Look Marijuana is not very dangerous- at worst it is as dangerous as booze. If booze is legal, then sure, why not weed? So, if dudes want to toke that is fine by me, I’ll vote for any laws that make it legal.
But they seem to need to lie about it to get it legal. They claim it’s some sort of miracle fiber-** it’s not.** It has its uses, but what little the US needs of that can be imported.
They claim it was banned due to racism.** It wasn’t.** Oh- not that there wasn’t plenty of racism to go around back then, but it was banned at the time everything else was. Sure, booze was re-legalized, and weed wasn’t. But if that had been based entirely upon racism, then why wasn’t cocaine (then a staple of many "Patent Medicines, taken heavily by Whites) re- legalized? The claim it was due to racism is just another lie by the dope smokers - after all, if it’s banning was caused by racism, then the banning has to be extra-super-wrong,right?:rolleyes: They then claim booze was made legal as white dudes drank it- as if blacks and hispanics don’t drink.:dubious: And of course today, plenty of whites light up, and weed is still mostly illegal.
So, tokers- ya wanna light up, fine by me. But lying about it won’t get you anywhere. It just makes you look disingenuous.
I think the contention, at least by Martin Booth is that at the time opiates and cocaine were banned (just as today) there really wasn’t any evidence whatsoever to support adding cannabis to the schedule of illegal narcotics. Instead, the tactics used were the worst kind of rhetoric, which spread lies like “smoking reefer causes crazed black men and Mexicans to rape white women”. Hell, they even had to make up the word “marijuana” (p. 179) to demonize the drug because if they’d called it “hemp” as the small percentage of folks familiar with it did, the public would have known right off the bat that it was a pack of lies.
Furthermore, see pages 187-188 for the story on how the Marihuana Tax Act passed Congress.
The allegation goes that the market for cocaine and heroin were rather small and somewhat isolated. By convincing the public that there was a terrifying scourge sweeping the nation, a super-drug spread by “hopped up, jazz-playing Negros” and crazed Mexicans which with one puff caused innocent, white teenagers to turn sex-crazed and homicidal, then Anslinger (etc) could secure for himself a hefty budget on a federal drug policy and some real job security. See page 179 again for a 1935 discussion of how those filthy illegal Mexican immigrants are peddling this murderous dope to our innocent schoolchildren.
I should add that the point is not that the only reason any drug was ever made illegal was due to racism, clearly there are some very valid reasons to strictly regulate cocaine and heroin (etc). The campaign to add cannabis to the schedule though was based pretty much wholesale on a frothy, hysterical pack of lies rooted firmly in racist rhetoric. I assume the reason cocaine wasn’t re-legalized is because there are very valid reasons to strictly control it, insofar as addiction and toxicity potential. Cannabis, not so much. And sure, plenty of “average white folks” smoke it now, and as we’re seeing, the trend is leaning further and further toward a realistic stance on the “criminal” nature of this drug.
Thanks, that was an informative article.
My point about the harvesting of forests was in response to the objection that hemp is somehow ‘too difficult’ to harvest and therefore ought to be rejected. The question I’m asking is: “How could harvesting hemp be more difficult than cutting down a forest?”
In the context of both your article and hemp, if it is true that hemp can reduce our reliance on wood for paper, then it is a good idea. (Same goes for flax or whatever else might work). One quote from your article:
First, this backs up my ‘hearsay’ knowledge that 1/2 of trees cut down are done so for paper- the article puts the figure at 43%. The percentage that are ‘trees specifically planted for that purpose’ as you put it is 16%. So… 84% of trees harvested for paper are not ‘planted for that purpose’. Your statement is false. ‘Most’ paper comes from trees that are not grown specifically for that purpose, according to your own cite!
9% of wood pulp comes from old-growth forests!?!?!? Sheesh, wouldn’t it be better to bring that figure to 0% and replace at least that much with something else? I await your objection on this point.
Furthermore, my ‘hearsay knowledge’ of hemp is that it produces more fiber per acre than trees anyway. Hemp can be harvested multiple times per year. Trees- every 60 years? I’d like to see reliable statistics comparing fiber per acre for hemp v trees. If I’m right, hemp for paper pulp would produce the same fiber yield on less land, and yes, preserve plenty of forests that are not farm trees.
Furthermore, if hemp can be a viable replacement for wood-pulp for paper, it destroys the argument that there is no market for hemp. How is 1.2% of the world’s total economic output too small a market?
I’ll have to respond later to the rest of your cites, they’re informative on broader issues than just hemp.
Thanks for the numbers on switchgrass. Kind of makes you ask why, if the yield is so much better, are we using corn for ethanol?
I addressed this in the op. I really am talking about hemp. If the numbers don’t add up then I’ll lose interest.
Part of my motivation here is that I think Mike Johanns, the former Secretary of Agriculture under W, governor of Nebraska before that and the current Senator from Nebraska, needs to be stopped.
From this article:
Well, note they also banned booze around then also. They banned pretty much anything and everything that could make you high. I don’t doubt that perhaps weed perhaps needed a little extra push through racism- not to ban it,just to let the legislatures know it could make you high, something that wasn’t all that common knowledge at that time, from what I have read. But they banned every damn fucking thing that could make you high- booze, coke, weed, all of it.
Cocaine was actually fairly common in patent medicines at the time. Coca Cola had cocaine, fergawdssake. (perhaps only a tiny bit)
*In early 20th-century Memphis, Tennessee, cocaine was sold in neighborhood drugstores on Beale Street, costing five or ten cents for a small boxful. Stevedores along the Mississippi River used the drug as a stimulant, and white employers encouraged its use by black laborers.[16]
In 1909, Ernest Shackleton took “Forced March” brand cocaine tablets to Antarctica, as did Captain Scott a year later on his ill-fated journey to the South Pole.
*
Well, note they also banned booze around then also. They banned pretty much anything and everything that could make you high. I don’t doubt that perhaps weed perhaps needed a little extra push through racism- not to ban it,just to let the legislatures know it could make you high, something that wasn’t all that common knowledge at that time, from what I have read. But they banned every damn fucking thing that could make you high- booze, coke, weed, all of it.
Cocaine was actually fairly common in patent medicines at the time. Coca Cola had cocaine, fergawdssake. (perhaps only a tiny bit)
*In early 20th-century Memphis, Tennessee, cocaine was sold in neighborhood drugstores on Beale Street, costing five or ten cents for a small boxful. Stevedores along the Mississippi River used the drug as a stimulant, and white employers encouraged its use by black laborers.[16]
In 1909, Ernest Shackleton took “Forced March” brand cocaine tablets to Antarctica, as did Captain Scott a year later on his ill-fated journey to the South Pole.
*
Also, if the banning of marijuana was caused by racism against Blacks and Mexicans why did just about every other “Western” nation ban it? Cultivation and use of cannabis were generally outlawed in 1928 in the UK, and they didn’t have any issues with “Blacks and Mexicans”. It wasn’t really banned in the USA for another ten years.* The racist claim just doesn’t stand up.
and then it was just taxed heavily, it was legal until 1970!
You keep repeating this as though it’s not common knowledge. Is your claim that because it was sold as an OTC pharamaceutical agent (etc) that it wasn’t dangerous or addictive? Yes all “things that could get you high” were banned at the same time, but the original (stated) purpose of the FDA and US drug control policies were to control dangerous narcotics, which opium and cocaine most certainly were, regardless of the fact that they had legitimate pharmaceutical (and some recreational) use. In order to ban cannabis, a case had to be made that it was a dangerous narcotic. The grounds for this case were entirely rooted in racist rhetoric. It’s interesting that you state right off the bat that marijuana “perhaps needed a little extra push through racism”… that is *exactly *the point I am trying to make. Except that it wasn’t a “little extra push”, it was the whole root of the campaign to establish cannabis in the public mind as a bringer of “moral turpitude” in the same vein as alcohol–only foreign, and a whole lot scarier.
Alcohol was banned on similarly spurious “moral turpitude” grounds and because of the huge demand by “normal white folks” the prohibition was overturned. Cannabis did not have this same widespread public support by “normal white folks” at that time. It does today, and we are most certainly beginning to see the tide turn against marijuana prohibition.
Again, same cite.
Egypt and Turkey had requested cannabis be added to the schedule of the 1925 Geneva international convention on narcotics control (which was the basis for the 1928 UK act) based on interpretation of Islamic law. Most countries dismissed the provision. In fact, the US walked out of the convention because the rest of the nations refused to comply with US demands for complete prohibition on all narcotics within ten years. It took just about that long for the US to establish a federal policy on drug control. The UK signed that treaty entirely because of the opium controls it entailed. When it came up for discussion in parliament, a Junior Home Office Minister explained that the convention on opium could not be ratified unless an “‘important but small’” law was passed. “‘What it does is include coca leaves under a former Act. They are the real basis of cocaine - we place them in the same category as raw opium.’” Cannabis was never even mentioned.
For another almost twenty years after that law was passed there were almost no prosecutions for cannabis offenses in the UK.
When the US continued to put pressure on the UN, the United Nations advisory committee on illegal narcotics prepared an extensive report detailing that “no further study” was necessary on the subject of cannabis. Most nations later caved due to direct pressure from the United States to “fall into line” with US narcotic prohibition laws.
Really? How about this choice selection from the UK paper the Sunday Graphic:
*After several weeks I have just completed an exhaustive investigation into the most insidious vice Scotland Yard has ever been called up to tackle – dope peddling. One of the detectives told me “We are dealing with the most evil men who have ever taken to the vice business” the victims are teenage British girls, and to a lesser extent, teenage youths… The racketeers are 90 per cent coloured men from the West Indies and West coast of Africa … As a result of my inquiries, I share the fear of detectives now on the job that there is the greatest danger of the reefer craze becoming the greatest social menace this country has ever known. *
He winds up with the major underlying fear that the time would come when: *This country would be all [racial] mixtures … There will be only half-castes. *
This kind of rhetoric started to show up right around the time police raids on jazz clubs hit the news, just as in the US.
Well, that’s a very specious claim. Sure, it was “taxed heavily”, in theory, except that no tax stamps were ever issued for purchase by private citizens.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that the racist rhetoric is the “only” reason marijuana was banned, or that everyone who voted in favor of banning it was doing so on racist grounds, simply that the racist rhetoric and yellow journalism tactics employed by Anslinger and Hearst in the US were the foundation for establishing cannabis in the public mind as a “dangerous, violence-inducing killer” and “corrupter of women”–a perception which most certainly did not exist prior to their campaign.
I’m sorry–I missed something in my initial response. I should have said that the “recreational use” of cocaine and opiates was rather limited in scope, not the market for cocaine as pharmaceutical additive, I misspoke and you were correct to comment on the commonality of OTC cocaine products.
Heroin also was sold in OTC elixirs and medications, it was invented by by Bayer for this purpose. However, the “street use” of opium was largely confined to areas with populations of Chinese immigrants.
Anyway, you were right to comment on the widespread use of OTC products. When I wrote that, I was intending to comment on the smoking of opium or sniffing of powdered cocaine. The pharmaceutical use of such drugs was certainly supported both by history and research, and as such was brought under regulation by the FDA.
Unfortunately, in direct opposition to the AMA’s recommendation before the senate during debate of the Tax Stamp Act, cannabis was not.
Once again you are confusing yourself b conflating all the supposed miracle properties of hemp. Hemp may not be any harder to harvest than trees, but it is also less productive, requires more fertiliser, can’t be grown on marginal land, produces lower quality paper, is more difficult to preocess and so forth.
This is the problem with the miracle hemp argument. Hemp is not a miracle crop, it’s a second rate alternative to lots of other crops. It’s more difficult to harvest than some, more expensive than others, more finnicky than others, more difficult to process than others and so forth.
Why? Seriously, this seems like a total non sequitur. Why is it good to stop using an efficient, sustainable source of pulp in exchange for a less efficient, unsustainable one? How is that a good idea?
Ah, but the op is to tell me again why hemp is illegal. If ‘not a miracle’ was a crime, we’d all be in deep doo doo.
It isn’t a non-sequitur, it is an if…then statement. If… hemp can be grown on land that isn’t currently producing anything and provide pulp for paper, thus obviating the motive for cutting down old-growth forest for paper production …then that is a great idea, tell me why not? If… something else obviates the motive for cutting down old-growth forests for making paper, without being somehow worse … then that’s a good idea too. No?
Allow me to admit that I don’t yet subscribe to a definite set of data about hempiculture. I find it as contradictory as the Bible franky- any side seems able to support their position with ‘data’. Some of the info out there is false.
How much is a fair amount? Your first cite says that toilet paper accounts for 5% of total US forest use, and plush toilet paper, from old growth forests, is some unstated fraction of that.
So again, how much of old growth forests is being harvested for paper production? Would hemp replace such use in toilet paper?
I don’t know the factual answers either way, but as an if/then statement, if the answer to the latter is “yes” then I’d submit that the answer to the former is “too much”.
This has already been answered for you. Hemp produces lower quality paper, requires more fertilizer, and it is more difficult to process. There is no clear incentive to use hemp as a substitute source of paper.
But it IS worse, as has already been pointed out more than once.
No. It’s only a good idea if there are no serious drawbacks to this plan, such as impracticality and greater inefficiency.
In the context of both your article and hemp, if it is true that hemp can reduce our reliance on wood for paper, then it is a good idea. (Same goes for flax or whatever else might work). One quote from your article:
You are completely misreading that article. For one thing, it explicitly says (and I quote):
While this is a feature, most paper now comes from sustainable wood supplies and from trees that are grown and harvested specifically for this purpose. As the trees are harvested, new trees are planted to replace those cut down.
This is, in fact, the entire point of that article. That is why its title is “Recycling paper saves trees - MOSTLY FALSE.”
The problem is that you’re pulling that quote out of context. IMMEDIATELY AFTER the quote in question, the article says, “Most pulp mill operators practice reforestation to ensure a continuing supply of trees.” In other words, even when the trees are not specifically grown for paper production, most pulp mills will replace the trees in question. In the vast majority of cases (if not all), forests are NOT being depleted in order to produce paper.
There is no large incentive to de-criminalize it, basically. Most of the ‘hemp is a miracle crop and even an alternative vegetable’ crowd want to de-criminalize it so they can get a wedge in to de-criminalize the recreational version.
Personally I think that we SHOULD de-criminalize both, but I think most of the arguments for why no one really cares that much about hemp have already been shown to you.
Once more you are confusing yourself by conflating all the miracle hemp arguments into one big mess.
The actual question you asked is how it could be more difficult to harvest hemp than to harvest trees. As I pointed out, that’s the wrong question. Hemp isn’t more difficult to harvest, it is more difficult and expensive to both grow and process, and produces lower quality product at the end.
If you could try to focus on just one issue at a time, rather than jumping from comparing hemp with trees for paper, and then comparing it with cotton for fibre, and then asking why it’s illegal and so forth, you would probably find the issue much easier to understand.
Well first off that’s not what you said. You made the statement that it is a great idea with no caveats and provisos.
And now that you have stated the caveats and provisos I only have to point out that they are not true. And that is why it is not a good idea.
Once again, getting all twisted up because of the multitude of supposed miracle properties of hemp.
Because a better use for the land would be to let it go unused and start the cycle of becoming a ‘new’ old growth forest rather than planting a troublesome and invasive crop.