The difference between Propaganda and Fact.
I believe it is important for Americans to separate themselves from the constant fear mongering promoted by the government. Politicians would have you believe that marijuana is destroying our communities and that it acts as a stepping stone to other drugs. But look around you…
How many people do you know drink alcohol? Or smoke cigarettes? Now, how many of those people are snorting cocaine, smoking crack, or shooting heroin into their veins? If the government is to be believed, their “stepping stone” theory means everyone that smokes cigarettes, or drinks alcohol, is a junkie trying to find an even more dangerous drug to try. We are being taught that doing one thing “naturally” leads to doing another.
What they fail to mention is that cigarettes and alcohol have both been proven to kill you, while marijuana has not. Here are some stats directly from the FDA concerning “Legal” prescription medications and marijuana:
FDA FACTS
Give it a read… this site will be here when you get back.
Those statistics are in direct opposition of what we, the public, have been taught. Drugs approved for public use account for a great many deaths in the United States, yet marijuana– with zero deaths directly attributed to it –remains illegal. And those are prescription medications, the numbers for deaths associated with alcohol and cigarettes are higher. Research it.
Junkies are Legal
Here’s another fact for you: “Legal” drugs are manufactured (to include cigarettes and alcohol), while marijuana is a naturally occurring plant. This means that every negative side effect we suffer in order to deal with our pain and illness is by our own hand. And one of those side-effects is withdrawal.
The media, and doctors, harp on the consequences of getting drawn into the world of harsh drugs like crack cocaine by showing us pictures of junkies trying to stop taking those drugs: the shakes, the sickness, the deterioration of the body, as junkies work to purge their bodies of highly addictive substances. Now go ask your doctor how addictive the pain killers they prescribe are.
What does that mean? It means that if you want to stay within the Law, you must take your doctor’s prescription and take the chance of becoming one of the very junkies you’ve been warned about. And if you do turn into a junkie, it’s ok because it was legal, and they have a Program for that.
Are you starting to see the failed logic here? If you buy your drugs on the street and become an addict, it’s a problem. But if your doctor prescribed the drugs you’re addicted to, well… it was all legal-like and for your own good.
Did I mention that marijuana has NEVER been scientifically associated with withdrawal symptoms like you see with cigarettes, alcohol, or prescription medications? And I say “scientifically” because, regardless of what the government would have you believe, neither doctors nor scientists have been able to prove that marijuana causes those symptoms. Ever. In the entire world.
Centuries of study
This is important. Marijuana has been around for thousands of years. We’ve only been studying cigarettes and prescription medications for a small fraction of that, yet we’ve proven their harmful effects on the human body. So where is the proof of marijuana’s ill effects? If it’s as dangerous as they claim, why aren’t people dropping dead all around the world?
United States’ history alone tells us that our Presidents– George Washington and Thomas Jefferson –encouraged Americans to grow marijuana. If it were killing people back in their day, surely they would have outlawed it instead of promoting it. We’re talking about a culture where families were close-knit, the kids kept close to home. Yet somehow, with marijuana as a leading crop in the United States, we’re still here, and we’re not all a bunch of strung-out junkies.
The People’s Cash Crop
We’ve looked at marijuana the drug, and the lies being told, but what about Hemp? As a drug, marijuana is known to cause relaxation, give relief from pain, and to increase one’s desire for potato chips. But it’s also well-known for giving you clothes, rope, and a great number of other useful products.
Quite often, we turn on the news and hear people protesting the destruction of our forests for the sake of paper. Trees take decades to grow, which means decades to replace once we cut them down. But hemp– marijuana –is a weed, and grows very quickly. Why is this relevant? Go research what type of paper Thomas Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence.
Imagine a single crop that grows just about anywhere, and can be used in multiple industries. Sounds like a money-making machine, right? Well, it was. Hemp provided families with an inexpensive, and easy to maintain, crop. While corn, beans, and wheat had only one common outlet (consumption), hemp could be sold for manufacturing such products as food, animal feed, hygiene, paper, textiles, fabric, fuel, and building materials. If one industry was getting its fill of hemp, farmers had many other outlets to sell their crop to.
To Legalize or Not To Legalize
The arguments for legalizing marijuana are many, while the arguments to keep it illegal are few and fueled by emotional outrage caused by misinformation and misdirection. The deciding factor as to whether or not a person uses marijuana should be up to each individual, as is the case with smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, or deciding whether or not to take prescription drugs. And the decision to grow marijuana should be out of the government’s hands just as one may decide to grow tomatoes or any other plant in your garden.
Obviously, I am for legalizing marijuana. More importantly, however, I am for people making their own decision about it. Criminalizing our citizens for refusing to become junkies at the hands of drug manufactures, or forcing us to purchase clothes from name-brand distributors when there is an inexpensive outlet through hemp, or telling us what naturally occurring plant we can, or cannot, grow on our own land, is wrong. We need to take back our Right to grow, and utilize, this wondrous plant.
Richard M. McCord II
May 14th, 2012
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FAQ
1. Isn’t tobacco a naturally occurring plant?
Yes, it is. And while nicotine is addictive, we should remember that cigarette manufacturers add chemicals to greatly increase addiction rates. Also, chemicals found in cigarettes– like arsenic and ammonia –are far more deadly than nicotine. If you were to add arsenic, for example, to another product the FDA would forbid the sale of that product since it contains poison. Yet cigarettes are sold openly over the counter. The question still remains, why is the sale of deadly poisons for the use of consumption legal while marijuana remains a major criminal offense?
