Blogging for Freedom

Dear Karen Tandy, Director DEA,

The History Channel has been running this week (June 30, 2006) a series called "Hooked: Illegal Drugs in America and How They Got That Way". Great program, Karen, and since a lot of of factual information about marijuana, hemp, cannabis et.al. is not coming out of your agency, I hope you'll get the chance to watch it sometime. You actually might learn something.

The historical perspective on prohibition of marijuana is particularly fascinating. Even Harry Anslinger, the legendary crusader against the evil herb in the 1930's, admitted later in life that it had all been politically-motivated. The horror stories Anslinger used to justify complete criminalization for possession of even small amounts of marijuana - the crime, the insanity, the child abuse - were fiction. Over 200 statements he made in his career as the first US Drug Czar have been debunked in the years since.

Including this famous one:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations
with Negroes, entertainers and any others."       Harry J. Anslinger, testimony to Congress, 1937

"It was Anslinger who is responsible, either directly or indirectly or in between, for giving us the idea that marijuana is a gateway drug, that those who break laws concerning marijuana should receive mandatory minimum sentences and that marijuana should be illegal at all. He is also responsible for ending our long-standing production of hemp and for rooting out most wild marijuana throughout the country. Indeed the popularization of the name ‘marihuana’ or ‘marijuana’ is often attributed to Anslinger, although this is unlikely. The influence of the life and career of this man, unknown by most people in our country, affects many legal and social issues today, thirty years after his death." http://forum.grasscity.com/showthread.php?t=60576

Since 1937, when the Marijuana Tax Act became law, the Feds have arrested and incarcerated 20 million Americans for marijuana posession, use, cultivation and/or sales.  All based on specious facts, hysteria, untruths and racism.

Yep, I said it.  The "R" word... Criminalization of marijuana was, in reality, organized racism legislated by our government against any ethnic and minority group it wanted to control - without those pesky Bill of Rights or Constitution getting in the way.  Like the Mexicans, the Blacks, Jazz musicians, artists, movie stars, hippies, love-mongers, peace-niks.

The truth is out there, Karen.  We have 70 years of prohibition behind us, BILLIONS of dollars spent on eradicating a weed that has grown freely and naturally on this planet since the beginning, millions of American lives hurt more by the law and police than the drug, and what have you learned?  Legitimate, science-based research about the medicinal properties of cannabis has been conducted all around the world - I wish I could remember who said this, but one highly respected medical scientist in Europe recently stated that "Marijuana in the 21st century may very well prove to be the aspirin of the 20th century."

Queen Victoria used cannabis for menstrual cramps, for goodness sakes.  She didn't go insane and kill her family with a hatchet. How about Carl Sagan?  He didn't lose his mind - on the contrary, he claimed it opened his mind up to the Universal in his studies of the universe.  Louis Armstrong was a beloved American icon and he smoked pot every day of his adult life. 

Evidence of marijuana as medicine is documented as far back as 5 thousand years in China.  It seems that you and your people - especially your Big Boss, Dick Cheney - are the only ones still towing the Anslinger line.  I see racism rearing it's ugly old head now that Mexican immigration and border control is such a hot political issue on your agenda.  In these days, too, I believe your rabid-dog response to marijuana is a deliberate attempt to control, through intimidation and persecution, "alternative" people, like myself, who disagree with your administration's self-serving wars and your illegal, unethical and un-American policies.  Sorry Karen, but greed and arrogance are simply not qualities I admire in my democratic government.

You should really read up on the subject. And, check out the History Channel listings for that show on drugs and politics.

.... or, maybe you don't believe in history? 

Sincerely,

Granny Green