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

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

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.

George wrote

"We need serious planning at the global level based on some sort of clear vision on how to make hunger and malnutrition history within this generation. At this stage there is no global agency to facilitate this planning effort."

Absolutely correct. Many people in many countries are sharing the same clear vision of returning to an historically proven, globally distributed crop as an available, efficient, proportionate strategy for addressing hunger and climate change.

I suggest we initiate a comprehensive discussion at the highest levels of the UNFAO, regarding the potential for ending prohibitions and restrictions imposed on Cannabis agriculture, in order to facilitate global distribution of protein-rich seeds, abundant fiber and cellulose.

Best wishes,

Paul

Hemp considered?

Syad asked, in the UNFSN forum:

Regarding "...using Biochar in soils for reducing global carbon emission...the question is how to trap it and deposit safely or reuse?"

Manufacture of biodegradable building materials from fiber/cellulose crops would be one way to store large quantities of carbon.

See
http://community.freespeech.org/zelfo_hemp_plastic_10_times_stronger_than_steel

for more about Cannabis history, manufacture and trade.

I am curious to know Ruy and others, to what extent Cannabis agriculture is employed in the production of biofuels, food and other products where you are?

I believe that the answer to many of the questions asked in this forum has been hidden in the forbidden and tragically under-valued Cannabis plant. If considered for its unique and essential food value alone, next spring would see a return to intensive global Cannabis agriculture.

Beyond the urgency of soil retention, detoxification, re-mineralization and de-compaction of damaged lands, Cannabis agriculture could also realize the planet's most efficient atmospheric carbon sequestration/oxygen production potential.

In addition, Cannabis production of atmospheric monoterpenes, could effect radiative forcing and reflection of increasing UV-B radiation. Except for the suppressive influence of 'marijuana' prohibition, Cannabis agriculture is an available, proportionate response to a huge global threat. Sufficient regional "seeding" of clouds with atmospheric aerosols called "monoterpenes" (of which Cannabis produces fifty-eight) would protect the Earth's surface from "global broiling" by producing a protective cloud layer.

I suggest that consideration of Cannabis agriculture warrants much more thorough and active discussion. If hemp isn't a viable solution to many of the problems being discussed in this forum, then will someone please explain why. One good reason that's true is all it would take to change my mind about Cannabis.

I propose and challenge this community of to consider what the effects would be if absolute Cannabis freedom was allowed to exist in the world, as the Creator apparently intended (i.e. Genesis 1:29). I am convinced that a global distribution of industrial hemp seed would provide people with the fast-growing protein they need, while providing a regional source of several bio-fuels, including pyrolytic charcoal, easily made from hemp stalks.

Re: “Marijuana I.D. card hearing scheduled” Mount Shasta Herald

Mount Shasta Herald
Letters to the Editor

Re: “Marijuana I.D. card hearing scheduled” October 22, 2008

October 25, 2008

Dear Editor,

Before the perverse county “ordinance,” imposing a self-serving tax, sinks its revenue-raising tentacles into the ill and dying people of Siskiyou County, it is urgent to recognize once and for all that no government has ever had rightful jurisdiction over natural resources that are both essential and unique. A rationale, science-based assessment of Cannabis agriculture is happening all over the world, reversing public attitudes toward both industrial hemp agriculture and ‘marijuana’ cultivation.

The true costs and incredible harms being created by a failed “drug war” linger on in this tax against people who are shamelessly preyed upon by state and federal governments. Revenue raising by voracious “drug war dinosaurs” targets people who are already struggling with illnesses, ranging from cancer and chronic pain to multiple sclerosis and clinical depression. Most are on fixed incomes.

Increased fees blatantly reward unaccountable public servants; the economics of punishment churns through our natural born rights and hard-won freedoms; the global environment suffers and world economies crumble.

How bad do things have to get before all solutions are considered? Every generation is responsible for reclaiming the rights that previous generations have sacrificed so much more than most of us can comprehend. The so-called “drug war,” hypocritical and selective as it is, has imposed the economics of scarcity, a violent black market, food insecurity and epidemic malnutrition on the world.

Because of ‘marijuana’ prohibition, all Cannabis agriculture is foolishly and tragically forbidden. Where’s the “free-market” economics in that? What an insult to our ancestors, rendering their sacrifices obsolete and pointless.

All those interested in the process of “essential civilian demand,” for reclaiming our freedom to farm “every herb bearing seed” are encouraged to attend or otherwise support strong community participation in the November 18th meeting.

For peace,

Paul von Hartmann
California Cannabis Ministry
projectpeace@yahoo.com

Recognizing the Stakes

"The unfortunate situation in global drug policies is that
thinking outside the box seems to be prohibited as well." -fp

That applies to the reform movement as well. I feel that our inability to shift the hearts and minds of prohibitionists toward reason after all these years is in some considerable measure our own inability to think outside of the outside of the outside of the box.

Eliminating any vagueness about the causal effect of Cannabis prohibition in imposing food insecurity and malnutrition points out the greatest harm of prohibition. As obvious as it is to say it, marijuana prohibition must be recognized as being responsible for the illness, death and hunger of literally billions of people at every strata of global society.

The single most inarguable and egregious example of the criminality of prohibition itself is the fact that the UNFAO doesn't recognize hemp seed as food for humans. This is an outrage of incomprehensible proportions, effecting billions of people, yet hardly anyone in the drug policy reform "establishment" mentions the relationship between drug policy, the global food crisis, including epidemic malnutrition.

"The highest authorities must recognize the stakes. Their
failure to act is a sign of helplessness or complicity...We must reduce
vulnerability to drugs and crime with greater development.
And greater justice would build faith in the rule of law."

There is no greater harm of the drug war than the crippling of organic agriculture, through imposed scarcity of an unique and essential critical resource. Without Cannabis agriculture, our species will never achieve sustainability. How many in the reform movement understand that this is true, and are willing to risk sounding extremist and fanatical by speaking the whole truth? Not many. Not enough.

It's time for the drug policy reform movement to assess how right we are, and to proceed with whatever mechanism of accountability there is for recognizing hemp seed as the world's most nutritious common seed.

Aside from the misery and poverty imposed by prohibition, developmental processes and human evolution are being afflicted by a deficiency in essential nutritional resources produced by the Cannabis plant. Because of this fact and more, the true value of Cannabis removes it from the rightful jurisdiction of any government. The limit of law is in the unique and essential nature of Cannabis. Until mankind recognizes that Cannabis is beyond the rightful jurisdiction of the court, then the degeneration of environment, economics and social evolution are inevitable, to the point of predictable extinction.

Cannabis agriculture is not a crime, it is a necessity. The imbalances created by prohibition mock "the rule of law" in failing to honor the first law, our freedom to farm "every herb bearing seed...and every green herb" as commanded in Genesis and every other human religion.

To understate the moral high ground serves no one. As it is, unique and essential Cannabis is the world's most ancient, useful, nutritious, potentially abundant and globally available organic agricultural resource on Earth. It also produces more monoterpenes than any other agricultural crop, making it a proportionate tool for mitigating global warming and global broiling.

best wishes to all, with high regards to both Andre Fursts, Sr. and Jr. I trust you are all well and am mindful of you and Chanvre Info for the great sacrifice of freedom you are being forced to make in defense of the true rule of law.


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

(831) 588-5095

Note: The word Cannabis is a Genus name, properly spelled with an uppercase "C."