Friday, November 28, 2008

31 Harms of Cannabis Prohibition

31 Harms of Cannabis Prohibition

1. Induces essential resource scarcity and inefficiency, by limiting the regional, sustainable production and dependable availability of several bio-fuels, including cellulosic hydrogen and ethanol, pyrolytic charcoal, diesel seed oil, methane gas, and compost heat.
2. Induces essential resource scarcity by limiting the production and availability of unique and essential foods, including both of the essential fatty acids, the best available source of organic vegetable protein, critically important vitamins, minerals and all of the essential amino acids.
3. Induces essential resource scarcity by limiting the production and availability of affordable, recyclable and biodegradable building materials for humans.
4. Reduces the carrying capacity of wildlife habitat by reducing the availability of essential food and cover.
5. Institutionalizes a black market economy in god-given herbs by misidentifying them as "drugs."
6. Corrupts governments, locally and globally.
7. Creates radical resource disparity, that inevitably leads to wars over energy, water and other essential natural resources.
8. Creates an economic vacuum that has addicted and corrupted our economic system to be dependent on toxic, unevenly distributed, finite resources.
9. Degrades the environment on regional and global levels. "Global Broiling" by increasing UV-B radiation is perhaps the least discussed example of "extinctionistic" effects that mankind's addiction to chemicals is already having.
10. Engenders poverty, illness and violence, where abundance, health and peace could otherwise exist.
11. Causes epidemic malnutrition.
12. Threatens everyone's health by inducing essential food scarcity, which obviates optimum human development and potential.
13. Perverts human social evolution toward synergistic collapse of environment, economics, and social structures.
14. Largely responsible for the rise of GMOs, having created protein shortages.
15. Economically and politically empowers the least conscious
16. Disrespects and interferes with science
17. Institutionalizes disrespect for Nature
18. Inhibits free individual spiritual evolution
19. Robs us of our Natural Rights, upon which our government was founded.
20. Robs other creatures, with whom we share this planet, of an unique and essential food and
shelter resource.
21. Creates conditions of acceptance for government misinformation, destroying the credibility of government.
22 Accelerates the spread of HIV/AIDS between infected mothers and nursing infants.
23. Creates a "forbidden fruit" which makes adolescent experimentation with 'marijuana' and other psychoactive substances more likely.
24. Makes the wild places into war zones, driving illegal growers further and further back into remote
wilderness areas.
25. Interferes with regeneration of damaged lands, and expansion of the global arable base.
26. Cripples organic agriculture by banning safe, potentially abundant biogenic pesticides and effective, rotational crop management.
27. Violates respect for previous generations who sacrificed so much for the freedoms we are
losing in the name of the counter-productive, hypocritical, selective and expensive "drug war."
28. Results, on average, in the pointless death of one police officer per month, who waste their lives enforcing
anti-Constitutional laws that are counter-productive to their own stated objectives.
29. Constricts the global agricultural production of atmospheric aerosols called "monoterpenes" which have been shown to reflect solar radiation away from the planet, and seed cloud formation to protect the Earth from "global broiling" by increasing UV-B radiation.
30. Inhibits the use of a safe and effective herbal therapeutic by people who are intimidated by the misinformation and violence that characterizes 'marijuana' prohibition.
31. Destroys families.

Paul J. von Hartmann
California Cannabis Ministry
http://www.californiacannabisministry.blogspot.com

Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace

Monday, November 24, 2008

Dear President Obama,

Please begin the process of ending the so-called "Drug War" by eliminating the position of "Drug Czar" from your administration. The arrogant and aggressive presumption that America needs a "Czar" of any kind is offensive, but even more so since what is truly called for now is a shift to compassion and reason.

I recommend that you immediately convene the U.S. Conference of Mayors to act upon recommendations made in the resolution they passed in June 2007. A panel of experts made up of people from several related disciplines would be a responsible, level-headed way to start.

I further recommend Ethan Nadelmann from the Drug Policy Alliance, Jack Cole from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Congressman Ron Paul as capable allies in the shift to a pragmatic drug policy.

Please heed the wisdom of Mr. Lincoln, stated so clearly,

"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes 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
Apr. 11, 1865 - from his last public address

How bad do things have to get before all solutions are considered?

Sincerely,

Paul J. von Hartmann
California Cannabis Ministry
Mount Shasta, California

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Letter to Congressman Ron Paul

Dear Congressman Paul,

For the past sixteen years I have been a Cannabis scholar, living in countries that grow hemp. Now that I am back on native soil, I simply cannot accept that rightful jurisdiction of the government over hemp is legal. Cannabis is both unique and essential. Government has never had rightful jurisdiction over unique and essential natural resources.

Perhaps you are already aware and sufficiently concerned about "global broiling" -- the increasing UV-B radiation that is weakening immune systems, stunting growth and causing genetic mutation in amphibians, and other indicator species.

Production of atmospheric monoterpenes has the potential to be a proportionate response to bombardment by solar radiation, making Cannabis agriculture our best bet for healing the Earth. Cannabis produces 58 monoterpenes, is highly adaptable, capabl of growing abundantly in a wide variety of soils and climates.

I am writing to ask you to help me exercise "essential civilian demand" for hemp, as referred to in Executive Order 12919 (Clinton, 1994). In 1998 I sent a formal challenge to the White House entitled "The Fundamental Challenge of Our Time." The 25 page paper was adopted as the manifesto for the Cannabis College in Amsterdam, and has been translated in several languages.

"The Fundamental Challenge of Our Time"
http://fundamentalcoot.blogspot.com/

If you would care to have me testify before Congress, I can help people to understand why Cannabis has never been truly illegal, because it is critical to our survival, individually and collectively.

If mankind doesn't grow hemp, we will never achieve sustainability environmentally, economically or in terms of peaceful social evolution. We are facing synergistic collapse, and every springtime that passes is an opportunity lost forever.

Drugs don't make seeds. Herbs do. In Genesis 1:29-31 is the key to our immediate legal access to hemp. Since our "First Freedom" Article One in the Bill of Rights, protects our individual spiritual relationship with the Earth, then I believe it is my responsibility as an American citizen to reclaim the rights I inherited from my father, so that I may pass them on to my son.

Thank you for your consideration, your great works and for your progressive visioning.

Sincerely,

Paul von Hartmann
California Cannabis Ministry
Mount Shasta, California

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Reversing America's Cannabis Assessment Begins in the Court of Public Opinion

In discussions with President Obama it is fundamentally important to be accurate in distinguishing between drugs and herbs. The fact is, drugs don't make seeds. Though typically over-looked, the distinction has practical and legal relevance. Celebrating our Constitutionally empowered right to "every herb bearing seed" is the shortest distance to Cannabis freedom.

It seems to me that the drug policy reform community has widely failed to argue this obvious legal distinction to its obvious conclusion, namely, the end of Cannabis prohibition and quite possibly the end of the hard drug trade as well.

For America to make the best of finally having an intelligent person as President, we must trust that he has the ability to understand "The Big Picture." In the past the drug policy reform issue has been divided into a number of conveniently (though unrealistically) defined areas. In truth, the medical, nutritional, spiritual, recreational, and industrial uses of Cannabis do not fit into distinct categories.

Many people in the drug policy reform community consistently understate our own argument by accepting artificial distinctions that do not present a well-rounded, cohesive rationale favoring total Cannabis freedom.

By failing to identify Cannabis for what it truly is: both unique and essential for food, biofuels, herbal therapeutics, biogenic pesticides, atmospheric aerosols, carbon sequestration, oxygen production, soil re-mineralization, expansion of the arable base etc. we are constricting the flow of critical information that would end prohibition.

Values that lead to sustainability must respect the Natural Order and be globally available. In the U.S. people are largely ignorant of the benefits of hemp agriculture, nutrition, economics, and ecology because it is being edited out of the community consciousness by prohibition.

Sadly, we have failed to stand up for fundamental freedoms that previous generations fought and died for. The responsibility rests with our generation to reclaim the freedoms that are critical for everyone's children's futures.

In many countries, Cannabis is being reintegrated into society, with rational tolerance. Industrial hemp is providing fuel, food, and fiber for more and more people every year. As people come to understand the enormous value of hemp as a proportionate response to climate change, Cannabis agriculture will be recognized as beyond merely "legal" -- it's essential, and urgently so.

Cannabis has been the measure of wealth and true value for the world's oldest global culture. In the U.S., people are finally coming to understand the unique and essential values of Cannabis. This is how we could end prohibition tomorrow.

An international commission to establish the value of Cannabis agriculture to society is what I believe is needed. The whole plant is unique and essential, therefore beyond the rightful jurisdiction of any court.

To have a truly free market, Canabis agricultrue must be allowed to compete. To eliminate the black market, and to effect climate mitigation, people must be allowed to grow Cannabis for any reason, in any amount that they choose.

Now that we have an intelligent human being in the Oval Office, perhaps America is ready to grow up, wake up or whatever it takes to recognize the essential value of Cannabis. Only through total freedom to farm can regional, organic agricultural abundance be realized.

I believe it is humankind's purpose within the Natural Order to effect the widespread distribution and propagation of beneficial plants. It is the surest way to stabilize "global broiling" that can only lead to synergistic collapse of environment, economics and mankind's social evolution.