time to legalize Marijuana.?

Question

what would be the advantages

Answer 1

Immediately, we would free up a very large portion of our criminal justice resources to work on things like counter-terrorism and non-consentual crimes. Legalization would simultaneously discourage the coercion and manipulation that occurs when gangs and Mexican Mafia smuggle cannabis into this country.

Legalization would stop the cycle of poverty that comes from imprisoning young women and men and leaving their children to fend for them selves or in state care.

Legalization would also be allowing a powerful medication with virtually no long-term side effects (and rather pleasant short-term effects) to be used again.

Legalizing all forms of cannabis would also help to alleviate the stress our national forests are under for paper production and growing hemp to be used in place of cotton would significantly decrease our need for water in places like Arizona and New Mexico (where it's scarce). The reduced financial, ecological and social costs would be tremendous and might even mean that we could bring some textile industry back to the US and close some of those sweat shops overseas.

Cannabis was outlawed primarily because of William Randolph Hearst (newspaper giant in the beginning of the 20th century). In response to the loss of some land in the Spanish-American War, he mobilized his hugs propaganda machine (virtually every major newspaper in the country) and identified cannabis with "lazy Mexicans" as well as the raping and murdering white people. His propaganda was so good that we still buy it almost 100 years later. Hearst wasn't alone, he had friends in the pharma industry (duPont) and some friends in very "high" places (read timeline below for more info). Actually, there are no good, logical reasons to keep this particular plant illegal.

Here's a timeline of this plant from the last 100 years or so:

1898: The Spanish American War erupts. During the war, the marijuana-smoking army of Panco Villa seizes 800,000 acres of prime Mexican timberland belonging to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

The timber from this land was used to manufacture newsprint for Hearst's publishing empire. Hearst begins a 30-year propaganda campaign denouncing Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Latinos, portraying Mexicans as lazy pot-smoking layabouts.

1910: The white minority in South Africa outlaws Cannabis ingestion in an attempt to force blacks to stop practicing ancient Dagga religions.

1914: Congress passes the Harrison Narcotics Act, its first attempt to control recreational use of drugs.

1916: The United States Department of Agriculture issues Bulletin No. 404: Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material, printed on hemp paper, outlining a revolutionary new hemp pulp technology invented by USDA scientists Dewey Lyster and Jason Merrill.

The bulletin lists increased production capacity and superior quality among the advantages of using hemp hurds for pulp. Lyster writes in Bulletin No. 404, Every tract of 10,000 acres which is devoted to hemp raising year by year is equivalent to a sustained pulp producing capacity of 40,500 acres of average wood-pulp lands. Hence, an acre of hemp produces four times as much pulp as an acre of trees.

February 1917: Henry Timken, the wealthy industrialist who invented the roller bearing, meets with inventor George Schlichten to discuss his brilliant yet simple new machine, the decorticator. Motivated by his desire to halt the destruction of forests for wood pulp, Schlichten spent 18 years and $400,000 developing the decorticator.

The decorticator was capable of stripping the fiber from any plant, leaving behind pulp -- making it the perfect tool to revolutionize the hemp fiber/paper industry in much the same way that Eli Lilly's cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry during the 1820's.

After meeting with Schlichten, Timken views the decorticator as a revolutionary discovery that would improve conditions for mankind (with healthy profits for investors), and he promptly offers Schlichten 100 acres of fertile farmland to grow hemp for the purposes of testing the new machine.

At anemic 1917 hemp production levels, Schlichten estimated that the decorticator could produce 50,000 tons of paper for $25 per ton -- 50% less than the cost of newsprint.

1920 - 1940: Economic power in the United States begins to consolidate in the hands of a small number of steel, oil and munitions companies, laying the foundation of the national security state. DuPont becomes the U.S. government's primary manufacturer of munitions. DuPont later creates Rayon, the world's first synthetic fiber, from stabilized guncotton.

1925: Concerned by the high number of goof butts being smoked by off-duty servicemen in Panama, the U.S. government sponsors the Panama Canal Zone Report. The report concludes that marijuana does not pose a problem, and recommends that no criminal penalties be applied to its use or sale.

1931: Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (head of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, one of the two banks with which DuPont did business) appoints future nephew-in-law Harry J. Anslinger to head the newly-formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

1934: U.S. Senator Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania attacks Harry Anslinger for making references to ginger-colored ******* on Federal Bureau of Narcotics stationary in letters circulated to department heads.

June 1934: Congress passes the National Firearms Act, the first prohibitive tax in U.S. history. The National Firearms Act was a futile attempt to reduce machine gun-related violence by gangsters -- a direct result of the prohibition of alcohol, and an eerie echo of the current state of affairs in the United States.

Through the power of statute, Congress now permits anyone (even Branch Davidians) to own a machine gun, as long as the individual has paid a $200 transfer tax.

1936 - 1938: William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire fuels a tabloid journalism propaganda campaign against marijuana. Articles with headlines such as Marihuana Makes Fiends of Boys in 30 Days; Hasheesh Goads Users to Blood-Lust create terror of the killer weed from Mexico.

Through his relentless misinformation campaign, Hearst is credited with bringing the word marijuana into the English language. In addition to fueling racist attitudes toward Hispanics, Hearst papers run articles about marijuana-crazed negroes raping white women and playing voodoo-satanic jazz music.

Driven insane by marijuana, these blacks -- according to accounts in Hearst-owned newspapers -- dared to step on white men's shadows, look white people directly in the eye for more than three seconds, and even laugh out loud at white people. For shame!

1936: DuPont obtains a patent license to manufacture synthetic plastic fibers from German industrial giant I.G. Farben Corporation. The patent license is obtained as part Germany's reparation payments to the United States after World War I.

A few years later, I.G. Farben manufactures deadly Zyklon-B gas, used in Nazi death camps to murder millions of Jews (along with many homosexuals and drug users). DuPont owned and financed approximately 30% of Hitler's I.G. Corps, the military-industrial backbone of the fascist Third Reich.

1937: The year the federal government outlawed Cannabis.

-- DuPont patents petrochemical manufacturing processes for making plastics, as well as pollution-heavy sulfate/sulfite processes for producing wood pulp. For the next 50 years, these processes are responsible for 80% of DuPont's industrial output.

--In its 1937 Annual Report, DuPont informs stockholders that the company anticipates radical changes from the revenue raising power of government... converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization.

March 29, 1937: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upholds the National Firearms Act.

April 14, 1937: The Treasury Department secretly introduces its marihuana tax bill through the House Ways and Means Committee, bypassing more appropriate venues. Committee chairman Robert L. Doughton, a key Congressional ally of DuPont, rubber-stamps the bill.

Spring 1937: Congress holds hearings on the Marijuana Tax Act. Dr. James Woodward, representing the American Medical Association, testifies that the law could deny the world a potential medicine.

Cannabis was already prescribed for dozens of common ailments, and medical researchers were just beginning to explore the therapeutic benefits of the numerous active ingredients in marijuana. Woodward said that AMA doctors were wholly unaware that the killer weed from Mexico was actually Cannabis. We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared, Woodward testifies.

FBN commissioner Harry Anslinger and the Ways and Means Committee quickly denounce Woodward and the AMA, which already had an adversarial relationship with the Roosevelt administration.

December 1937: The Marijuana Tax Act is signed into law, initiating 60 years of Cannabis prohibition and annihilating a multi-billion dollar industry. DuPont and other synthetic materials manufacturers reap vast profits by filling the void conveniently left by the criminalization of industrial hemp.

1937 - 1939: Under Harry Anslinger, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics prosecutes 3,000 doctors for illegally prescribing Cannabis-derived medications. In 1939, the American Medical Association reached an agreement with Anslinger, and over the following decade, only three doctors are prosecuted.

February 1938: Popular Mechanics describes hemp as the new billion dollar crop. The article was actually written in the spring of 1937, before Cannabis was criminalized. Also in February 1938, Mechanical Engineering calls hemp the most profitable and desirable crop that can be grown.

1941: Popular Mechanics introduces Henry Ford's plastic car, manufactured from and fueled by Cannabis. Hoping to free his company from the grasp of the petroleum industry, Ford illegally grew Cannabis for years after the federal ban.

1942: The Japanese invasion of the Philippines cuts off the U.S. supply of Manila hemp. The U.S. government immediately distributes 400,000 pounds of Cannabis seeds to farmers from Wisconsin to Kentucky.

Just four short years after Cannabis was outlawed as the assassin of youth, the government requires farmers to attend showings of the USDA pro-Cannabis classic, Hemp for Victory.

Also in 1942: Harry Anslinger is appointed to a top-secret committee charged with finding a truth serum for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency (which, in later years, investigated the applications of psychedelic drugs for mind control purposes).

The group picks a Cannabis-derived form of hashish oil as their truth serum of choice. In 1943, the committee abandoned the idea because test subjects tended to laugh hysterically and get the munchies rather than spill the beans.

1943 - 1948: Harry Anslinger orders all Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents to conduct surveillance and keep files on marijuana crimes by jazz and swing musicians.

However, Anslinger orders his agents not to bust them immediately -- he instead envisions a gigantic nationwide bust of all pot-smoking jazz and swing musicians, simultaneously.

FBN agents keep constant surveillance on various low life such as Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and many more.

Luckily, the bust never goes down: Anslinger's slightly more sane superior at the Treasury Department, Assistant Secretary Foley, hears of the plan and writes to Anslinger, Mr. Foley disapproves!

1944: New York Mayor LaGuardia's Marijuana Commission concludes that there is no link between Cannabis and violence, instead citing beneficial effects of marijuana.

Harry Anslinger goes berserk, denouncing Mayor LaGuardia and threatening doctors with prison terms should they dare to carry out independent research on Cannabis.

1948: Harry Anslinger testifies before a red-baiting Congress that marijuana causes users to become peaceful, pacifistic zombies. Anslinger warned that the Communists might use marijuana to weaken the fighting spirit of American troops during wartime.

This was a complete reversal of earlier testimony; in 1937, Anslinger had testified to Congress that Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind. Ironically, Anslinger later writes in his autobiography, The Murderers, that for years, he illegally supplied Senator Joseph McCarthy with morphine.

It was necessary, you understand, so that the Communists would not be able to blackmail McCarthy in a moment of drug-dependent weakness.

1961: Harry Anslinger heads the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Drugs Convention, which issues the United Nations Single Convention Treaty on Narcotics.

Intended to eradicate marijuana use within 25 years, the Single Convention Treaty removes the issue of legal classification of Cannabis from citizens of the United States.

Reversal of marijuana's criminalization on a global level now requires agreement among all 108 signatory nations. According to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1920 ruling in Missouri vs. Holland, treaties with foreign nations take precedence over domestic legislation.

1962: President John F. Kennedy forces Federal Bureau of Narcotics czar Harry Anslinger into retirement after Anslinger attempts to censor the work of Professor Alfred Lindsmith, author of The Addict and the Law.

Some time after his assassination in 1963, associates of Kennedy claimed that the president used Cannabis for back pain and planned to legalize marijuana during his second term.

1964: Dr. Raphael Mechoulam of the University of Tel Aviv isolates THC Delta-9, the primary active ingredient in Cannabis -- and one of at least 60 compounds found in Cannabis that have therapeutic value.

1967: Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are busted at Richard's home for marijuana possession.

1971: Medical World News reports that Marijuana... is probably the most potent anti-epileptic known to medicine today.

1973: Oregon takes the first steps towards decriminalization of Cannabis. For the next 25 years, possession of up to one ounce of marijuana is considered the equivalent of a misdemeanor, with no criminal record for those caught in possession.

1974: Dr. Heath conducts his infamous government-funded Rhesus monkey study at Tulane University, touted for years as evidence that marijuana causes brain damage.

Dr. Heath would put an airtight gas mask on the monkey, strap it into a chair and force-toke the equivalent of 63 Columbian-strength joints over the course of five minutes. The monkeys suffered brain damage, all right -- from suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

1976: The Ford Administration bans independent research and research by federal health programs on the use of natural Cannabis derivatives for medicine.

Private pharmaceutical corporations are allowed to do limited no high research using only THC Delta-9, ignoring other potentially beneficial active natural ingredients.

1989: A government-funded study at the St. Louis Medical University determines that the human brain has receptor sites for THC to which no other known compounds will bind.

December 30, 1989: Ignoring evidence to the contrary, Drug Enforcement Agency Director John Lawn orders that Cannabis remain on the Schedule One narcotics list, reserved for drugs which have no known medical use.

1990: As the drug war gets uglier and uglier, 390,000 American citizens are arrested on marijuana-related charges.

September 5, 1990: Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that casual drug users should be taken out and shot.

Sources:
Kayo, The Sinsemilla Technique, Last Gasp Publications, 1982.
Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes 1994 edition.
UKCIA History of Cannabis

Answer 2

Advantages: It would decrease the overcrowding of prisons and jails, due to different states handing out harder/softer crime time for small offenses. i.e. less than an ounce on said adult. It's closest comparison is alcohol, and if you compare them, you'll notice that marijuana doesn't affect any of your organs except the brain (it can damage the lungs if you smoke it). You do not get violent, (contrary to belief), you become lazy, hungry, and can recede pain without the help of pharmicuticals, be it prescription or on the shelf. Also, the effects of smoking marijuana (two MUCH safer alternatives are consuming in food or using a vaporizor) does not cause lung cancer. Period. The THC (tetrahydrocanibinals) in marijuana actually kills off the "dead" cells that turn to tumors, versus nicotine which prevents those cells from dying off, hence causing them to fester into tumors, and ultimately cancer. Not only would it benefit the U.S. having a much safer alternative to alcohol available to us, but the government could stand to make a huge profit on manufacturing and selling the product to it's people. Use it to fund finding meth/heroin/cocaine/gang units and eliminating them. The amount of taxpayer's dollars being used to fight the war on drugs is being vehemontly used towards marijuana, not only because it's an easier target, but because there is more of an abundance of it. Easier to grow (it is a natural drug), not physically addictive (there's no chemical dependencies related to the drug, only psychological, and even that's a stretch), and it is only considered a gateway drug because you have to go to the black market in order to get it. If we take that away from the black market, it would drop crime rate (people wouldn't have to commit crimes to get the product). If you put all of the drugs that are being used today, either illegal or legal, marijuana is the least harmful. So how can people say that it is dangerous? Is it for protecting the youth? The youth have easier access to it now than if it was legal. The problem the gov'ment has with it? It would eliminate the need for pharmies, and that's the same reason why they don't mass produce vehicles that don't need fossil fuels. It would kill the money making markets. Oil, tobacco, pharmicuticals... there are more viable resources that could be used, but it would drain the profits. That's another topic I don't need to delve into. Bottom line, it would make a majority of the people who do enjoy it happy, and I guarentee if those who oppose it realized how much more it costs their tax dollars in booking/processing/judging these "offenders" (meaning small time buyers and recreational users, not dealers), they may change their tune.

Answer 3

I don't have a problem with weed, the truth is that i believe most of the damages are very similar to that of drinkin alcohol. I have never smoked weed but i drinkk...sometimes too much, but it isn't a contradiction. I don't smoke weed because i think its damages are worse than alcohol but instead its a moral issue. Why do people smoke? becuase they were asked if they wanted a hit....the people who took that hit became part of the crowd, others like me are the exception. I don't think im special or better than anyone, i have seen the damages that alcohol does to poeple yet i still chose to drink, in toher words i step on someone elses **** so why would i step in more **** knowing whats going to happen to me when i start weed? Its like chess it be dumb to put yourself in check, for all you know you can end up in checkmate, I do believe tho america should legalize it because for one it would greatly damage druglords, and mobsters and that is something we dont want right now, 2 it be a great income for the country, and my proof is look at the results of when they legalized alcohol, all the mobsters dealing alcohol lost power and vanished, is weed good for poeple NO, would legalizing it be smart YES.

Answer 4

1) Clothing
2) Rubber
3)Hemp Seeds could be used for Oil
4) Medical

Methinks taxing plays a major factor in the legalization due to the fact that it grows wild.

Smoke should be legalized! Support NORML!

Answer 5

Absolutely.... There are so many medical reasons for it be readily available and it's far less harmful than tobacco and alcohol or even many of the RX drugs that it can replace.

I'm not a kid... I came of age in the 60's.

Answer 6

YES!
- it would avoid visiting bad places to buy it
- it would allow the consumption of good stuff
- you could socialize while smoking a joint!
- When you smoke, you get relaxed, so why are we waiting for?

Answer 7

Yes it's time.

Advantages? Some f*cking great hallucinations.

Answer 8

well it would keep kids out of the prison system, for one.

Answer 9

population control
and there would be a lot more dead people so i would be able to devour their flesh

Answer 10

LONG OVER DUE

Answer 11

YES