The War on Marijuana

The above excellent documentary is called The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, and is a must-see presentation of the history, myths, benefits, and suppressed facts about Cannabis/Hemp.


"The extent of drug education in most schools involves a police officer, a suitcase of drugs, and the repeated assurance that there's nothing but negativity inside. However, take pot as our example for today. Cannabis use in America is higher per capita than in Holland where it's legal. Our first few presidents were marijuana growers and activists, yet now in America twenty percent of all prison convictions are marijuana-related. The Hindu religion believes that Shiva brought marijuana to Earth for human enjoyment. It stimulates brain receptors but doesn't produce toxins that kill them like alcohol. It impairs your short-term memory during use, but has no long-term effects. No brain damage, no cardiovascular damage, no reproductive damage, no hormone alteration, and it even has hundreds of medicinal uses. It helps labor pain, headache, anxiety, glaucoma, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, chemo-recovery, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy. The oil from seeds is nutritious when eaten or can be used for making paints and canvas. Hemp yields twice the product of cotton fields, can be grown without pesticides or insecticides, and it's clothing is more durable and environmentally friendly than cotton, nylon, or synthetic fibers. 2x4s made from 100% pot-planks are two to three times stronger than most trees. All plastics could be replaced by hemp; Bags, wrappers, containers could all be edible, fully biodegradable, and act as fertilizer if littered. Gasoline could even be replaced by refining its ethanol. Since discovered over five thousand years ago paper has been made with pot plant pulp; Even the first Gutenberg and King James Bibles were printed on hemp paper. Hemp fields are sustainable and yield four times more product per acre than trees. Hemp is the longest and strongest fiber in the plant kingdom, produces the finest quality pulp, and doesn't release dioxins or chloroform during the paper-making process, but it has recently been replaced by wood-pulp due to cost efficiency and government control."

Excerpt taken from the book "Asbestos Head"

1) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers grew hemp.

2) Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in America, and it processed hemp. Also, the War of 1812 was fought over hemp.

3) For thousands of years, 90% of all ships’ sails and rope were made from hemp. The word ‘canvas’ is Dutch for cannabis. (Webster’s New World Dictionary.)

4) 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc., were made from hemp until the 1820s, at which time the cotton gin was introduced.

5) The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross flags, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp. (U.S. Government Archives.)

6) The first crop grown in many states was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for Kentucky, producing 40,000 tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th century. (State Archives.)

7) The oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China, although hemp industrialization probably goes back to ancient Egypt.

8) Rembrandt’s, Van Gogh’s, Gainsborough’s, as well as most early canvas paintings, were principally painted on hemp linen.

9) In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees would need to be cut down. Government studies reported that 1 acre of hemp equaled 4.1 acres of trees. Plans were in the works to implement such programs. (U.S. Department of Agriculture Archives.)

10) Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seed were used in America for paint products in 1935. (Sherman Williams Paint Co. testimony before the U.S. Congress against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.)

11) In 1938, hemp was called ‘Billion Dollar Crop.’ It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars. ( Popular Mechanics, Feb.1938.)

12) Mechanical Engineering Magazine (Feb. 1938) published an article entitled ‘The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop that Can be Grown.’ It stated that if hemp was cultivated using 20th century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

This list taken from Sean Casey's great article "Cannabiz"