imported post
wrightme wrote:
Where is any of that "immoral?" You may feel it is not correct, or an outrage, but where is it "immoral?" :?
Immoral is a set of laws that were based NOT on any sort of health risk, societal effect, or crime trends, but rather were based entirely on the greed and monopolistic corporate strategies of people who lied during sworn Congressional testimony, published racist, falsified, and completely fabricated newspaper articles to sway public opinion. DuPont and Hearst Publishing knew that the only real competitor to their wood pulp paper, synthetic nylon, and petrochemical oils were hemp products, and they saw that the best way to eliminate their competition was to make it illegal.
If cutting out the American Farmer from the process of providing cloth, paper, rope, varnish, paint, and lubricating oils through a concerted effort of lies, propaganda, and racist perjury is NOT immoral, then I don't know what is...
"Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seeds 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.)
Henry Ford’s first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the car itself was constructed from hemp! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, ‘grown from the soil,’ had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel. (Popular Mechanics, 1941.)
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.)
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.
If you consider the Conressional Record, Popular Mechanics, and peer-reviewed scientific journals to be part of some pro-pot NORML conspiracy, then I really feel sorry for you, because you obviously haven't done any real research to form your opinions, and you are simply regurgitating the same lies,propaganda, and racist untruths that the petrochemical industry has been spewing for the last 90 years to justify this travesty.
Spefically on the "REQUIRED BY LAW" to be cultivated, I find that highly suspect. What do you base that upon? Are you speaking about hemp for rope? Different animal.
Apparently you don't know much about plant biology and agronomy. The plant used to make fiber for hemp rope and cloth is the EXACT same genus and species as the plant used to make marijuana. Look it up. Cannabis Sativa.
http://www.popularmechanics.co.za/content/news/singlepage.asp?key=32
As for the requirements to grow hemp in the US, and it's acceptability as a commodity payment for taxes, here are some sources:
In 1619, the council in Jamestown VA passes a law making it illegal NOT to grow hemp, because it was such a valuable resource. It was used to make paper, fabric, sails, and rope. (G. M. Herdon. Hemp in Colonial Virginia)
In 1715, 1726 and 1730, the Colonial government passed acts to place tarrifs on imported hemp from Europe to encourage American farmers to grow it here, to reduce our dependence on European sources. (G. M. Herdon. Hemp in Colonial Virginia)
In 1791, President Washington signed a duties act on imported hemp to further encourage American farmers to grow hemp. Washington and Jefferson both had substantial hemp plantations (farms that dedicated 2000 or more acres to a single crop) and went to great lengths to smuggle hemp seed from China for their farms. (Washington and Jefferson Diaries.)
Thomas Jefferson wrote extensively about the use of hemp on his personal plantation and in the Colonies at large:
If you look down this list, you will even see where Jefferson discusses in a letter with Samuel Huntington in December of 1779 that the Virginia General Assembly established a tax that could be paid with commodities (if the land-owner didnt have enough cash), and among those commodities acceptable as payment was Hemp.
So if you consider the personal diaries and letters of Washington and Jefferson, the official website of the Monticello Archives, and peer-reviewed scholarly research works to be part of the pro-pot, NORML conspiracy, then again, I am really sorry for you, because you apparently are COMPLETELY brainwashed by the media, big Pharma and Big Oil companies, and you have no concept of the ACTUAL history of this Great Nation, as documented in the writings of our Founding Fathers.
I've been researching this topic for over 20 years. I am a historical reenactor, and specialize in Medieval and Colonial printing, so hemp paper, cloth and rope are topics I have done a LOT of research on. I've researched this at the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, and at the archives of Monticello and George Mason University. (I lived in Northern VA for 15 years).
Unless you've actually looked into the primary source documents on this issue, I suggest you keep your media- and government-sourced opinions to yourself.
Now, specifically to your claim of "MOST profitable cash crop," present your argument. What metric provides for that claim? Or, is your whole post a simply "cut/paste" of NORML 'talking points' that misstate the reality to further an agenda?
According to current USDA and FDA statistics, California's biggest agricultiral product is milk and cream, which brings in $7.3 Billion/year. The DEA estimates that the Marijuana trade nets over $14 Billion/year in CA.
You do the math...
Of course, if you consider ABC News, CNBC, Time Magazine, and the Register (a respectable UK publication) to be part of the Pro-pot NORML conspiracy, you can just dismiss these articles as pot-smoke BS.
But if you actually get out there and do the research, rather than accepting the spoon-fed propaganda given to you by the corporate-controlled media, you will find that these statements are in fact a horrible, ungly truth, and the "war on drugs" is in fact robbing the American Farmer of a tremendously valuable crop, robbing the American people of an environmentally friendly source of fiber, food, and oil, and is robbing the American Taxpayer of billions of dollars of revenue in lost sales taxes and business taxes because hemp is illegal to grow IN ANY FORM in the USA...
As to moral or immoral, I see nothing in your "immoral" claims that fit the definition.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/immoral "violating moral principles; not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics." Disagreeing with a law does not make it "immoral."
The "War on Drugs", and specifically, the "War on Hemp" is, like gun control, an immoral travesty with it's roots in racism, fed by corporate greed with complete disregard for the environment, the health and welfare of the People, and the prosperity of the Common Man, and was borne from and continues to be perpetuated by the desire to punish non-white people for daring to come to this country.
In 1942, the USDA produces an educational movie entitled "Hemp for Victory", which was distributed to farmers and co-ops all over the country to encourage farmers to grow hemp for the War Effort. Shortly after the war, most of the movies were rounded up and destroyed, and even the Library of Congress denied for DECADES that such a film ever existed. Eventually, someone found a copy stashed in the basement of a midwestern church in the 1980's. The USDA, the DOD, and the Library of Congress were all exposed in their lies, and now this movie is available on VHS and DVD. I suggest you get a copy of it and watch it--it's pretty interesting. But the point is, that three agencies of the US Government lied about the existence of this movie and the "Hemp for Victory" program to the American public for decades. The existence of this program is not taught in schools, and the importance of Hemp as the most valuable, strategic, and environmentally responsible agricultural product in the history of the United States has been summarily deleted from our educational system. If THAT is not immoral, then I don't know what is...
Hemp is NOT illegal because anyone ever determined it to be medically dangerous. It is not illegal because any credible studies ever showed that it's use causes any more crime than any other intoxicant like Alcohol or Nicotine. It is NOT illegal because it causes any sort of health problems. Hemp was made illegal because DuPont and Hearst Publishing wanted to kill their only viable competitor in the paper industry, and since the Hemp industry in the USA was one of the biggest agricultural sectors, the only way they could do that was to make it ILLEGAL.
If that's not immoral, then I don't know what is...