addicts. The strategy of separating cannabis sales from hard drug dealers by bringing pot above-ground has been quite successful. (L.A. Times, August 1989). In 1998, despite constant pressure from the U.S. government and the DEA, the Dutch government has totally refused to recriminalize marijuana!

Footnotes:

1. "Cannabis Indica as an Anodyne and Hypnotic," J.B. Mattison, M.D., The St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. LVI, no. 5, Nov. 1891, pg 265-271, reprinted in Marijuana: The Medical Papers, Tod Mikuriya, M.D.

2. "Cannabis Substitution: An Adjunctive Therapeutic Tool in the Treatment of Alcoholism," Tod H. Mikuriya, M.D., Medical Times, vol. 98, no. 4, April, 1970, reprinted in Marijuana Medical Papers, Tod Mikuriya, M.D.)

More Prohibitionist Deceptions

Scientific American reported in 1990: "The alarming statistics, cited by testing advocates, to demonstrate the high costs of drug abuse . . . do not always accurately reflect the research on which they are based. In fact, some of the data could be used to 'prove' that drug use has negligible or even beneficial effects." (March 1990, page 18)

One of the examples given is the often cited statistic former president George Bush utlized in 1989: "Drug abuse among American workers costs businesses anywhere from $60 billion to $100 billion a year in lost productivity, absenteeism, drug-related accidents, medical claims and theft." Yet according to a 1989 assessment by NIDA, all such claims derive from a single study that grew out of a 1982 survey of 3,700 households.

The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) found that households where at least one person admitted having used marijuana regularly reported average incomes 28% lower than average reported income of otherwise similar households. RTI researchers ascribed the income difference to "loss due to marijuana use."

RTI then extrapolated costs of crime, health problems and accidents to arrive at a "cost to society of drug abuse" of $47 billion. The White House "adjusted" for inflation and population increases to provide the basis for Bush's statement.

Yet the RTI survey also included questions about current drug use. The answers revealed no significant difference between income levels of households with current users of illegal drugs, including cocaine and heroin, and other households.

Thus the same statistics "prove" that current use of hard drugs does not result in any "loss," in contrast to a single marijuana binge in the distant past!

Official Corruption: Carlton Turner

In all the research this author has done about the misapplication of public funds and trusts, nothing, it seems, compares with the either totally ignorant or willful manslaughter of fellow Americans by the bureaucrats and politicians of the following story:

One Man & His Drug Scams

The U.S. government policy, starting in the Nixon and Ford administrations and continuing under Carlton Turner* (Drug Czar under Reagan 1981-1986), allowed federal medical marijuana, supplied to the individual state marijuana medical programs, to consist only of the leaf of the marijuana plant, even though it's usually only one-third as strong as the bud and doesn't contain the same whole spectrum of the "crude drug," i.e. the THC and CBNs.

* Prior to becoming Special White Hose Advisor (read: National Drug Czar) Carlton Turner, from 1971 to 1980, was the head of all U.S. government marijuana grown for drugs by reason of his position at the University of Mississippi. The U. of Mississippi Marijuana Research Program is directed by state charter to discover initiate or sort out the constituents of Thc a "simple" crude cannabis drug that works as a medicine then synthesize the substances with beneficial medicinal properties to attain their full potential for pharmaceutical companies.

For example, the leaf's relief of ocular pressure for glaucoma patients is much shorter lasting and therefore unsatisfactory, compared to the bud. Also, the leaf sometimes gives smokers a headache. The federal government until 1986 used only the leaf. Turner said to the pharmaceutical companies and in interview, that leaf is all Americans would ever get although the bud works better. Still today in 1999, the seven legal marijuana users in the U.S. only get leaf, branch, and bud chopped up and rolled together. Although buds work better for chemotherapy, glaucoma, etc., the branches can be as toxic as smoking wood.

Turner said, in 1986, that natural marijuana will "never" be given as a medicine and, as of April 1998, it still hasn't. (Except in California, where citizens successfully voted, in November 1996, to overrule the federal government on medical marijuana!)

The Reasons Given:

- Buds are too hard to roll through a cigarette machine. (Forget the 25 million Americans who do quite well at rolling bud everyday.)

- By extracting compounds from the "crude drug" of the bud, there would be no pharmaceutical patents, therefore no profits. Therefore, his program would have worked against his former employers, the Mississippi University's legislative charter and funding.

(Interviews by Ed Rosenthal for High Times Magazine; Dean Latimer, et al; National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.)

Although buds work better for chemotherapy, glaucoma, etc., Turner said they will "never" be given. It also became evident the famous marijuana 'munchies' (appetite stimulation) were not working for the cancer chemotherapy patients using federal leaf.

And even though no studies have been allowed to compare leaf with bud, we know of doctors who unofficially recommended bud and watch their wasting cancer patients put on weight (NORML).

Poisoning Pot Smokers

In August and September, 1983, Turner went on national television to justify the illegal marijuana spraying (by plane) of paraquat in Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee by the DEA. He said it would teach a lesson to any kid who died from paraquat-poisoned pot. Turner was forced to resign after announcing his conclusions in public that marijuana caused homosexuality, the breakdown of the immune system, and, therefore, AIDS.

Looking into the therapeutic potential of cannabis is the most controlled and discouraged research, but any tests pursuing negative or harmful effects of cannabis are promoted. Since these tests often backfire or are inconclusive, even this research is rare.

Turner quoted "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" to show how jazz (rock) singers are eroding the America "he" loves with this hallucinogenic drug marijuana! Which he meant to stamp out.

Phony Paraquat Kits

During the 1978 Mexican marijuana paraquat scare, and while still a private citizen working for the state of Mississippi marijuana farm, this same Carlton Turner called High Times magazine to advertise a paraquat tester. Unknown to Turner, High Times was not accepting ads for any paraquat testers because all evidence showed the testers didn't work.

Dean Latimer then a High Times associate editor, strung Turner along in virtually daily phone conversations for a month, listening to Turner talk about how much money Turner was going to make from sales of the device.

High Times wanted to see a sample. When Turner delivered his prototype version of the paraquat test kit to High Times, it was a total "Rube Goldberg" type rip-off, "just like the dozen or so phony kits other companies tried to buy ad space for at this time," wrote Latimer in an article published in 1984.

Turner apparently never thought High Times was ethical enough to check the contraption out. He assumed they would just take the ad money and run print the ad and make Turner rich.

He didn't care if some kid died or was bilked out of money believing in his bogus paraquat test kit.

After this attempted mail fraud, this man became President Reagan's national drug czar in 1981, recommended by George Bush and Nancy Reagan.

A Wanton Disregard For Life

Turner even said that he doesn't even care if hundreds of kids die from smoking pot the federal government has deliberately sprayed with paraquat.

Then at the April 25, 1985, PRIDE conference in Atlanta, Georgia, with Nancy Reagan and 16 foreign First Ladies in attendance (including Imelda Marcos), Turner called for the death penalty for drug dealers.

Turner was, after all, Reagan's, Bush's, and the pharmaceutical companies' own hired gun, who saw his entire mission as not against heroin, PCP, or cocaine, but to wipe out pot and jazz/rock music.

Carlton Turner was forced to resign after Newsweek magazine excoriated him October 27, 1986, in a large editorial sidebar. His resignation was a foregone conclusion after being lampooned in the Washington Post and elsewhere as no other public figure in recent memory for his conclusions (in public addresses) that marijuana smoking caused homosexuality, the breakdown of the immune system, and, therefore, AIDS.

He resigned December 16, 1986. What should have been front page headline news was buried in the back pages during the Iran-contra scandal that exploded that week.

Urine Testing Company

After his resignation, Turner joined with Robert DuPont and former head of NIDA, Peter Bensinger, to corner the market on urine testing. They contracted as advisors to 250 of the largest corporations to develop drug diversion, detection, and urine testing programs.

Soon after Turner left office, Nancy Reagan recommended that no corporation be permitted to do business with the Federal government without having a urine purity policy in place to show their loyalty.

Just as G. Gordon Liddy went into high-tech corporate security after his disgrace, Carlton Turner became a rich man in what has now become a huge growth industry: urine-testing.

This kind of business denies the basic rights of privacy, self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment) rights, unreasonable search and seizure, and the presumption of innocence (until proven guilty).

Submission to the humiliation of having your most private body parts and functions observed by a hired voyeur is now the test of eligibility for private employment, or to contract for a living wage.

Turner's new money-making scheme demands that all other Americans relinquish their fundamental right to privacy and self-respect.

Bush Strikes Again

President Ronald Reagan, at the urging of then Vice President George Bush, appointed Carlton Turner as the White House Drug (czar) Advisor in 1981.

At conventions (1981-1986) of pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyist the American Chemical Manufacturers, Turner promised to continue the research ban on the 400 chemical compounds of cannabis.

Bush managed to continue to direct this effort, simply by not allowing any grants for private or public research with a positive implication to be issued by NIDA or NIH, or approved any recent FDA applications unless they pursued negative results. As of this writing (July 1998) President Clinton's policy has remained the same.

Comparison to Alcohol

There are many terrible drug habits. The worst of which is alcohol, in both numbers of users and the anti-social behavior associated with extreme use. Alcoholism is the leading cause of teen-age deaths: 8,000 American teenagers are killed each year and 40,000 are maimed from mixing alcohol and driving. (MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving; SADD, Students Against Drunk Driving; NIDA, National Institute on Drug Abuse, etc.)

In fact, U.S. government/police statistics confirm the following strange numbers:

The mortality figure for alcohol use are 100,000 annually, compared with zero marijuana deaths in 10,000 years of consumption.

From 40-50% of all murders and highway fatalities are alcohol related. In fact, highway fatalities that are alcohol related might be as high as 90%, according to the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times.

Alcohol is also indicated in the majority (69-80%) of all child rape/incest cases; wife beating incidents are in great majority (60-80%) alcohol influenced.

Heroin is indicated in 35% of burglaries, robberies, armed robberies, bank robberies, grand theft auto, etc.

And there were more than 600,000 arrests for simple marijuana possession in the U.S. in 1997 (up from 400,000 in 1992), according to the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[User]

The Emperor's New Clothes

Alternatives to Prohibition

In conclusion, we see that the government's case against marijuana is woven of transparent lies. In this chapter, we bring to light some research that the government does not like the people to know about. Then we talk about some realistic alternatives.

But first, a brief fable:

The Story of the Emperor's New Clothes

There once was a very very vain and terrible King/Emperor who heavily taxed his subjects in order to pay for his incredibly fine wardrobe made from the most expensive clothing.

One day, two swindlers, representing themselves as great tailors from afar, arrived and sought an audience with the Emperor. They told of an amazing new fabric they had invented, made of a very expensive gold fiber that only the best, purest, and wisest of people could see. Excited, the Emperor asked to see a sample, and the men brought forth an empty spool. "Ah, isn't it lovely?" they asked the Emperor.

The Emperor agreed, afraid to admit that he did not see anything because that would mean he was a dull and stupid person.

So, to test his ministers, the Emperor brought them all in to get their opinions. Once the power of the fabric was explained to them, all agreed that this was, indeed, the finest and most beautiful cloth in the world.

The vain Emperor ordered a new outfit be made for him, so the phony tailors took his measurements. The Emperor ordered the gold from the treasury be given to the supposed tailors to be spun into thread. They set about at once working day after day, pretending to cut and sew, while the Emperor and his ministers periodically came by to admire their handiwork and to pay the enormous bills the merchants were running up in the course of their activities.

Finally, the big day came when all the people in the land were ordered gathered to see the Emperor's new outfit, which they had paid so much for and heard so much about.

When he nakedly strode forth, all the people looked in disbelief and said nothing. Then they sang the praises of the miraculous new cloth. "It's the most beautiful work I've ever seen!" "Magnificent!" "I wish I had such lovely fabric!" They all cheered, afraid of being denounced and called stupid and impure if they did otherwise.

And the Emperor proudly paraded in front of his subjects, secretly worried afraid that he would lose the crown if the people knew that he, himself, could not see the cloth that draped his body.

Until he passed through the crowd, a small boy perched on his father's shoulder, in his innocence cried out, "But the Emperor has nothing on!"

"Just hear what the innocent says!" said the father. And each person whispered to another what the child had said. The word spread throughout his subjects what the little boy had said.

Then, everyone knew that the Emperor and all his ministers had been tricked by swindlers. Now his guards and ministers, as well as the people, realized that the swindlers had not only tricked the Emperor, but he, the Emperor, had spent all their tax money, wasted on this farce.

The Emperor heard the people murmuring. He knew they were right, but he was too proud to admit he was wrong and had been made the fool. So he drew himself up to his full height and stared down at his guards, until he caught one guard's eye.

The guard, looking around nervously, realizing this vain Emperor could have him imprisoned or even beheaded, averted his eyes and looked down at the ground. Then another guard, seeing that he wasn't laughing anymore, got scared and lowered his eyes to the ground, too. Soon, all the guards, ministers, and even the children pretending to carry his invisible train of gold cloth, were staring at the ground.

The people, seeing the ministers and guards, who a moment ago were laughing at the Emperor with them, now staring at the ground, quaking in their boots, stopped laughing and quickly bowed their heads as well.

The little boy who had first exclaimed that the Emperor was naked, seeing all the grown-ups around him, and even his father, completely scared and subdued, bowed his head in fear!

Then the Emperor, pulling himself up to his full height, announced to his subjects, as he marched proudly through his kingdom, "Who is to say that these are not the very finest clothes of all?" The Emperor held his head high and looked down his nose at the crowd determined to save his royal face from public humiliation. The Emperor continued his procession acting as though he were oblivious to his nakedness, and his ministers held the train of his invisible cloak higher than ever. The people looked on in disbelief and did nothing as the Emperor and his ministers kept marching down the street parading their naked ignorance.

* Paraphrased from Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tale.

The Moral of the Story is:

We cannot simply call the Emperor (U.S. government) on his (its) acts of deceit and manipulation of fact. His guards (FBI, CIA, DEA, etc.) are far too powerful. His fear of shameful discovery so great he ceaselessly uses his power (through funding much of the United Nation's and the world's anti-drug crusades) to buy allegiance through bribery and intimidation (foreign aid, arms sales, etc.).

Those American citizens who would dare speak out against this tyranny are often slandered as "druggies" or "dopers" and may be threatened with the loss of their jobs, income, families, and property. To win, we must drive a stake through the heart of (the U.S. government's/DEA's) lies, over and over and over again by hammering at them relentlessly with hard-core facts to defeat the evil of this hard-hearted Emperor (unjust cannabis laws) and even imprison these perpetrators, if necessary, to set our people free!

The Logical Analogy

We contend that America's marijuana/hemp laws are like the Emperor's clothes! Like tyrants and prohibitionists in the past, this Emperor relies on brute force, intimidation, fear, and a police state to maintain his authoritarian, despotic reign while draining the federal treasury and dismantling all vestiges of the Bill of Rights while imprisoning innocent souls.

Our great country was founded on the principles that each person has "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that each person has the responsibility of maintaining these rights by casting her or his individual ballot.

It is a criminal offense for officials or executives of the U.S. government to direct or conspire to wage a deliberate campaign of misinformation, omission of fact, and outright lies with our tax dollars.

On the subject of cannabis, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and now even Bill Clinton, have acted the part of the Emperor. We might add that Nancy Reagan has acted the part of the evil and ruthless Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland who decreed, "Sentence now verdict later!"

Past and present Drug Czars Carlton Turner, William Bennett, Bill Martinez, Lee Brown, and now General Barry McCaffrey acting the parts of the Emperor's advisors, have all upheld the fallacy of the "pure fabric that only the purest eyes may see," woven for them originally by Anslinger/DuPont/Hearst and their malevolent police-state bureaucrats. Now it is co-maintained by energy, pharmaceutical, alcohol/beer companies, drug rehab professionals, drug testers, police, prison guards, and prison builders all with enormous financial interests and police-state motives.

When agents of the U.S. government deliberately act or conspire this way be they President, Vice President, National Drug Czar, head of the DEA, FBI, or CIA they should be imprisoned. And in an honest American society, they would be held accountable for the 14 million years they've already sentenced so many Americans for the "crime" of pot.

Our Federal bureaucracies and the U.S. Supreme Court are rapidly chipping away at our freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights (written on hemp paper). Hemp/marijuana has become their principal excuse for taking away our guaranteed Constitutional rights more so than all other crimes, police actions, insurgencies, strikes, uprisings, and wars in the last 200 years combined! And the loss basic freedoms is even worse in our satellite Central and South American countries, where their leaders have acted at America's official behest.

What does it mean to drive a plant species to extinction? Who will forgive us if we allow these greedy tyrants to destroy America and perhaps life on Earth?

At coffee shops like the Bulldog Palace in Amsterdam, one can quietly ponder these issues as you smoke your choice from a wide selection of marijuana and hashish samples.

In Conclusion:

Truth or Consequences of Prohibition

When DuPont tells you that they bring "Better Living Through Chemistry", they don't tell you that it's only for 100 years, then the entire planet dies for their profit.

England and Holland treat their substance abusers as human beings keeping them supplied with enough affordable medicants so they don't disrupt the activities of others. Such policies allow them to lead otherwise productive and normal lives. These policies are now firmly established, effective, and popular in those countries. In the mid-1900s, Switzerland began its own experiments in localized tolerance of public drug use.

When the Swiss tried, in 1997, to recriminalize cannabis with a ballot initiative, it lost by 79% of the vote!

So, why should otherwise peaceful hemp/marijuana growers and users be labeled and persecuted as lifetime criminals while 35% of all robberies and burglaries are committed by heroin and alcohol addicts, 40-55% of murders, rapes, and highway fatalities are alcohol related* and heroin is more available in jail than on the streets? Yet cannabis users statistically have the same or lower incidents of crime and violence as the non-cannabis-using population as a whole.

* FBI Statistics, 1993, 1996.

In fact, aside from cannabis usage, take the mob and the dealers out of heroin and other drugs and you reduce as much as 80% of non-alcohol related crime. As a direct example, throughout the "Roaring Twenties" era of alcohol prohibition, the murder rate rose consistently, then dropped every year for the next 10 following prohibition's 1933 repeal.* * FBI Statistics.

Let's find another way to deal with drug usage or be prepared for continued exponential erosion of our freedoms, including the rigths of self-expression, public debate, and a free press, including books and songs.

Accept the fact that all drug-related crime ends if you treat addicts and users instead of removing them from society. Help tem, educate and encourage them be financially productive.

In 1999, the top priority of the U.S. government, Newt Gingrich and most of the Republican Party is to try to enact legislation that will automatically take away 100% of all citizens' rights to privacy and freedom from unwarranted search as if the drug war were a true state of emergency in order to further their fascistic, police, and prison-state agenda.

High-Tech Repression

In order for America to be marijuana free, all of us, smokers and non-smokers alike, will have to give up our Bill of Rights forever! You will have to conform to the likes of Lyndon LaRouche, Jerry Falwell, Nancy Reagan, Edwin Meese, William Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and minds of that ridiculous ilk. Each, in their smug ignorance, contributing to the permanent poisoning of the Earth while trying with all their might to completely annihilate the one thing that can save us: hemp.

The computer, that great boon to humankind, will ironically allow the police to finish, today, the job the Roman Catholic Church's Inquisition started (see Chapter 10: Dark Ages) because the church could not stand the "commoners" laughing at them, or knowing the secrets of, among other things, hygiene, astronomy, and hemp. Using computers, the pot police can peer into an individual's family background, his or her sales receipts, income taxes, and so forth to enable them to blackmail and/or bribe Americans as well as detroy their politicians, judges, and other VIPs by exposing issues like their private sex lives or personal drug use.

For example, the son of Clinton's former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, was systematically and perpetually badgered, over six months, by his friend (who had been previously busted and forced to work undercover for the DEA, specifically to set up young Elders) to get him to purchase a small amount of cocaine for himself. Elder's son, who had never been known to deal, consistently refused, but eventually gave in to the friend's constant pressure.

The government revealed the information about this transaction to no one for another six months until they could use it to directly blackmail Surgeon General Elders into recanting her soft stance on medical cannabis. Instead, refusing to be silenced, Elders resigned. With such blatantly underhanded tactics, the DEA is daily bringing us closer to Orwell's 1984 nightmare.

A postscript: as of this writing, young Elders is still appealing his case on grounds of entrapment.

Wasting our Tax Money

Approximately 50% of all drug enforcement money, federal and state, during the last 60 years has been directed toward marijuana!

Some 70-80% of all persons now in federal and state prisons in America wouldn't have been there as criminals until just 60 or so years ago. In other words we, in our (Anslinger and Hearst inspired) ignorance and prejudice, have placed approximately 800,000 of the 1.2 million people in American prisons (as of August 4, 1998) for crimes that were, at worst, minor habits, up until the Harrison Act, 1914 (whereby the U.S. Supreme Court in 1924 first ruled that drug addicts weren't sick, they were instead vile criminals).

Eighty percent of these government "War on Drugs" victims were not dealing. They have been incarcerated for simple possession. And this does not include the quarter of a million more in county jails.

Remember, just 20 years ago, in 1978, before the "War on Drugs," there were only 300,000 persons in American prisons for all crimes combined.

Some radio and television preachers have added to the hysteria by calling rock music "satanic and voodoo" and associating it with the drug culture. They want to outlaw rock, burn albums and books, and lock up everyone who doesn't agree with them. So does Carlton Turner. So does Lyndon LaRouche. So does William Bennet. So does Lee Brown. So does General Barry McCaffrey.

During the last three generations, Hearst's and Anslinger's propaganda and lies have been relentlessly jammed down Americans' throats as unimpeachable gospel truth resulting in the massive drain on taxpayer's money to build the government's anti-drug machine (see "Fighting the Police State" in the Appendix of the paper version of this book).

And virtually every state is in the midst of the biggest prison expansion ever in America's and the world's history, while political vultures, concerned only for growth of their prison-related industries and job security, demand that we build more prisons and expand tax bases to pursue this "law and order" madness against formerly misdemeanor or even non-existent offenses.

Double Standards

In the 1980s, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist (now Chief Justice) was "nodding off" in Court and sending other druggies to prison for their habits he just kept feeding his "eight-a-day" Placidyl habit. This was the equivalent in dollars, "high," and mental effect of a $70 to $125 a-day street abuser's heroin habit.

Placidyl, a cousin of Quaaludes, is known as a "heavy down," popular on the streets for imparting a very placid feeling in users.

The physical dependency and mental effects of using the legal drugs Placidyl, Dilaudad, Quaaludes, et al., are virtually the same as for the reviled barbiturates, opium, morphine, and heroin. In essence, they disturb the body's "endorphin" (pain-receptors and nullifiers) balance.

Rehnquist, who was said to have used Placidyl far in excess of normal limits, did not rob liquor stores, physically assault his fellow citizens, or commit any of the anti-social behaviors attributed to "junkies."

His habit was easily maintained because the Placidyl was both legally available and within his normal income limits. Placidyl was also well labeled as to purity and frequency of dosage, while persons with outlawed drug habits have to get by on a "dime of tar" (a 10 dollar bag), the purity of which whether 5% or 95%Is unknown and dangerous estimate. The great majority of drug overdoses are caused by unknown, unregulated, and unlabeled purity factor.

The government also acknowledges that 90% or more of overdoses by illegal drugs would probably be avoided with accurate labels and appropriate warnings.

Policies Based on Ignorance

While researching this book over the last 24 years, we talked with and questioned senators, legislators, judges, police, DAs, scientists, historians, Nobel Prize winners, dentists, and MDs. All knew little bits and pieces of the history and uses of cannabis, but virtually no one knew any depth about marijuana in its 360-degree entirety except long-term medical researchers, such as Ungerlieder, Mikuriya, et al; and writers like Ed Rosenthal, Dean Latimer, and Dr. Michael Aldrich, et al.

For example, 15 years ago, at a large California NORML fundraiser in February 1983, we spoke privately with then Senate Majority Whip Tom Rutherford, of New Mexico. He has been a leading pro-marijuana politician for a decade and was, at that time, probably the most knowledgeable elected government representative on the subject of marijuana, in the United States. We asked him why the government didn't just come out and legalize marijuana, especially with everything we knew medically, industrially, and historically about cannabis.

We were shocked when he replied that he was not aware of any argument in favor of the legalization of marijuana, except to end the lunacy of criminalization for at worst a minor act.

So, we enthusiastically outlined the facts and entire history of hemp/marijuana to him, figuring he must have heard some of it before. He sat literally in awe of what he was hearing for the very first time. When we finished speaking, he said, "If I had that knowledge outlined and documented for me as you just told it, the government, police, and judicial system would be through persecuting pot."

"But is it true?" he added

This was in February 1983 and here were America's top pro-pot politicians who literally didn't know enough about hemp to fill a single page of a book, and some left office in the Reagan "just say no" era before having learned enough to publicly support hemp/marijuana.

But now, many do know hemp is potentially the Earth's number-one crop and that the present laws are unjustifiable, and that the government's position on pot is utterly false and can't stand the simple light of truth.

What is the Law?

"All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at." Spinoza, (c. 1660)

To control marijuana is to give up our freedoms, for ourselves, our kids, and our kid's kids, forever.

And that, my friends, is called fascism; and simply put, if the laws on cannabis are not overturned, and if present Earth-destructive practices, such as strip mining, oil drilling, clear-cutting of trees, industrial pollution of waters, and use of pesticides and herbicides are not discontinued, our planet will soon die at the hands of these ignorant (not-knowing and/or evil) politicians who think they have a right to pass more and more Draconian laws to fill more and bigger prisons and jails with some of our most decent citizens. These same politicians portray themselves as being motivated purely out of concern for children. Meanwhile, they promote the massive ongoing environmental poisoning of these same children every day!

But to truly understand why tens of millions of decent Americans are scared silly of pot after 60 years of disinformation that continues to this day, consider the mentality and character of former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (1978-1992), who has admitted to helping direct a program of squashing accurate hemp information and ordering the arrest and harassment of California Marijuana Initiative workers for doing their civic and Constitutional duty to collect petition signatures.

In September 1983, on television and through a police spokesman, Gates called hemp reform advocates "well-intentioned but terribly naive regarding marijuana and [they] really don't know much about it."

In January, 1984, Gates was asked by a parent at a San Fernando Valley, CA, public school, "What can I do if I find out my child has used marijuana?" He replied, "It's too late. Once they've smoked one marijuana cigarette, they are lost to us forever!"*

* These exact words were also used by LA County D.A. Ira Reiner in his 1990 campaign for State Attorney General. He lost.

A few months later, the then-California attorney general, John Van de Kamp, suppressed the August 17, 1990, report by his own advisory panel that called for hemp re-legalization. Gates testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on September 5, 1990, that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot." He held to this position for almost a week, until public outcry for his dismissal* forced him to modify his comment to a call for stricter penalties. Former Drug Czar William Bennett said, "I have no problem with beheading marijuana users, only legal ones (in beheading them)" and one Mississippi legislator said in 1998 that marijuana punishment should include severing of hands, arms, feet, and legs (seriously!).

A few months later, on March 3, 1991, the world was shocked to learn that Gates' officers were indeed capable of such brutal and heinous behavior when the video of Los Angeles police officers savagely beating a defenseless Rodney King (accused of speeding abd evading capture) was revealed to the world. A urine test later revealed traces of THC. Gates continued to back his officers in the beating, through the time of the riots.

* Reiner was almost the only official to publicly support Gates.

In July of 1998, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, on a fact-finding mission to Europe, added insult to ignorance by proclaiming to a Stockholm audience, "The murder rate in Holland [where "soft" drugs are treated as a legal product] is double that in the United States.That's drugs." Actually, the American murder rate is 8.2 per 100,000. The Dutch murder rate is 1.7 per 100,000, less than one-fourth that of the U.S.

This was only the latest in McCaffrey's continuing stream of ludicrous misinformation. In December 1996, for example, he had been quoted in the media as saying, "There's not one shred of evidence that marijuana has medicinal value"

Conclusion

On the basis of the information provided in this book, we demand an end to the enforcement of these prohibition laws. All laws regarding the cultivation of the plant must be stricken from the books, including the UN's Single Convention Treaty of 1961, at which Anslinger represented the United States. Although he was forced to retire by an angry President Kennedy for, among other things, his antics at the Convention, Anslinger's legacy of lies and deceit lives on in 1999.

Our government owes an apology to all persons who spent jail or prison time for cannabis (14 million years in aggregate so far), had to go through the courts, had their education, families, and professions torn apart, and their lives, wealth, and health often destroyed.

We also owe an apology to honest-but-ignorant teachers, police, and judges for our lack of courage to speak up and educate them. But there is no apologizing for the profit-minded corporate and government leaders who have acted illegally to censor and refute the undeniable truth of hemp.

What Justice Demands

Justice demands nothing less than the lifting of all penalties (criminal and civil) and removal of all restraints upon the cultivation and use of both smoking and non-smoking uses of this, our most remarkable plant.

Prisoners being held for the peaceful possession, sale, transport, or cultivation of cannabis hemp must be released immediately. Money and property seized must be returned. Criminal records must be wiped clean, amnesty granted, and some sort of reparations paid for time served. These cannabis prisoners are the real victims of this monstrous crime called the "War on Drugs."

In the end, half measures will not be acceptable.

In the meantime, we must begin with a moratorium on hemp/marijuana law enforcement. And we most move swiftly to restore and expand the national archives and historical record on hemp and its multiplicity of valuable uses.

What You Can Do

We think, now that you've had a good look at our side and the government's sideof this story (both as we see it and as the media projects it), you'll want to join us in putting this issue onto the ballots and into the legislatures of this country, where everyone can express their opinions in the straight-forward manner set forth in our United States' and individual state constitutions.

Teach hemp to everyone; talk about it all the time. Look for hemp products, ask for hemp buy hemp. Defend hemp. And use the information and suggestions included in the Appendix at the end of the paper version of this book. Purchase copies of the paper version of this book and the CD-ROM for you local public and school libraries.

At the risk of repetition, let us once more state in the strongest possible terms, that cannabis hemp indeed the plant we denigrate with the slang name marijuana will become known to future generations, as it was known to past generations for millenia, as the number-one annually renewable, fully sustainable, non pesticide-requiring, and most abundant source of paper/fiber/fuel on the face of the earth; with more overall uses than any other known plant.

In other words, cannabis hemp is the greatest plant on earth!

Write to your elected officials and the news media, to help create a more conscious political leadership and favorable news coverage on marijuana and hemp. Give credit for good votes and coverage, and complain about bad. Register and run for office. And always vote!!

Demand that our prisoners of conscience be freed, rewarded, and honored. They deserve to be welcomed home as heroes, and as P.O.W.s in this "War on Drugs," to receive veteran's benefits and rights not the DEA or police.

Think of this:

If these outlaw citizens had not defend the government and preserved the hempseed, our government and its prohibitionist policies would have eradicated this plant from our Earth.

So, the heroes of this war are not William Bennett, Nancy Reagan, Bill Clinton, General Barry McCaffrey, the DEA, or DARE, but those who de÷ed them. These true heroes must have their lives and property returned. For defying these tyrannical laws, they must be remembered by each of us for all time. For they saved the seed that's going to save the planet!

Hemp for Victory!

Let our people go. Let our people grow. And never allow our politicians again impose such fanatical prohibition laws against any natural substance in its natural form. We almost lost the seed and knowledge to save the planet.

Democracy doesn't work ever unless it is honest.

And if the suppression of hemp is just one example of the many lies which American police/bureaucrats and prison guards have been blackmailing their theoretical bosses elected politicians and the public we are in big trouble!

We have reviewed this "drug war" against cannabis hemp/marijuana as thoroughly as we possibly could, and what we have seen sickens us. And only those with this knowledge of hemp, whose doors of perception have been cleansed, can kick the scumbags out and reclaim our freedoms, our planet, and our life-sustaining environment.

We therefore agree with the little boy from Hans Christian Andersens's tale who, while watching the parade pass by, shouted with courageous innocence:

"The Emperor wears no clothes."

What do your own eyes see?

What are you going to do about it?!

MY PARTNER CAPTAIN ED'S FAVORITE THEME WAS AN ORGANIZATION CALLED VOTE:

Victory Over The Enemy

AND THE ENEMY IS THE UNREGISTERED VOTER

REGISTER and VOTE!

The Smithsonian's Suppression of Facts About Cannabis Hemp

It should be noted that, even though 50-80% of all their displayed fibers for paper and cloth from their "Life in America: 1780s to the 1800s" exhibit and "American Maritime Exhibit, 1492-1850" were made of hemp, the Smithsonian Institution has removed all mention of cannabis hemp as it was used in paper, textiles, ropes, and sails, referring to it only as "other fibers" while cotton, wool, flax, sisal, jute, Manila hemp, etc. are specifically mentioned. Cotton was less than 1% of all fibers prior to 1800. Hemp was about 80% of all fibers.

Museum curator Arkadero's response when questioned on this topic was that, "Children don't need to know about hemp anymore, it confuses them," and the director of the Smithsonian said that even though hemp was the primary fiber, "We are not a fiber museum."

He did not mention how they had determined that children do need to know about the minor fiber crops in American history.

Were children's innocent questions about hemp and marijuana making the Smithsonian tour guides uncomfortable?

And in a June 20, 1989, letter, Institution secretary Robert McCormic Adams wrote that, "We do not see a cataloging of fibers in early America as part of our task," in presenting these exhibits.

"At times this focus does lead curators to mention fabrics such as linen, wool or others."

He returned copies of this book and the U.S. government's own 1942 pro-marijuana film, Hemp for Victory to us, apparently without reviewing any of the information.

[User]

SOME OF THE SOURCE MATERIALS

IN THE BACK OF THE BOOK:

Reign of Law: A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields, 1900

Schlichten/Scripps letters

Movie review of "Hemp for Victory," 1988

Documentation of authenticity for "Hemp for Victory"

U.S. History entwined with Hemp; USDA Yearbooks

USDA Bulletin No. 404, 1916

American Midland Naturalist (excerpt)

HEMP, Farmer's Bulletin No. 1935, 1943

"Humorous Hemp Primer" German comic book

Isochanvre: Nature as Architect

"Making Fossils of Fossil Fuels" Utne Reader, 1991

"Reconsider Hemp," Pulp and Paper Magazine, 1991, 1993

"Marijuana Tax Act of 1937," House Hearings

The Hemperor's Classic Clip Collection, 1985-1998

"The Weed" (Gene Krupa) Time Magazine article, 1943

"From Test Tube to You," Popular Mechanics, 1939

American Peoples Encyclopedia (1953) DuPont history

"Pinch Hitters for Defense" Popular Mechanics, 1941

"Ford Tells of Stronger Cars" Popular Science, 1941

Science Newsletter, "Hemp Grown in U.S. as War Cuts Imports," "Marijuana Found Useful in Mental Ills"

"War Booms Hemp Industry," Newsweek, 1942

"Can We Have Rope Without Dope?" Popular Science, 1943

"Hemp Quota Cut," Business Week, 1944

"Hemp Slows Up," Business Week, 1944

"Army Study of Marihuana Smokers..." Newsweek, 1945

"Marijuana and Mentality," Newsweek, 1946

"Marihuana" (unattributed article), 1940

"Radioactivity: The New-Found Danger in Cigarettes," 1986

Diazepines (Valium): #1 in Abuse

Drug Charges, 1990

"Rather Fight Than Switch?" Whole Life Times, 1985

America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon, 1783-1812, Book, 1965

"Marihuana: New Tax Hits Potent Weed," Newsweek, 1937

"Marijuana More Dangerous Than Heroin or Cocaine," 1938

"Bush Intervenes on Tax," New York Times, 1982

"The Marijuana Conviction," The Birth of Prohibition, 1987

Ecology cover-story collage

Authorities Examine Pot Claims, 1989

Greenhouse Effect articles

"Urge Production of Dioxin-Free Paper from Hemp," 1990

Hemp for Fuel, 1989

Summaries of Research Papers on Hemp

"Authorities Examine Pot Claims," Athens News, 1989

"July Sets Record for Heat," Los Angeles Times, 1998

Cotton Vital Statistics, 1996

"How our Heads of State Got High," High Times, April 1980

"Iran Executes Over 30 Drug Traffickers," 1989

"Beatles High When Queen Decorated," National Enquirer, 1970

"Protect Youth Against Dope," Hearst clipping, c. 1935

"Paul's Pot-Bust Shocker," High Times, July 1980

Police States: Prohibition Through the Ages

Security Wrap-up: Drug Use, 1989

HR 4079 and Its Parellels with Nazi Germany

"U.S. Jails More People..." Bakersfield Californian, 1991

"The Chemistry of Reefer Madness," Omni, 1989

"Pro-Pot Police Teacher," Oklahoma City Times, 1975

"Teens Can Use Yet Not Abuse Drugs," c. 1986

"Herer Promotes Hemp Plant," Wall Street Journal, 1991

"Nancy Reagan Enlists John Paul II," c. 1982

"Court Gives CIA Power..." Oregonian, 1985

Doonesbury, by Garry Trudeau

"Voices for Legalization," High Times, 1990

"Why Drug War Cannot be Won," by George Soros, 1997

"Chemicals in Pot Cut Pain," Los Angeles Times, 1997

"Fat Solubility Scare - Nahas," High Times, April 1982

Trial by Jury: Cherished Heritage

"Collective Conscience Breeds Dutch Tolerance," 1989

DuPont Annual Report, 1937

Dana Beal's Coverage of DuPont Story

Seizure & Forfeiture Laws: Take Hands Off My Assets, 1989

Drug Legalization: Interest Rises in Prestigious Circles, 1989

Administrative Judge Urges Medicinal Use of Marijuana, 1988

Glaucoma and AIDS victims legal cannabis articles

"Science and the Citizen," Scientific American, 1990

"Response to Rosenthal," by Lynn Osburn, 1995

"Energy Farming," Chapter from Eco-Hemp, 1994

"Fighting the Police State," L.A. Times; Orange County Register, 1994

"Environmental Impact of Laws Against Marijuana," Orange County Register, 1994

"Hemp a Source of Energy," Albany Times-Union, August 1990

Letter from Tipper; Hemp Stamps

The Brawley Report, 1998

Various press reports, 1998



ALL SOURCE MATERIALS ARE IN THEIR ENTIRETY AND VERY READABLE AND MOSTLY IN THEIR ORIGINAL FORM, PICTURES INCLUDED.

© Jack Herer 2006
Photo of Jack by Malcolm MacKinnon

To write Jack or order any products, send an e-mail to: jack@jackherer.com