I have been told that when a story starts with the words, "I was born...", ya knew you were in trouble, so... here is me.
I was born in 1955, in a medium sized city in West Virginia. This is where I lived until I joined the military in 1975. This is also where, at the age of 15, I started toking.
My military career was spent keeping my front in place... work hard and play hard. I was deeply "in the closet" for the entire 20 years, with one exception.
I successfully steered a US Naval vessel to pay for a "party"... 'nuff said.
I was married for a while (24 years) and raised 4 children after a divorce through their teenage years, successfully.
I have 5 kids. Two of them nurses or nurses to be. Two of them are US Marines. The other one is a US Soldier.
I also have 11 grandchildren.
Other than my 20 years in the military, I am a musician (Jazz/Blues) playing sax and violin (sex & violence), photographer, poet, writer, farmer, beer brewer, chandler, mead maker, carpenter, did some work in the adult entertainment industry for 6 years, daddy and grampa. I now live off the land in Northwestern Minnesota and in my spare time I fight for cannabis legalization.
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America is the greatest nation on earth; we treasure the freedom of liberty, and many nations have followed our example. Our forefathers sacrificed their lives and the lives of their sons and daughters to preserve these truths. Equality is the benchmark by which we judge ourselves, and in many cases have legislated results that guarantee that equality. It is with this in mind, I find great sorrow that the United States Congress violated the first amendment when it legislated a ban on Cannabis. The violation has caused many lives to be lost, and many families to be ruined. The law is absolutely biased and is the benchmark of inequality; the proof of that is that criminals are the profiteers of this law and it has denied fair trade of an herb that should be traded on an open market, and denied fair tax on this product while reaping windfall profits to persons that avoid taxation and are willing to murder anyone trying to stop them. The ban on growing Cannabis is the real example of unfair trade and inequality; the monstrous amount of funding for enforcing this ban over the last 97 years has nearly bankrupted our government.
The cost of ignorance to the principles of The United States Constitution can readily be seen in the deficit of over fourteen trillion dollars.
Recently on Capitol Hill the leaders of this nation try to find 4 trillion dollars in cuts to our budget over the next ten years, I can offer them one third of it right now. That is 1.52 trillion dollars in wasted money over the next ten years; our government however has been throwing these funds away for ninety seven years. A sideline benefit of this plan is it will create jobs right here in America.
1. The judicial system spends over 14 billion dollars a year to prosecute and jail 750,000 users of cannabis that are arrested yearly.
2. We import 39 billion dollars a year in hemp related textile products. If Americans have the right to grow the thirty-nine billion would not be spent outside our borders plus the thirty-nine billion we would pay our citizens, to grow and process this textile. This would gain 78 billion dollars a year and jobs and income taxes for something we know how to do.
3. The estimated revenue from persons purchasing Cannabis from, underground sources, to smoke recreationally is 200 Billion dollars a year. Tobacco has a 30 percent state and federal tax so let’s do that. The revenue from a simple tax generates 60 billion Dollars a year.
4. Add 14+ 78+ 60= 152 Billion dollars a year, and over ten years that would be 1.52 Trillion dollars and more than one third of the relief Congress is looking for; however if we then multiply that 152 billion a year times the ninety seven years Congress has done this; you will find that nearly our entire deficit has been acquired to prevent people from smoking Cannabis!!
5. I think we could find better uses for our tax dollars.
The commercial value of Cannabis, AKA marijuana is widely known throughout the world. There are many verifiable uses for Cannabis as a medicine, for example glaucoma, epilepsy, simple pain relief, and others too many to name. Textile uses such as cloth, paper, synthetic oil, and herbal essences in all more than 25,000 products. Herbs are medicinal! that is why they are called herbs. In fact God said in the Holy Bible Genesis 1:29 that every green herb bearing seed is given to man to use as meat. The same is in the Torah, and again in the Quran chapter two verse 29.
The First Amendment says Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of worship.
When God asked Moses to worship him he said bring a burnt offering of meat.
1. Meat then is a symbol of worship, according to God.
2. Therefore when we were given herb by God we were given a means of worshiping our Creator if we so choose.
3. The Constitution protects our right to choose our means of worshiping God without political intervention in the First Amendment.
4. Congress violated this right when they banned part of God’s creation from his children.
5. The Supreme Court validated that it is a violation of the First Amendment when they gave the American Indian the right to grow.
The reason for banning Cannabis to begin with according to Senator Grassley, in a letter to me, was that it harms the user, (other than being wrong an herb is no threat to anyone), why then hasn’t tobacco, barley and hops, or Grapes been banned? The corn plant of his home state certainly has led persons to their death from use in the form of white lightning or sour mash whiskey, but there is no ban on corn.
There is no right in a free nation for one person to deny another person equal use of God given plants. The same wrong thinking was viewed when they burned books. No human has the right to deny another human a gift given from God!
God gave every green herb to me and every person on this planet to use as meat. It is a violation of The United States Constitution to discriminate in this; that is if the words All Men are created equal from our Declaration of Independence means anything to Americans and we know it does.
The Federal government grows cannabis for research, 16 states allow the right to grow for medicine, The Indians have the right to grow, yet we continue to waste billions of dollars a year banning the plant from growth in America, except to a few select individuals. This plan doesn’t sound like any plan our fore fathers installed for us to follow. For ninety seven years this travesty of justice has survived but if we as a nation expect to survive we need to follow the law and common sense; and that includes Congress.
Repeal the ban on growing Cannabis; allow this herb to trade on an open market just the same as parsley or garlic or onions and other herb. Allow the industry of this herb to be counted as a product for our use in our nation as God intended; which will eliminate a 152 Billion a year waste by our Government. A relief we all need.
No one can deny that this plant is an industry.
Under current laws, we just don’t get any of the financial benefits from the industry; because it is traded on a secondary or underground market where criminals make money, and don’t pay tax on it, and innocent people get hurt in the scuffle.
The proof that banning this plant was wrong is that it has not stopped its use by Americans. It is time for this law to cease to exist, and end a secondary market that avoids taxation on this industry.
“Prohibition…goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
Abraham Lincoln,
December 1840