Why pot Is illegal

August 11th, 2005, originally published online at A View From the Street website 

    Let's see, Americans...if we set out to find a new miracle drug, say, one that would be beneficial for a wide range of ailments, low cost, effective, and with no bad side effects, would we jump on it? NO we'd ban it. How do I know? We already have!! 

     And let's see, Americans. If we set out to find a new source of oil to run our cars, something that did not need to be extracted from either the heat of the Arabian desert or the pristine Arctic, something we could grow here in America, a renewable crop, an oil that was NON POLLUTING, would we jump on it? NO we'd ban it. How do I know? We already have!!

    And again, if we set out to find a new miracle fiber, one that we could use to make paper so we didn't have to cut down any more trees, a fiber we could also use to make twine and rope and cloth, even fine linen cloth, would we jump on it?  NO we'd ban it. How do I know? We already have!!

     What is this miracle, this drug, one that can be used to treat pain, sleeplessness, and depression?  It is a tranquilizer, an effective cough medicine, a child birth analgesic, a glaucoma treatment, an appetite stimulant, and an aid to opiate, alcohol and nicotine withdrawal, one with no reported bad side effects or death?

     IT'S CANNABIS!!

     And where did this miracle, this cannabis come from? Straight from our maker.  In the book of exodus, God commanded Moses to make a holy oil, and one of the ingredients, besides Cinnamon and myrrh is guess what?  CANNABIS!!

     So if cannabis is older than Moses and has been used as medicine for at least 5000 years, are we just stupid?  Why is this wonderful product banned??

     There is an old investigator's term that applies here and since I'm an old investigator, let's FOLLOW THE MONEY.  Let's see if we can figure out who would stand to profit from banning an  easily grown herb, in short, medicine you can grow yourself? 

Perhaps such folks with names like Squibb, and Lilly, and Park and Davis and other pharma-barons that wanted to PATENT and CONTROL drugs. The problem is they banned a natural medicine that hurt no one, and added often lethal chemical cocktails to the market, such as Acetaminophen, a liver poison used to control pain.  Tylenol they call it. The world takes 11 billion aspirin tables a year.  Then we have Nyquil, a mixture of drugs and alcohol.  Nyquil is 50 percent alcohol.  More than 240,000 people are hospitalized every year from adverse drug reactions.  More than 2 million older Americans are addicted to tranquilizers and sleeping pills and this is before Ambien came along.

     My my, imagine having a patent on a drug that has addicted millions of Americans. Repeat business guaranteed you stock holders you!!

     Now let's look at the oil portion of the equation.  If you are talking motor oil you are talking about John D Rockefeller, termed "ruthless" by some texts on the old curmudgeon. He became Standard Oil and Standard Oil controlled 95 percent of the oil refining business in America.  (Remember hemp seed oil will burn right out of the pod and doesn't have to be REFINED..  So guess which oil baron did not want to compete with cheap, easily grown hemp seed oil? Interestingly enough, old John D died in 1937, the same year cannabis was banned. I can still hear the old SOB chuckling from his grave.

     Next in the mix are the timber barons.  How many years citizens, have we been cutting down trees to make paper?  In the early days of cutting down trees, only spruce was used, but the relentless pulping technology expanded the pulping process to include fir, hemlock, and southern pine. That's great.  More kinds of trees to cut down. 

    Never mind that a Chinese man named Ts'Ai Lun made paper from hemp fiber back in 105AD. 

     Does it appear to you folks that the pharma-barons, the oil barons and the timber barons all had and have a stake in not wanting to compete with cannabis?

     CAN YOU SAY CONSPIRACY BOYS AND GIRLS?

     What happened is that someone wrote a movie script about a fictitious marijuana smoker that went crazy called "Refer Madness" and frankly it scared the non marijuana smoking public to death allowing Harry Anslinger, the  first drug czar to reek his havoc.  The end  result was that all cannabis was declared unlawful!

     Oh, and there is one more thing!  All the federal cops who used to point Tommy guns at alcohol users and distributors had nothing to do after Prohibition ended in 1931.  Fortunately for them, the cannabis war began in 1937 and gave them all gainful employment again.  Hooray!!

     So you see boys and girls that is why cannabis was made illegal and why it remains so today. Are we stupid?  No because most of this happened before you were born.

     But hear this!  When any administration tells us that marijuana is bad and therefore illegal ask this question.  Who trumps who, Gods command to use cannabis or some government official?  Sorry government I'll follow God instructions!!

By Don DuPay

ABSOLUTELY NO PORTION OF THIS EDITORIAL MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISSEMINATED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR, DONALD LEE DUPAY, UNDER PENALTY OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!!