Cannabis legislation / legalization

[ponda]

rgray222 said

I would not be so quick to applaud this action by the government until all the facts have surfaced.

I'm not really applauding it.I'm just sharing the documentary.

I find it interesting that there appears to be a softening of the cannabis/hemp laws in some places at the moment.I wonder where/what it might lead to.

The main reason that the Hemp plant has not been more widely used in some of the ways mentioned above is because it got people high and has been demonized etc.I would like to see more wide spread economic use of the non-psychoactive Hemp plant.These new softer laws might help to bring that about sooner.

[LivioRazlo]

I don't know why people continue to label marijuana as a drug. It's a plant that has been here well before we ever were. In fact, many of the plants you see in the world today contain a substance called "DMT" - should we label all these plants drugs because of an active ingredient found within them?

[Davidallany]

This is good. I think people should make a decision whether to use drugs or not. After all everyone who is an adult should learn to take responsibility for acting out mere thoughts and emotions. Thoughts by themselves can be addressed then dismissed if they don't come out favourably, also actions of thoughts that were carried out due to ingnorance can be analyzed and discontinued by a personal will and resolve. Emotions can be acknowledged too then processed using a few techniques.
People are talking about ascension, enlightenment and phasing into higher dimensions. However, real efforts are needed to achieve something.

In short and to quote a wise-man “There is no royal road to geometry.” [Euclid].

And another,

"Health, contentment and trust
Are your greatest possessions,
And freedom your greatest joy.
Look within.
Be still.
Buddha
Dhammapada.

[rgray222]

[QUOTE=ponda;829041]

rgray222 said

I would not be so quick to applaud this action by the government until all the facts have surfaced.

I applaud you for posting this, I think people need to see all sides of every subject before making their minds up on whether or not it is beneficial for mankind. I was just adding my $.02

I don't know why people continue to label marijuana as a drug. It's a plant that has been here well before we ever were. In fact, many of the plants you see in the world today contain a substance called "DMT" - should we label all these plants drugs because of an active ingredient found within them?

When you get right down to everything on planet earth is natural, even the most toxic waste we produce was at one time a plant or mineral. Just because things are found in nature does not necessarily make them good for consumption.

I think that any plant substance that has any medicinal effect on people should be considered a drug. I think what you are referring to is the word "drug" because it has become a term considered to be negative. Drug abuse, drug war these are terms coined by society and used in a very broad sense. It is unfortunate but it is simply the way it is!

[Matt P]

This is very positive but I know full well how strongly the Cabal cannot let marijuana become legal and will fight this.
Marijuana is not a drug. It is not addictive. It is not a gateway drug. It is a miracle plant with more amazing benefit than any other plant on this planet. It was NOT made to be illegal because it can get people high. It was made to be illegal for one reason and one reason only--it is a threat to corporate and government profit and a threat to police state control of the people. Marijuana is empowering because it can be grown cheaply and easily by anyone in their own back yard. It requires no pesticides, it grows quickly and it improves the soil in which it is grown. As Ponda says above, it can be used as food, fuel, medicine and many textiles. It is a threat to the oil industry, paper industry, clothing industry, medical cartel and government profit (from the production, processing and distribution of heroin, cocaine and marijuana by the government), which is the largest drug dealer in the entire world. This is why this miracle plant is illegal. People strangely latch on to the one thing it can do that makes them uneasy (psychoactive) and then demonize it because of their fear. People have been altering their consciousness for thousands of years and this will not change. If it was legal, this could be done safely but, again, this is not what the controllers want people to have the power to do. It should be illegal to NOT use marijuana because then we would not need many pharmaceuticals or alcohol.

I never have trouble with clicking on any article on this site yet when I click on this one, my computer says the page is not available. This is now the third time I've tried to post this message. The first two times I tried, the page went blank. This has never happened on any of the few posts I've done. Either this is coincidence or someone doesn't want us seeing/communicating about this.

Matt

[edit: yay, 3rd time is a charm]

[chancy]

Hello Everyone: This is a Great article that just shows beauracracy didn't just start yesterday! It was running well even in 1923. The law to ban marijuana wasn't even passed in Canada's parliment. In fact someone ( and they don't know positively who did it ) had just added it to a list with cocaine. It appears Canada was the test model to see if everyone else would ban it also.

Here is the link:

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/marijuana-...092931240.html


Here is the article:

"Marijuana was criminalized in 1923 but why
CBC – 6 hours ago - May 3, 2014

Marijuana growers say early signs are good
Legal or not, marijuana sold and used freely
Pot activists in Canada and elsewhere will be taking part today in what's being billed as a "Global Marijuana March." In this country, they will be calling for the decriminalization of marijuana.
They might also ask why it became illegal in the first place.
That happened in 1923, and if there was any kind of parliamentary debate historians have been unable to find a record of it.
When Parliament decided to add marijuana to the schedule of proscribed drugs that year, Canada became one of the first countries to making smoking pot illegal. The U.S. didn't accomplish that until 14 years later, in the midst of the Great Depression.
In 1923, then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal government introduced an Act to Prohibit the Improper Use of Opium and other Drugs. The federal health minister at the time, Henri Beland, said the bill was a consolidation of other legislation that had been passed over the previous few years, with some changes.

At the time, the only drugs on the schedule were opium, morphine, cocaine and eucaine (a local anesthetic first introduced as a substitute for cocaine).

The new bill added three drugs to the proscribed list: heroin, codeine and "cannabis indica (Indian hemp) or hasheesh."

The only mention of the proposed changes to the schedule recorded in Hansard was on April 23, when Beland told the House of Commons, "There is a new drug in the schedule."

In fact, there were actually three new drugs. Historian Catherine Carstairs says Beland was likely referring to cannabis when he said there was “a new drug,” because in the government's view, "the other two are extensions of other products that had already been added to the schedule."

Carstairs is the author of Jailed for Possession: Illegal Drug Use, Regulation and Power in Canada, 1920-1961 and chair of the University of Guelph's history department.

The next month, on May 3, when it was the Senate's turn to review the legislation, Raoul Dandurand, the Liberal government's leader in the Senate, told his colleagues, "There is only one addition to the schedule: Cannabis Indica (Indian Hemp) or hasheesh."

And, in what may be the most detailed account of these 1923 events, the authors of the 1991 book Panic and Indifference: The Politics of Canada's Drug Laws, state that the health department’s narcotic division's files contain a draft of the bill that does not include cannabis. There are also several carbon copies, and to one of them was added, "Cannabis Indica (Indian Hemp) or hasheesh."

It seems no one knows who added that phrase, or ordered it added. But both the House and the Senate agreed to the additions without any discussion.

One reason that no one in Parliament asked about or challenged the addition of marijuana to the schedule may be because little was known about the drug in Canada at the time, and very few people were using it.

We could find no references to marijuana in either the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail in 1923. And there were no police seizures of marijuana until 1932.

Looking back, it may seem odd that a decision that has in one way or another seriously affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians took place without debate.

There was also no debate in Parliament then about adding the better-known heroin and codeine to the schedule of proscribed drugs either.

Heroin had been on the market since 1898, courtesy of the Bayer pharmaceutical company.

Heroin is the brand name for a semi-synthetic compound derived from morphine, so authorities had probably considered it as a proscribed drug since the first schedule was passed in 1911, which included "morphine, its salts and compounds."

Proscribing codeine was more controversial, although after it was added doctors, druggists and the pharmaceutical industry successfully lobbied to have codeine decriminalized.

It was removed from the schedule in 1925, though the U.S. government and the Canadian government’s own narcotic division criticized the decision.

A 1922 book, The Black Candle, by Emily Murphy, is frequently given as the explanation for the King government's move against marijuana. However, no evidence beyond coincidence has been put forward that the book, or Murphy, influenced the government's decision.

The book is based on a series of articles Murphy, then a judge, wrote for Maclean's magazine in 1920. The series did not mention marijuana but her book has a seven-page chapter called, her spelling, "Marahuana -- a new menace."

Murphy starts out by noting "the drug is not really new" and "comparatively unknown in the United States and Canada."

But, today, that is arguably the best-known chapter in the book, even though historians have not uncovered evidence that this chapter attracted much public attention in its early years.

Murphy herself is best remembered as one of the Famous Five, from the celebrated “persons case” — that women qualify as persons for the purpose of being appointed to the Senate — a suit that eventually won the day in the British Privy Council.

With no parliamentary debate, no evidence of public debate or discussion, and no paper trail about why marijuana was criminalized in 1923, it's understandable why people would later link the decision to The Black Candle. But Carstairs says it's probably just happenstance.

She also told CBC News, "There were insinuations in the records that the bureaucrats at the division of narcotic control did not think very highly of Emily Murphy and did not pay attention to what she was writing about, and they didn't consider her a particularly accurate or valuable source."

Unlike the other drugs on the government’s proscribed list, the book Panic and Indifference observes that marijuana was criminalized in Canada long before it could be defined as a social problem. "Why this was so remains a mystery."

However, this was an era of prohibition and control, and before he became prime minister, Mackenzie King had been a strong advocate for prohibiting opium, which happened in 1908.

Carstairs says that there's no record King was then keeping a close eye on the drug file and she has found no reference to marijuana in his diaries.

There's also no reason to think there was any science behind the decision. The major report of the era, and it was seven volumes in length, was Britain's Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report, published in 1894.

"Moderate use practically produces no ill effects," according to the report, and the evidence the commission heard "shows most clearly how little injury society has hitherto sustained from hemp drugs."

An alternative theory for the marijuana ban was put forward in 1974 by Alexander Morrison, an assistant deputy minister at Health Canada. "Col. Sharman, then Director of the Federal Division of Narcotic Control, returned from meetings of the League of Nations convinced that cannabis would soon fall under international control. In anticipation of such action, he moved to have it added to the list of drugs controlled under Canadian law."

However, Sharman did not become the director of the division until 1927, and before that he was at the department of agriculture, so that explanation goes up in smoke.

Nevertheless, Carstairs argues, "There would have been significant international pressures to do so. Canada liked to see itself as a leader in the drive for international drug control. We were actively involved in all of the international discussions."

Despite this, she says there was "no international sentiment against smoking marijuana" at the time.

Criminalizing marijuana "had almost no impact in the years immediately after it was added but the fact that it was added has certainly had long-term consequences," Carstairs says.

Today, when protesters demand decriminalization, the federal government may be able to come up with reasons not to do so, but it would be hard-pressed to explain why it was criminalized in the first place."

chancy

[DeDukshyn]

Posting CBC stories, heh.

[chancy]

Wasn't actually me that went to cbc for the story...that was yahoo.ca

Thought it was important today to get the word out on Canada and their role in making pot illegal since this is 2014 Global Marijuana March Day and it was Canada that was one of the first to make marijuana illegal with an illegal act in government. It wasn't even done honestly in 1923.
Was only fitting to use an article from Canada.

As much as I don't like the idea of a company that I help pay as well as everyother canuck and don't even get the tv channel that they promised all canadians for FREE.
We can get it if we rent cable or satellite feeds which is a little ironic for a government channel that is full of public funds.

chancy

[Patrikas]

Perhaps these companys and and synthetic products had a bit to do with it ........cheers

http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/pot/blunderof37.html

[Ellisa]

It seems that a number of useful drugs were criminalised in the 1950s, among them heroin. I am 74 and was born, at home, in the UK. At the time the anaesthetic often used for pain relief during childbirth was heroin! or a least an opium derivative. Heroin was also used very effectively in cough medicines and other products. It was abolished as a result of concerns in the US about its misuse, and so an excellent and effective medicinal drug disappeared. I have always been told, that, like marijuana in Canada apparently, heroin was banned BEFORE it became a problem, and in fact, many medically qualified people were against the banning. The fact is that heroine is an effective drug, and some who take it become addicted. Obviously not all. My mum wasn't! Half the drugs we use in medicine can become drugs of addiction for some people. By banning these various medications the government lost control of their distribution--- and the criminalisation of drug distribution started, and has never stopped.

Footnote
I have never used either drugs-- I have an allergy to opiates! I cannot even tolerate codeine or paracetamol, so I have no interest in whether these things are available or not. But i get upset when I feel that panic (as mentioned by chancy), is more powerful than considered opinion and the result is a mess.

[DeDukshyn]

Posted by chancy (here)
Wasn't actually me that went to cbc for the story...that was yahoo.ca

Thought it was important today to get the word out on Canada and their role in making pot illegal since this is 2014 Global Marijuana March Day and it was Canada that was one of the first to make marijuana illegal with an illegal act in government. It wasn't even done honestly in 1923.
Was only fitting to use an article from Canada.

As much as I don't like the idea of a company that I help pay as well as everyother canuck and don't even get the tv channel that they promised all canadians for FREE.
We can get it if we rent cable or satellite feeds which is a little ironic for a government channel that is full of public funds.

chancy

I honestly hear your plight, every Canadian should get it for free ... however Harper is really making changes that will soon make even that returning possibility null. Which is unfortunate in my opinion.

Anyway back to topic ...
I read this article this morning and thought also that it was important.

[sigma6]

Bloody Canada under Harper, makes us look like a bunch of suck ups to her Majesty.

[ponda]

Why Legalize Marijuana? Because GMO Pot Is On Its Way



U.S. corporation Monsanto plans to launch production of genetically modified marijuana, and companies such as Drug Policy Alliance y Open Society Foundation are going to create our own brand, which will be produced under cannabis, information portal La Red 21.

Organization of Open Society Foundation is under the control of the shareholder Monsanto, billionaire George Soros. Company Drug Policy Alliance y Open Society Foundation, funded by Monsanto will be responsible for market development of transgenic seeds of marijuana, particularly in Uruguay.

Uruguay – the first country in the world to officially legalize the production and sale of marijuana. Initiator of the law was the leadership of the State, headed by President Jose Mujica. According to authorities, a guarantee of success in Uruguay marijuana legalization should be state regulation of prices for hemp.

There are many reasons why Monsanto and other companies producing GMOs would like to learn a new product. Marijuana may be the next major GMO crop. First of all, the company plans to produce GMO manipulate so-called “medical marijuana”. If pharmacists join with GMO companies, pharmaceutical mafia can create transgenic strains with the ability to produce more active compounds which are patented and can be implemented as a medicine.

It is also worth noting that former strategic director Jamin Shively Microsoft also announced that it plans to patent in the U.S. is the first national brand under which will be produced hemp imported from Mexico. The new company is based in Seattle.

Businessman said that the initial funding for the project is $ 10 million to start the company’s products will be distributed only in two U.S. states, but at the request of Shively: “We will seek to ensure that in our hands was 40% of cannabis in the world.”

[Heartsong]

This is a copy of an article from the Daily Beast.com May 21, 2014

The Bluegrass State is eager to grow hemp for the purposes of research and commerce. Instead, its hemp seeds just became the latest casualty in the DOJ’s war on drugs.
Not long ago in America’s history, hemp was king. “Make the most of the hemp seed and grow it everywhere,” George Washington instructed his new America.

So vital to our young nation’s success was hemp, that the 1619 Virginia Assembly actually deemed it illegal for farmers not to grow the plant. It’s strange then, given how deeply entrenched hemp once was in the American landscape, to watch Kentucky fight the Department of Justice—not only for the right to grow it, but the seeds to do so.

After challenging the Drug Enforcement Administration’s decision to seize 250 pounds of seeds from the Louisville Airport in court last Friday, the Kentucky Agriculture Department will meet the feds across the aisle Wednesday. The fate of hemp production in America hangs in the balance. So how did hemp go wrong?

In the mid-1700s, hemp—derived from the same plant as marijuana—was ubiquitous, used for everything from food to fabric. While originating from cannabis sativa, like pot, it contains only a negligible amount of THC (the psychedelic chemical in weed). Those trying to get high from hemp are likely to have about as much luck as those chugging O'Doul's. If marijuana’s game is calming, hemp’s is commerce.

But as decades passed, nylon and materials stole hemp’s thunder. Then came the war on drugs and with it, innocent casualties. Hemp, too close to reefer madness for comfort, was one of them.

If not for movies like Dazed and Confused, hemp would have all but disappeared from American discourse. But with the passing of the 2014 Farm Bill this year, including an amendment to allow certain state departments to grow hemp for research, a revelous reunion seemed at hand: an opportunity for the 10 states with legislation allowing hemp production to be leaders in a new, promising industry.

But while growing hemp seeds for research at the state level is now legal, importing the seeds to do so still isn’t, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

It’s a fact Kentucky officials learned the hard way when the 250 pounds of seeds they’d flown in from Italy were swiftly handed over to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Officials. Infuriated by the seizure, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA) lashed out publicly, eliciting a response from the Department of Justice, who swiftly defended the DEA. In a letter Tuesday, Deputy Assistant Administrator Office of Diversion Control Joseph T. Rannazzisi explains why the DEA acted appropriately. “No person may import cannabis seeds unless such a person is registered with the DEA to do so and has obtained the requisite permit,” Rannazzisi writes, before proposing a plan of action for the KDA to apply for a permit.

The DOJ considered this a quick and easy solution. The KDA did not, filing a lawsuit mere hours after the letter was released claiming the DEA was “engrafting additional regulatory and bureaucratic requirements.”

The DOJ disagrees, saying that these are existing procedures in place that are not trumped by the Farm Bill. In court Friday, the first hearing on the case, the judge instructed the state of Kentucky to apply for the license as instructed by the DEA. Once this goes through, the feds have allegedly agreed to hand the seeds over. But even if they do, hempgate may be far from over.

While the Farm Bill allows for private farmers in Kentucky to grow hemp under the supervision of the government, the DEA is allegedly only going to honor that right for universities and the agriculture agency itself.

In the view of Jonathan Miller, former Kentucky state treasurer and now a member of the industrial hemp commission, this is beyond ridiculous—defeating the purpose of the entire amendment.

“The DEA said private farmers can’t grow it because the legislation only mentioned the universities and the department of agriculture. Well, our department of agriculture is an office building,” Miller says. “The logic is missing. Did Congress intend for only [Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner] James Comer to be able to plant seeds in a patch of garden outside his office?”

The No. 1 producer of hemp in the 19th century, Kentucky has high hopes that hemp can turn the tide of its broken financial system. Now, they’re not so sure. “My state is really suffering economically. This is a crop that can grow abundantly and produce so many jobs,” says Miller.

Referring to himself as a “recovering politician,” he believes it’s fear of change, not policy, that’s driving the fight. “I have the greatest respect for law enforcement, they have a tough job. But law enforcement and the DEA have such a fierce opposition to drugs. They think anything that’s a distant cousin of marijuana could possibly get you high. It’s an internal bureaucratic resistance to change.”


The DOJ, for one, is sticking with the facts. “The Court has instructed Kentucky’s state agricultural department to apply for the appropriate DEA permits to obtain the hemp seeds at issue,” Ellen Canale, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, tells (PDF) The Daily Beast. “The DEA will continue to work with state officials so the state can lawfully obtain the seeds.”

As they battle it out once more in court Wednesday, all eyes will be on Kentucky—including, most likely, those of Congress, which for once is united behind a cause. Miller, who’s been in politics for 20 years, calls the congressional support of hemp “breathtaking.” “I have never seen something move in such a bipartisan way…it’s been crazy. Most everyone was against it only a year and a half ago, but now you have Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell standing arm and arm, supporting it.”

Even more than supporting it, they’re now aggressively fighting the DEA for it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Politico he was appalled by the DEA’s action. “It is an outrage that DEA is using finite taxpayer dollars to impound legal industrial hemp seeds,” he said. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Rep. Earl Blumenauer described the situation as showing how “incredibly out of touch with America” the DEA is. (The agency declined to comment for this article).

Whatever happens Wednesday, it will prove vital to the other nine states that are soon to follow in Kentucky’s footsteps. If the DEA obliges, they may soon be hitting the farming lottery. “Is [hemp] a panacea? No,” says Miller. “But in this tough economy it only makes sense to give farmers this new option. There’s no reason to treat them like drug dealers.”
It’s safe to say America is hooking back up with hemp. Or, in Facebook-speak, “it’s complicated.”

[Matt P]

One of the few positive things Mitch McConnell has ever endorsed. This guy's a cabal water carrier. Makes one wonder...
Usually Kentucky is among the last to do just about anything. Considering we were once the #1 hemp producer, this makes so much sense to turn our fortunes around. Now, with marijuana being our current #1 cash crop, we'll have to get that on the docket, too! Might as well make tax money off a billion dollar black market industry. It's embarrassing that Colorado, Oregon and other states are moving ahead of us on this.

Matt

[Lifebringer]

The crops are gonna be irradiated if all this is true. I stumbled on it, and bought it here. You know how they have censored any information on it, and it needs to be tweeted to those people who not only are facing high wind wild fires, but fukishima unit 4, has blown it's top and is spilling deadly gases, contaminated water, the works. I was reading their twitter conversation on it after watching the Japanese video of the local media. Someone posted it from Japan a couple times.

http://enenews.comgov-diseased-seals...-worrying-ther

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative...o-2960558.html
I'm still going over their twitter comments.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

hopefully for commercial hemp, the outdoors won't be too awfully dirty.

for smoking/edible etc cannabis, definitely in today's tech environ you want INDOOR GROW or at least hidden grow.