Among the many things that outrage me about the War on Marijuana Smokers is the blatant lies spread by our government officials. According to our government's Drug Enforcement Agency, an entire branch of government dedicated to the notion that the way to stop drug use is to put people who like drugs in jail, marijuana has no useful properties.
The arrogance of this statement amazes me. To say that a substance has no useful properties is akin to saying that there is no God. Oh, sure, you may think there's no God... but how can you ever prove such a thing? Truth is, you can't, which is why most atheists draw a distinction between saying that they don't see any reason to believe in God, and the very difficult to prove contention that God cannot possibly exist.
But the DEA says that the marijuana plant has no valid uses. This is shown to be an outright lie by the very existence of clothing made of hemp, of rope, of oil, of paper, and of all those other industrial uses that our country could benefit many times over from if pot were legalized. The DEA folks get particularly upset by the valid medical uses of cannabis, since they contend that pot is a "dangerous drug" rather than a "useful drug", or more simply, a medicine. The existence of just one person who's health has benefited from cannabis proves that the DEA is suppressing the truth and lying to us.
One of the seminars at the Cannabis Cup was on medical rights, and one of the speakers there was a guy everyone calls Glaucoma Jim. As everyone but the folks at the DEA has heard, Glaucoma is an illness for which marijuana is an effective treatment. It's also a hereditary disease. Jim spoke of how his father and (I think) his uncle had both gone blind due to glaucoma, and how he had been told by a doctor that he'd almost certainly go blind from it himself, within the next two years. Well, that was over 8 years ago. He still has his eyesight, and he smokes pot every day, without fail. For Jim, marijuana is of inestimable importance, as it's the only thing keeping his vision.
I'm reminded of the novel 1984. The DEA is telling us that 2 + 2 = 5. When will they admit the truth?
Jim's case, and many others, including cancer recovery, migraine and other pain relief, and AIDS, have proven that marijuana has enormous medical usefulness. In fact, Pot can be useful for almost everyone.
Stress is a major factor in many people's lives. We live in a high stress world, in which one of the many stress factors is the fact that doctors are always telling us we need to reduce our stress levels in order to lead healthier lives.
Well, there's a medical use that most of us can use. Forget the valium, the prozac, the yoga, and the New Age relaxation tapes. Grass relaxes you like nothing else.
As one speaker at the Cannabis Cup said, "We're not the criminals. It's the people who made smoking pot into a crime... those people are the criminals."
Perhaps when the War on Drugs is over and freedom emerges as the winner, we can hold a War Crimes trial for the people at the DEA. Our government shouldn't be persecuting people who wish to improve their health with a naturally occurring medicine.
Consider: The tobacco industry is shelling out big bucks in settlements right now, for lying to the public about the addictiveness of tobacco. They are being held liable for supressing the truth and ruining people's lives thereby. Maybe we ought to consider the same thing for the people responsible for supressing the truth about marijuana's medical usefulness for so long. Consider how many people may have gone blind or even died in the past 60 years because doctors haven't been allowed to prescribe a drug that's been used by mankind for over 10,000 years.
Somebody oughta pay.
