MEET TODAY’S POTHEADS

Temecula, CA – Today marks an anniversary more heinous than Nero or Hitler’s birthday. Today marks the first 100 years of trying to snuff out Mary Jane Green, aka the plant cannabis, slang ‘weed’, pot, reefer (cause it chills you like a refrigerator), and marijuana, the government’s name for the plant when their money masters, the elite, wanted Congress to ban it from society due to it not being patentable. The benefits the government and Pharma businesses have tried in vain to mimic are so numerous that the only way to accomplish their perfidy is to spread hysteria and ignorance as they toil away in the labs hoping to profit from Mother Nature and mankind’s illnesses.

In our first report The Calendar presents the history of the pot prohibition; ahhh, the love of money... After that we are proud to give you a look at today’s ‘potheads’. These are people who are trying to make a difference in the lives of people by showing compassion, intelligence and ingenuity. I have sorted them by short introductions with the first link being where I started my relationship with Mary Jane. Coming from a family that had accepted segregation as a way of life, going to church every Sunday, and being espoused with middle class values and religious ethics, I was unprepared for The Big Lie. But you’re only a cherry once, ONCE.

Today marks the centennial, the 100th year anniversary of the nation's first anti-marijuana law. On April 29, 1911, Massachusetts enacted a statute making it illegal to sell or possess cannabis or other "hypnotic" drugs such as opium without a prescription. Violators were subject to a $100 fine and up to six months in jail,

Ironically, there is no record of any public concern about cannabis at the time. "Marijuana," the Mexican name for cannabis leaf rolled into cigarettes, was still unknown outside a few border settlements in the Southwest.

The Massachusetts law was not primarily aimed at cannabis, but at opium, morphine and other narcotics abuse of which had become a concern among Progressive Era reformers and temperance advocates. By prohibiting the use of narcotics without a prescription, it was hoped their abuse could be stemmed. Cannabis was added for the sake of completeness, being one of the familiar hypnotic drugs traditionally available in pharmacies. This incidental decision would turn out to have far-reaching consequences, aptly illustrating the dangers of governmental misjudgment in matters of drug regulation.

Significantly, the law expressly permitted pharmaceutical sales of cannabis, the medical value of which was widely acknowledged at the time. Only in 1937 was medical cannabis suppressed at the insistence of federal narcotics boss Harry Anslinger, whose last-century "reefer madness" policy sadly remains with us today. For more on the racial motivational which played as much though different a part than in the Chiropractor field, see The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer.

Other states soon followed Massachusetts in passing anti-cannabis laws of their own, beginning with California, Maine, Indiana and Wyoming in 1913. As in Massachusetts, there was no public concern about marijuana at the time.

Significantly, the laws were the handiwork of pharmacy boards and Progressive era advocates of government regulation, who believed that drug use should be restricted by force of law. Officials admitted that cannabis was not a problem at the time, but warned that it might become one unless steps were taken to prevent it.

Ironically, only after being prohibited did cannabis become widely popular. During the 1920s marijuana use spread inexorably from Mexican and Caribbean immigrants to jazz musicians, hipsters, and reprobate youth. As usage proliferated, so did laws against it. Over 30 states had prohibited marijuana by 1937, when Congress enacted the first federal prohibition law, and penalties were further enhanced in the 1950s. It was the Rand Corporation report that resulted in the increased penalties.

In that report it was noted that the two most dangerous aspects of marijuana use were the commonality pot smoking brings to all socio-economic classes. Smoking pot was a link that united people as much as religion. This gave rise to the stigmatizing of the term ‘pothead’ or ‘reefer addict’ as is used in Back To The Future. But it was the second aspect of pot smoking that chilled the government, and not in a good way. In Memoirs of Mary Jane & Mr. Pete, it is John Dunn who asks, “What is the first thing that people talk about when they get stoned, really talk about? The Man and how the man is sticking it to you.”

The ‘awakening’ of the anti-war/anti-establishment generation brought an explosion of marijuana use in the later 1960s and 1970s. The result left marijuana firmly established as America's second most popular intoxicant after alcohol, a status it seems destined to enjoy for the foreseeable future regardless of government disinformation, persecution, or threats.

Ironically, America's problems with marijuana post-date the laws that were supposed to prevent them. Since 1911, the number of consumers has soared from a handful to tens of millions Americans. Meanwhile, over 20 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges; over 40,000 are now in prison for marijuana crimes; marijuana production has become a multi-billion dollar illicit industry; billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on eradication and enforcement, and thousands of lives lost in prohibition-related violence in Mexico and elsewhere. Over the same period of time, not a single death has been recorded from a toxic reaction to marijuana.

In sum, the evidence is overwhelming that the 100-year war on cannabis has failed. In practice, prohibition has served as a crime-creation program, criminalizing otherwise law-abiding and chronically ill Americans, while promoting a criminal market, gun sales/violence, and generating continued disrespect for the law. This is the bitter fruit from the love of money and the business people who would claim to replicate what God has done to obtain said riches. In the wake of this historic failure, public support for re-legalizing marijuana has recently risen to record levels, reaching majorities in the West Coast and New England. As in 1911, so today it is government officials, drug cops and bureaucrats, now entrenched in a multibillion-dollar complex of anti-drug agencies and programs, who are the staunchest supporters of the failed system that keeps them on the public payroll. Americans would be well advised to reject their bankrupt paternalism and reclaim their historical freedom to use cannabis. That’s the real way to make government work. Make 2012 the year to remember as the year people took back their government. And now a look at some modern VIPs, very important potheads and their point of view.

The ‘big lie’

Social activism

Another side of activism

Doing the right thing

A miracle plant

The medical side

A gateway drug to other herb drugs

Where all the weed at

The spiritual side

The Justice side

Hope for the helpless

(Story source - Dale Gieringer, Cal NORML; vid source – MSNBC; all emphasis – Ed)