Harm reduction should not only be applied to world affairs, like avoiding electing presidents that take America to war using fear, hysteria, and blatant lies, but also to American drug policy. Harm reduction has worked throughout the world and on the west coast of the US. It works.
Now, that said, marijuana, being the least harmful “drug,” less harmful than coffee, should be studied for its cancer-reduction capabilites per a new study out today. Before I give some quotes from that, let me remind that marijuana made news last week also. Both of these links deserve a thorough read. Last week’s is in this Science Daily publication and today’s new study explains how marijuana’s THC reverses the effects of a cancer-causing enzyme that is produced by smoking cigarettes. It actually reverses cancer, please let that sink in:
Both of these studies flies in the face of our disgraceful, lying, bipartisan, federal and state government Holy Drug Inquisition.
See below for some facts on that and some excerpts from these 2 studies…
Last week’s study:
New study:
The difference rests in the often opposing actions of the nicotine in tobacco and the active ingredient, THC, in marijuana, says Dr. Robert Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
He reviewed the scientific evidence supporting this contention in a recent issue of Harm Reduction Journal.
Whereas nicotine has several effects that promote lung and other types of cancer, THC acts in ways that counter the cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana smoke, Melamede explained in an interview with Reuters Health.
“THC turns down the carcinogenic potential,” he said.
The sad history of the Holy Drug Inquisition:
“Records of St. Louis for the years 1848 and 1849 reveal hemp commerce at $1,820,970,
exceeding tobacco at $1,061,347.”
– Chris Conrad citing Commissioner of Patents Report. 1849. 31C1S no 20. P. 566
“Hemp is so useful that (the tariff) may well be dispensed with…from any parts.”
– The Calendar of State Papers for Colonial Virginia, 1665
“The culture [of tobacco] is percicious. This plant greatly exhausts the soil. Of course, it requires much manure, yielding no nourishment for cattle, there is no return for the manure expended…
It is impolitic…the best hemp and the best tobacco grow on the same kind of soil. The former article is of first necessity to the commerce and marine, in other words to the wealth and protection of this country. The latter, never useful and sometimes pernicious, derives its estimation from caprice, and its value from the taxes to which it was formerly exposed. The preference to be given will result from a comparison of them: Hemp employs in its rudest state more labor than tobacco, but being a material for manufactures of various sorts, becomes afterwards the means of support to numbers of people, hence it is to be preferred in a populous country. America imports hemp and will continue to do so, and also sundry articles made of hemp, such as cordage, sail cloth, drilling linen, and stockings.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Farm Journal, March 16, 1791
A Legitimate Industry Meets the Politicians: the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937
“There is no hesitancy in saying that the reputation of marijuana as a troublemaker in the Panama department was due to its association with alcohol, which, upon investigation, was always found the prime agent.
…The legislation in relation to marijuana was ill-advised, that it branded as a menace and a crime a matter of trivial importance. It is understood that this legislation is furthermore a serious detriment to the development of a hemp fiber industry in this country. Finally, it is hoped that no witch hunt will be instituted in the military services over a problem that does not exist.”
– Colonel J.M. Pholen, Military Surgeon, 1943
“Cannabis indica does not produce dependance as in opium. …There is no dependance or increased tolerance…. As with alcohol, it may be taken a relatively long time without social or emotional breakdown.
Marijuana is habit forming, although not addicting in the same sense as alcohol might be with some people, or sugar or coffee.”
– Dr. Walter L, Treadway, head of U.S. Public Health Service Division of Mental Hygiene, 1937
“The only information they had was what we would give them in our hearings.”
– Harry J. Anslinger, head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, as quoted when discussing how to get Hemp Prohibition past Congress and the Courts in The Marijuana Conviction, Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974.
“…gross unfairness….”
– Congressional investigation cited by Carl Solberg in Oil Power: The rise and imminent fall of an American empire, commenting on the tax rebate scandal by Andrew Mellon and Gulf Oil
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate real estate….People will work harder, live a more moral life.
Values will be adjusted and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
– President Herbert Hoover, summarizing Treasury Secretary Mellon’s formula for American recovery from the Great Depression, as denoted in Oxford History, London England. vol. 3. 1961. P.292
“The State Deparment has tentatively agreed to this proposition, but before action is taken we shall have to dispose of certain phases of legitimate traffic; for instance, the drug trade still has a small medical need for marihuana, but has agreed to eliminate it entirely. The only place it is used extensively is by veterinarians, and we can satisfy them by importing their medical needs. We must also satisfy the canary bird seed trade, and the Sherwin Williams Paint Company, which uses hemp seed oil for drying purposes. We are now working with the Department of Commerce in finding substitutes for the legitimate trade, and after that is accomplished, the path will be cleared for the treaties and for federal law.”
– Harry S. Anslinger, memo to Stephen B. Gibbons. Feb 1, 1936
“Have you lots of cases on this? Horror stories; that’s what we want.”
– Harry S. Anslinger, memo to Stephen B. Gibbons, Jan. 14, 1937
“Not long ago the body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk after a plunge from a Chicago apartment window. Everyone called it suidice, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic [sic.] known to America as marijuana, and to history as hashish. …
How many murders, suicides, robberies and maniacal deeds it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured.”
– Harry J. Anslinger (head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics) and C.R. Cooper in `Marijuana, assassin of youth,’ American Magazine, vol. 124. 1937. Pp. 18-19, 150-153
“The leading newspapers of the United States have recognized the seriousness of this problem and many of them have advocated federal legislation to control the traffic in marihuana. … In a recent editorial, the Washington Times stated, `The marihuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope [sic.], largely because of the failure to the public to understand its fatal [sic.] qualities.’ … The purpose of HR 6385 is to employ the federal taxing power not only to raise revenue from the marihuana traffic, but also to discourage the current and widespread undesirable use of marihuana by smokers and drug addicts [sic.] and thus drive the traffic into channels where the plant will be put to valuable industrial, medical, and scientific uses.”
– Transcript, `Committeee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives. 75c 1s. HR6385.’ April 27-30, May 4 , 1937
“It is grown in their fields and used as oatmeal. Millions of people everyday are using hemp seed in the Orient as food. They have been doing that for many generations, especially in periods of famine. … The point I make is this – that this bill is too all inclusive. The bill is a world encircling measure. This bill brings the activites – the crushing of this great industry under the supervision of a bureau – which may mean its suppression.”
– Ralph Loziers of the National Oil Seed Institute in the1937 hearings on the fate of the hemp industry
“Last year [1936], there was imported into the United States 62, 813, 000 pounds of hempseed. In 1935, there was imported 116 million pounds.”
– Ralph Loziers, 1937 hearings
“[What are] the legitimate uses of the hemp plant?”
– Chairman Brown, 1937 hearings
“…They are not only amply protected under this Act, but they can go ahead and raise hemp just as they have always done.”
– Harry J. Anslinger’s answer, under oath, in 1937 hearings, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“[There is] a new cash crop with an annual value of several hundred million dollars…It is hemp.”
– Popular Mechanics, 1937
Useful Crop Purged for Monopoly
“Make the most of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere.”
– George Washington, 1794 note to Mt. Vernon’s gardener, vol. 33, p. 270
“Synthetic plastics find application in fabricating a wide variety of articles, many of which in the past were made from natural products.”
– Lamont Dupont in Popular Mechanics, 1939
“Farmers must be allowed to grow an energy crop capable of producing 10 tons per acre in 90-120 days.”
– Energy Farming in America, 1989
“Drought can even have a good effect on hemp when fields have been prepared and planted early, for a `remarkable yield of fiber of exceptionally good quality.'”
– Chris Conrad, hemp expert and author of “Hemp: Lifeline to the Future” (available from NORML, Washington D.C., citing The Official Record, US Department of Agriculture. Dec.25, 1930. P.3)
“It just seems silly for the government to be paying farmers $26 billion a year not to produce something that would replace what we are importing at a cost of about $100 billion a year. … This is a national disgrace.”
– George Tyson, President of Xylan, Inc., biomass research firm
“The process can be adjusted to favor charcoal, pyrolytic oil, gas, or methanol production with a 95.5 percent fuel-to-feed efficiency.”
– Lynn Osborn, biomass expert
“Hemp … has more to offer the paper industry than we are taking advantage of (or more correctly, we are allowed to take advantage of).”
– Jim Young, technical editor of Pulp and Paper magazine, in `Time to reconsider hemp.” June, 1991. p. 7
The Roots of the Modern Inquisition
“Had Alexandria triumphed and not Rome, the extravagant and muddled stories that I have summarized here would be coherent, majestic, and perfectly ordinary.”
– Jorge Luis Borges, Gnostic scholar
“God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.”
-Genesis (1: 29)
“Essential fatty acids are responsible for our immune response. In the [European] old country, the peasants ate hemp butter. They were more resistant to disease than the nobility.”
-R. Lee Hamilton, Ed. D., Ph. D., medical researcher-bioemeritus, UCLA
A little tie-in there at the end to my Gnostic thing. As Einstein pointed out, everything is relative.
