Allpot.com - Home of the Domestic Marijuana Times

Marijuana has been cultivated for a variety of reasons for over 8,000 years. The U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were both written on hemp paper more than 200 years ago. Marijuana was made illegal in 1937 and has remained so for less than 1% of its recorded history.

Medicinal Marijuana

There is currently a strong movement across the country to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Over a dozen states have done so in one form or another, and the Obama administration has vowed to avoid prosecuting those patients who are following state law. This is critical to the medical marijuana movement, as federal law still prohibits all forms of marijuana.

Marijuana can be used to relieve pain and eliminate symptoms of seizure disorder, and it helps cancer and AIDS patients avoid wasting by stimulating their hunger, and it helps reduce the pressure from glaucoma. There are hundreds of other reported benefits of medicinal marijuana reported, some legal and some still illegal, but there is no significant down side to the popular treatment.

Domestic vs. Imported

Domestic marijuana is simply marijuana that is grown inside our own country, as opposed to imported marijuana. While fundamentally the same substance, domestic marijuana is far superior to imported marijuana in terms of the benefits it provides to the country as a whole.

For example, the quality control of imported marijuana is not as good, because the laws governing the crops in foreign countries is not under U.S. control. Pesticides and fertilizers can be used that are known to be dangerous, and additives could be included after production to help the marijuana seem more potent or to allow it to get past the dogs at the border.

Legalize Domestic MarijuanaBy eliminating the laws restricting the growing, distribution, and consumption of marijuana that is grown locally, the economy would be given a huge boost, smuggling would be reduced and crime would go down. Taxes could be collected and law enforcement could dedicate itself to much higher priority work.

Allowing users to grow their own pot for personal use would not increase the number of people who smoke pot, but would decrease the amount of money they send overseas on imported pot. The money that gets spent now often funds terrorism or hard drug smuggling, and is the cause of any crime related to marijuana.

Allowing industry to capitalize on the domestic marijuana trade would have the effect of reducing the price of marijuana to pennies on the dollar and take the incentive out of the illegal marijuana trade. There would be a dramatic decrease in crime as the money dried up, and the local economies would benefit as pot smokers had more discretionary money to spend locally.

Multiple Uses

Marijuana has a wide variety of uses beyond the well-known recreational and medicinal applications that get most of the media attention. There are also several religious and industrial uses that are noteworthy and beneficial to society and the planet as a whole.

Freedom of religion is one of the key principles in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. Marijuana laws, which prohibit religious use, are therefore unconstitutional. Repealing the laws that make marijuana illegal would be a win for those religions that would use it in their worship as well as a win for the country as a whole by supporting the Constitution.

Industrial marijuana and hemp have so many uses that it is impossible to list them here. (Websites such as Industrial Hemp.net, Norml.org, and Allpot.com list a number of legitimate uses.) Suffice it to say that legalizing industrial marijuana and hemp for all purposes would create thousands of green jobs and help to eliminate carbon emissions by reducing our dependence upon oil.

Now is the Time

Take a stand on this important issue by contacting state and local elected officials and requesting that they vote to legalize domestic marijuana for all purposes today. Ask them what they stand for and why. Make them commit to being either for it or against it and show them the appropriate support at the ballot box at the next election.

If you do get busted, don’t say a word. Hire a good lawyer to represent you and tell the lawyer right off the bat that you are pleading not-guilty to all charges, and will be taking the case before a jury trial. Many lawyers want nothing to do with a full trial, and will spend all of their efforts attempting to get you to agree with a plea bargain, basically a contract with the state forgiving them for any wrongdoing, and admitting your own wrongdoing in fifty-seven flavors. The carrot in this arrangement is simply force. When arrested, some people can make bail while others sit in jail awaiting trial. If you can’t make bail, waiting for trial can often take longer than a full sentencing would have given. For instance, they may offer a plea bargain in which they cap the maximum amount of time you will serve at two years. If you agree, less than two years from now you will be getting out of jail, and on your way. However, if you fight the charges and don’t get bail, you could easily sit in jail for four or five years awaiting a full jury trial. What a choice that leaves, admitting a crime you didn’t commit, or taking more punishment than the crime allows trying to fight the charges. They have you between a rock and a hard place without bail.

Medicine will benefit tremendously, at the expense of the great drug companies, when it comes to the conclusion that marijuana is more helpful in treating most ailments than most of the things they now prescribe. Aches, pains, fever, cough and sore throat, colds, nausea, and much more are easily treated by smoking marijuana, which also tends to build the immune system and help clear the lungs of inhaled particles that would otherwise stay there. Depression and bipolar disorder can be treated with great success, and it has been long known an excellent supplemental treatment for gout. Until 1937, marijuana was listed in the big medical journals as legitimate medicine and prescribed widely.

Legal or not, marijuana can be grown in a wide variety of places. It could be cultivated in the space station or on the ocean floor (with a little preparation, and some high intensity lighting, of course). It already grows on every populated continent. Almost any soil is suitable for growing some strain of the marijuana plant; it adapts to new conditions faster than any other plant, and can actually improve poor soil. Growing without soil is becoming the trend—along with hiding it in secret closets, attics, basements, and spare rooms. The trick is really simple—don’t tell anyone what you do and never, ever allow anyone to see it for themselves. If you want to grow marijuana, telling somebody else is what will get you busted.

Let’s talk about urine testing programs at major workplaces for a moment. They all have them these days, random urine samples are collected and screened for drugs, including marijuana. People lose their jobs or get denied employment regularly for positive testing for marijuana, but that is a bad rule. Nobody should be screened for marijuana, as it has no effect on the workers ability to work, or their coordination, especially when only used at home. While there is some risk of distraction with using pot on the job, we are not talking about that. We are talking about somebody who lights up a joint at midnight once a month, and is perfectly back to normal before daybreak. They will lose their job for failing a urine screening test, which is wrong.

Got selected for jury duty on a marijuana trial? Don’t just be a nodding head, read the Constitution and Bill of Rights before you go to trial. Do what’s right. Find out the background of the case—was the search warrant valid? Were there other drugs found? Was it a growing operation or just a reseller? Kids? Once you know a little about the background of the case, ask yourself if this person was most likely producing marijuana or reselling imported marijuana. This is technically the only kind of marijuana covered under federal laws, although they state they cannot tell the difference easily and will confiscate any. Well, in some cases it’s easy to see the difference between domestic marijuana and imported marijuana, or at least it’s easy to know when somebody got caught with the whole plant, that it was probably grown in this country. In cases like that, where marijuana was being produced, you should always vote that person not guilty. The district attorney and judge will not instruct you to do this, but it is perfectly legal and in fact your obligation to do exactly that. State your reason to be that domestic marijuana is not the source of any problem in this country, but imported drugs of all kinds are, and that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

There are a lot of things they won’t tell you. Jury trials only occur for about 13% of all felony charges, and murder charges are required to go before the jury, so not very many people challenge their charges any more. This usually means that if you know somebody who got busted recently, you can be pretty sure that one of the people they hang out with either just got busted and turned them in, or is going to get turned in by them and will soon get busted. It’s evil, gone bad. This is quite a bonanza for law enforcement. It is very fast and cheap to sentence somebody to many years in prison when they plead guilty. But there is a cost. That cost is the freedom and liberty that so many before us have given their lives to defend. The only way to stop the laws from becoming insane is to keep your mouth shut if you get arrested. Don’t speak to the cop, or anyone you know about any of it ever. Talk to your lawyer, and read up on the law and the constitution. Plead not guilty to all charges, and request a jury trial for any crime. Never turn in somebody else in order to get your own charges reduced. Jury trials cost money and they take years instead of weeks to finish, so fight all the charges.

These days, you can’t believe anything you hear. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which basically outlawed hemp in any form, was passed with a big series of lies. It was passed in a midnight vote by using one-sided testimony. They told tales of the evil weed that caused all sorts of freakish behavior. They warned of drug addiction, murderous rampages, and that we would be overrun by illegal aliens. It was all a pack of lies used to cover up the big secret of 1937. Look it up. They had printed an article on the front page of one of the major science journals of the day, truthfully claiming that hemp, due to new advances in machinery, would soon become the world’s first billion dollar crop. This was very significant, as marijuana and hemp could now replace many of the commonly mined or harvested long term natural resources we were fast tapping into, and could be replenished every year. It was truly a miracle of modern times – one that was going to change the face of farming and self-sufficiency at a time when we needed it the very most – our Great Depression. However, the people who owned the forests, coal mines and oil wells were not going to allow it to put them out of business. They mounted the most successful lying campaign ever, for greed.

Marijuana plants come in many varieties, but did you know that they also have a sex? Each plant turns out to be either a producer of pollen, (male), or a producer of seeds (female). Because of this, the plant is considered to be highly developed and advanced, as plants go. It is the top of the evolutionary ladder, having adapted to more climates and conditions than any other plant we know of. Marijuana has been cultivated by man since the beginning of time, and could well be the reason man began farming instead of hunting in the first place. That puts it someplace between opposing thumb and the wheel, in terms of our evolutionary benefit from this miracle plant. We need to legalize domestic marijuana now.

The marijuana plant really is the modern miracle plant. It has the potential to turn the world upside down – providing us with a renewable source of food, shelter, energy, clothing, fuel, medicine, and so much more. It can produce more food per acre per year than the best food crops we know. It can produce four times more building material or biomass per acre than the fastest growing wood on an average basis per year. It’s most valuable product, marijuana for smoking, is about half the price of gold per ounce, and one plant can produce as many as 30 ounces in a season. Making it legal to grow marijuana for sale in this state makes a lot of sense. People are already smoking it, so you would not be creating a new market or introducing any new risks, only channeling the money back into the local economy instead of exporting our money overseas. Pot can solve all the major topical issues facing mankind such as hunger, poverty, and depletion. Global warming can be reversed, pollution reduced, and cars will run cleaner on hempseed fuels and oils. By growing and exporting pot, while stopping the flow of illegal imported pot and other drugs coming into our country, we can bring our country and our children out of harms way. Pot is the alternative to hard drugs, and it can become the alternative to alcohol as well. It leaves the user in a much better frame of mind than any other drugs, and also leaves the user fully functional, even able to drive normally when stoned. We don’t advocate driving high, but history shows us that it is not as unsafe as it sounds. Car & Driver magazine did a story on it in the late 70s and they did actual driving test experiments with smokers, drinkers, and a test group which was straight. Only the drinkers missed any points at all, and had to stop early due to poor judgement.

New treatment for depression, arthritis. Depression is often treated with drugs, which tend to be addictive, leading to deeper depression. Domestic marijuana can be used to treat victims of depression, as well as many other psychological disorders, with much greater success than current prescription medications. People with eating disorders, upset stomach, major aches and pains, arthritis, gout, and many other ailments can turn to domestic marijuana for fast relief, and they can grow it themselves. Millions of dollars a year can be saved on expensive prescription drugs, and we can save our livers, but we have to legalize it first.. Contact your congressman or senator today, and demand some real answers.

So what is behind all this unrest regarding marijuana? Money. Lots of money is at stake and there are big players at the table who already know the score. What I’ve been saying is true, and there are those out there who know it and wish to prevent it from being known. Big Government doesn’t want to be caught in a lie, and also doesn’t like ‘hard-to-tax’ income, especially on this scale. Big business fears hemp will level the playing field, and reduce the value of their coal, oil, wood and food production operations worldwide. They are correct to fear hemp, as it is by far the best raw material for manufacturing that the world has ever known. They are wrong to lie about and criticize marijuana. They are evil to raid, pillage, rob, and slander so many good, honest people who just smoke a little pot.

There are a lot of things they won’t tell you. If you get selected for jury duty, here’s one I’m sure they will forget to mention – Jury Nullification. It is seated in the oldest of court precedents, and is easily the biggest defense we have against oppression and tyranny – and that’s why they won’t remind us about it. If you, as a jury member, feel that the punishment for a particular crime is unjust, you may thereby vote a ‘not-guilty’ and stand by that vote, stating such as your reason. Nobody can find you wrong for this, although the meek among you will attempt to coerce a fast, easy, state-friendly answer as if they themselves were on trial as well. If you find yourself on a jury trial considering a case of domestic marijuana, do the right thing and vote not guilty, no matter what the evidence. It’s a bad law, not a bad person, and shouldn’t spend several years in jail over a plant. It has been shown in case after case where jury nullification was used, that the opinion of a juror to vote not guilty cannot be challenged, or called wrong, even when done with the determination that the punishment does not fit the crime. It is the inherent right of jurors.

The marijuana seed has some incredible properties. You can refine the oils produced by pressing hemp seed into many varieties of compounds very similar to plastics, fuels, and paints. In fact, you can use hemp seed to produce oil to lubricate your engine, fuel to run the car, paint, vinyl-like material for the seat, (cloth-like materials for seats and body panels can be made from stalks) and much more. Hemp seed oil is made up of complex carbohydrates, which are chemically similar to hydrocarbons, or oil based products. Because we already refine oil into thousands of different compounds, we can use current technology to refine hemp seed oil into practically anything that crude oil can be made into, with one key difference – hemp seed oil is renewable and reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, unlike petroleum use.

The worst lies you hear about marijuana are the ones told by people who were using it. What they usually don’t tell you is that they were almost always also on hard drugs or alcohol, and it was often their first and last time smoking pot. The scenario unfolds a couple of ways. In the first one, junior decides to take a hit of acid and comes home tripping. Mom and dad are not impressed, and demand an answer as to what he’s taken, and he is too scared to admit what he is really on, so he tells them that he has been smoking pot. Pot is not seen to be as dangerous, and thereby less punishment is in order. The other scenario is the party drunk who has way too many, and at the end of the night smokes a little bit of pot for the only time in his life—and can only remember certain parts of the night. They claim that it was the pot that got them all messed up, until you ask them what they had been drinking.

Hemp is clean burning and totally renewable, providing a safe alternative to current power plant technology. Plants store solar power that we can easily recover by burning at a later time., generating steam that turns electrical turbines to produce electricity. This is, simply put, solar power one step removed. Why not just skip the hemp part, and put up lots of solar panels then? Because producing the solar panels takes a huge toll on the environment. There are many dangers associated with the manufacturing side of photovoltaic cells, and therefore it takes a solar panel over twenty years to pay for itself in terms of electricity produced. However, that same solar panel will take over six hundred years to produce the energy it took to manufacture it in the first place. As we go about solving the problems we face, we need to keep the bigger picture in mind. Does the solution we provide today lead to bigger problems for tomorrow? Not if we legalize domestic marijuana today.

The marijuana seed has some incredible properties as food. It contains four times the fiber of soybeans per serving, and has a perfect blend of oils and fats that is said to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. You can make hemp seed tofu, which can be formed into anything regular tofu is made into. You can also produce a sort of tofu-milk which is highly nutritious and tastes better than soy milk. Roasted hemp seeds are a treat much like a cross between sunflower seeds and popcorn—they are delicious and nutritious. Hempseed tofu is balanced so well that the human body can get all it needs from two servings a day. We can survive quite nicely, and probably live much longer on a strict diet of hemp seed products, but not until we legalize domestic marijuana. Until then, we are stuck with the current salty, greasy fast food choices!

Cocaine, crack, heroin, Oxy’s, and any number of designer drugs all have one thing in common—they wouldn’t be around if pot were legal. Ask anyone you know who does hard drugs, or has ever been treated at a methadone clinic for it. They will tell you that if marijuana had been available, cheap and legal, they would never have tried hard drugs in the first place. As it turns out, the experts were lying. Instead of being a gateway drug, marijuana is actually a ‘gatekeeper’ drug instead. That’s to say that as long as there is plentiful, cheap marijuana around, people tend to smoke it instead of doing hard drugs. When the supply of marijuana runs out, they turn to whatever is available. Often this is alcohol, which is far more damaging to both the family and the individual, but more often they turn to hard drugs. The supply can run low for a number of reasons, but they all boil down to the fact that the plant is illegal, and very easy to detect and destroy. Shipments of marijuana get interrupted all the time, often from law enforcement activities or theft, and that causes the market to run out temporarily. Many users cannot withstand the shortage, and fall prey to their instincts, which lead them toward the widely available hard drugs. Often they are unable to shake the new habit and return to pot on their own. We need to rethink our strategy on the drug war, and realize that domestic marijuana is our friend and should be completely deregulated. With it we can eliminate drug overdose, and keep over $200 billion here in our own economy that would otherwise be used to fund our enemies. Without it, things are going to slowly get worse. Trade deficits, global warming, drug overdose, war, terrorism, hunger, poverty, and all that go with them seem to be a much worse alternative than legalizing domestic marijuana.

Seems like everybody wants to be a rat these days. It’s more popular than ever, with the new terror alert and all. Why, what is a rat, you ask? A rat is a person who gets caught doing something, anything, wrong and instead of taking the punishment like a man, he worms out of it by turning in some of his friends instead. Yeah, nice guy alright. They are way past that nowadays, bringing in professional informants, paying the repeat offenders for information, and much more. In fact the police count on a large percentage of their arrests turning into rats. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be very many busts—as that is where over 80% of all search warrants originate—from a statement. Don’t trust anyone new, and watch the ones you do trust to make sure they weren’t busted.

Lying about pot is not a good long term strategy. There are many examples of wrongs in history, and most of them came into being thru lies. Marijuana prohibition is one of those lies, and it is probably the oldest one still in existence. By telling us that pot is as dangerous as heroin or cocaine, they have fallen into a trance. They no longer hear the words that are coming out of their own mouths, say nothing of the words coming out of OUR mouths (which, by the way, is their job in Washington, D.C.) Politicians and law enforcement can gain back the respect of the people it now targets with such a fierce bias. Well, some of it. People don’t believe the truth about the dangers of hard drugs because they have been lied to about marijuana.

You don’t need a high school education to know what they were talking about when they wrote the bill of rights. No, you only need to read it for your self again to see how plain and simple it is– but then you will surely wonder why the politicians haven’t read it yet. Here are a couple of my favorites—we don’t have space for them all. I. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. II. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized. VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted. IX. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. The fifth and sixth amendments will be discussed in a later issue. For now, do yourself a favor and read the Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights. Then Legalize Pot.

Smoking marijuana isn’t the safest habit, as there is always the risk of fire. There are also other risks involved, mostly involving inhaling hot fumes and tiny clumps of hot ashes on a regular basis. Ask anyone who’s ever sucked down a red-hot cherry from the tip of a roach, and they will tell you, in a raspy voice, not to smoke it when it gets that small. However, the risks from smoking marijuana are different from the risks of smoking cigarettes, for a few reasons. First, cigarettes are treated with many chemicals, and are not pure tobacco leaf, wrapped in paper. They are instead the chemically soaked tobacco roots, leaves, stems and seeds, mixed with pesticides and fertilizers. The best tobacco is not used for cigarettes but instead used for chewing and pipe tobacco, or cigars. Cigarettes are made from the left over scraps of tobacco. When tobacco burns, it burns at a very high temperature, vaporizing heavy tars and depositing them in your lungs. Marijuana doesn’t burn as hot, and does not give such heavy tars a chance to vaporize. It leaves much of the heavy tar right in the hands of the smoker, in the form of a wet, sticky roach. Pot coats the lungs with a much lighter oil or tar than tobacco does, and it expels from the lungs much more readily. It helps rid the lungs of toxins.

When it comes to rope and canvas, sailors probably know best. They have to rely on both to travel, and quality means everything when you are in a storm on the open water. Hemp rope doesn’t rot like other ropes, has better stretching properties than nylon and is about twice as strong per pound as other rope materials. Canvas made from hemp is the finest quality, producing smoother textures and longer wear. It also has much greater resistance to tears and cracking over time. Hemp canvas lasts up to six times longer as sails. Fine grade fabrics can be made directly from hemp, and hempseed composites can give us compounds just like nylon, rayon, and most other plastics. Clothing made from hemp can easily last a lifetime. It can be dyed into any color, and made with any texture you prefer.

What do milk, aspirin, and table salt have in common? They are all much more dangerous than marijuana, in a very real way. They kill people every year, in some small number, while marijuana has never killed anyone in the history of mankind. That’s a pretty big statement, but it’s true enough. Marijuana is completely non-toxic, in any dose—there is no limit. That means you could smoke marijuana every day, all day long and not die from it. You may cough and hack a little, and may feel light headed or get the munchies, but you won’t overdose or have an allergic reaction and die. Only Legal Domestic Marijuana is safe, as imported pot often gets sprayed with chemicals to alter the smell, in an attempt to bypass customs. Legalize it today!

With dozens of great reasons why, and no legitimate complaints, this is a no-brainer. Domestic marijuana can solve all of the major problems that we currently face as a society, but not if it gets eradicated first. Marijuana is one single natural resource that could provide human life with all of it’s needs, including shelter, food, fuel, clothing, and much, much more. Man can survive on marijuana alone. By keeping marijuana illegal, we are sending the money people already spend on marijuana to overseas importers, who poison the marijuana with harsh chemicals or other drugs. Legalizing marijuana would lead to lower costs for police protection, lower jail costs, lower taxes, lower prescription prices, and much more revenue to tax. It is the answer to the current problem of hard drug use – the only gateway with marijuana is when the gate is shut, and the supply of marijuana is cut off – people will simply turn to whatever is available. These days, it’s heroin, crack and Oxy’s. Pot is much safer. By legalizing domestic marijuana we can cut down on deaths by drunk drivers, overdose, and rage. We can reduce the deficit and taxes, while increasing spending. We can save the environment and conserve natural resources for the future, when we are sure to know a little more about what to do with them than we do now. For the sake of our health, our future, our economy and our sanity, legalize domestic marijuana today. Stop discrimination against pot smokers, who make up over ten percent of the population. It’s not right.

Its clear that much of the money Americans spend on illegal drugs gets shipped right out of the country. Just like you see in the commercial, smoking a joint or doing heroin is all the same—it funds terror. Well, I’m here to say that I couldn’t agree more. We need to shut down the illegal imports at the border. Then we need to legalize domestic marijuana to complete the process. People are a predictable bunch as a whole. If you take away their pot, they will turn to something else, anything else. With tens of millions of pot smokers already smoking, it is safe to say that millions will still be smoking pot ten years from now. Let’s not turn them into crack addicts because we refused to see the truth about marijuana and took it away. That’s what happens, though. There is a shortage of marijuana on the streets, people begin searching for anything to get them high. They will spin in a chair if it’s the only alternative. By legalizing domestic marijuana, you offer people who use other drugs a safe choice—switch to marijuana or go to jail if caught using hard drugs. Increased penalties for drugs which can kill people, or that fund terror, but legalized domestic marijuana will provide an alternative that is realistic and safe for all ages. It is a win-win situation, increasing the amount of money that gets spent on consumer items, and creating new wealth from the same old fields that have been costing money for so long. Keep the money at home. Hard drugs are a menace to society, but its wrong to lump pot in with cocaine or oxy’s. There is just no comparison. So, legalize domestic marijuana today!

No matter what you smoke, you are still at higher risk if you are not using a water pipe. A water pipe, or bong, can eliminate over 98% of all particles and tars carried in smoke, by percolating the hot smoke thru ice-cold water before allowing it to enter your lungs. The health benefits of daily smoking thru a water pipe when compared to hand rolled cigarettes or joints is astounding. Even compared to a cigarette or filtered product, water pipes remove over 80% more tars and other contaminates from the smoke, making it much less likely to cause health problems. The other thing you need to do is assure yourself of a pure material to smoke in the first place. If you smoke pot, grow your own so you know what is in it. Do the same for tobacco, or at least buy it unrolled in bags where you can inspect it a little before smoking it. Do not buy flavored, or slow burning varieties, as they use harsh chemicals to obtain these results—one of the tobacco industries deadly little secrets they keep hidden.

Hemp is a multipurpose material if there ever was one. Among its many features is the unique ability of the fibers to swell up when they come in contact with water, enabling a loose wad of hemp fiber to become a tight-fitting seal when wet. While this may not seem important at first glance, it could easily change the way we waterproof concrete, glass, wood, and many other materials. By using inexpensive fiber made from hemp, you can cut the cost of sealants by up to 80% or more and reduce waste. Pollution given off by the production of PVC and metal piping is reason enough to switch to hemp—there are few environmental impacts in hemp plumbing of any sort, save for an occasional leak. When fire strikes a PVC pipe, however, there is poison in the air. In fact, the workers who made the pipe are probably already in poor health as a direct result of working around those particular plastics on a regular basis. We need hemp.

Writing what you feel is a real pleasure. It also puts a series of thoughts in order, in a way that useful information can be shared among various people. That’s one beauty of living in a free country, and I’m the first to say I love this country, and will defend that right for others. The point is that you can love your country and your president (I love G.W.B. a lot more than B.C.) and still speak your mind about certain topics of interest. This newsletter is protected under the first amendment to the constitution; it is a freedom which everyone should salute. So are all of our freedoms, to what extent we still have them. Let’s keep this country free, and legalize domestic marijuana. That would free a million people from prison who have done no wrong, and increase our economy by almost 8% in the first year alone, before export.

It pays to know your rights, even if you just stay at home. While rights don’t often get violated at home, on occasion they may need defending. The crafty cop will often capitalize on people’s lack of knowledge concerning their rights, and thereby take advantage of them. One simple right is the right to say no, when asked if an officer can search you, your car, or your home. Police cannot search at will, and need to have either a very strong case against you, or your permission. Your permission can be gotten by deception, and that’s ok with the law. They do it all the time, as a matter of fact, often dressing up as repair men or using a false pretense to get you to allow them inside. Once inside, the cop is going to be looking for any reason to stake his claim to your place. If you don’t do anything wrong, you may ask what the big deal is. Well, I’ll tell you what it is, the big deal is called freedom. Thousands of our best men have given their lives to defend freedom, in war after war. If you just sit there and let them take it away from you without so much as a protest, then you have the blood of all those soldiers on your hands, my friend. There is no excuse for not standing up for your rights. Don’t like it? LEAVE. Any other country in the world will force you to submit to searches, be prosecuted without due process, etc. but only our country has a Constitution which protects our rights. We are alone in the world of countries, being the only country where the people are actually guaranteed their rights in contractual form, and the contract is actually followed. However, the police and prosecutors do not have any respect for freedom; they smash it at every opportunity they get.

Hempseed oil contains a number of complex carbohydrates, many of which can be refined into useful compounds such as oils, fuels, and plastic resins. One such compound is a very hard resin that can be mixed with the hemp stalk to produce a composite building material. Similar in structure to wood, this material can be formed into bricks or dimensional lumber, and is strong enough to replace some structural aluminum. It is flame retardant, nontoxic when forcefully burned, and extremely resistant to weather. Hemp fibers can be blended with hempseed resins to form a compound which can replace fiberglass, and another which is similar in properties to vinyl. We can grow this resource every year, for much less energy and environmental impact than current methods and resources. We should eliminate all restrictions on domestic marijuana. Once we do, our looming problems will soon fade into happy memories. We will be able to look back upon these days and say to ourselves, We did it.

These days, you just can’t be too safe. Domestic Marijuana is the answer to our fears. Marijuana can be grown in a totally enclosed area, without soil, by using high intensity lights or sunlight. While you may not be able to grow enough of it to live on, you could grow enough of it to barter in tough times we may face just around the corner. It’s also the best producer of oxygen of any plant known to man. So the next time we get a terror alert, and they tell us to duct tape ourselves into an unventilated room, you can feel safe with a little more oxygen than the next guy by growing pot. In fact, marijuana can be used as a sole plant, capable of supporting human life in an enclosed area, as long as there is either sunlight or electric light to replicate it, and enough of it. You would of course need more space than one room – it would be more like a greenhouse to support one family with oxygen, and even more to feed them. There is no time to plant once the terror alert is sounded, and marijuana is by far the best plant for sustained life in an enclosed area, year round. Legalizing domestic marijuana makes sense from a survivalist viewpoint in times of terror. It also cuts big funding from a number of our current enemies.

Drugs are the only form of entertainment police get on the job. They don’t all use drugs, they abuse the laws surrounding drugs to confiscate the drugs, money, and property of those they arrest. Its kind of corrupt, if you want the mild report. These days, the cops get to spend any money they confiscate on new equipment. They buy swat gear, police dogs, and high tech spy gadgets designed to catch you in the act. In fact, there is a lot of corruption where ever there is a lot of money, and this particular money is the kind which is very difficult to track. Much of the money lost in a police raid never makes it’s way to court for some reason. It seems like only about half the drugs they take show up as evidence, and nobody is really sure of what they do with all that evidence after a trial. So while the police are driving new cars, sporting $500 sunglasses and $4000 dogs, we sit by and let them continue on their rampage by encouraging them to bust people for possession of pot. It’s time we legalize domestic marijuana. The freedom we once enjoyed are being completely destroyed in the quest for zero tolerance of pot. Eradication of the marijuana plant is their top priority. They will seek out and destroy this plant as if it were high level biological or chemical weapons. In fact they spend huge resources, flying helicopters and doing ground searches all summer long, to the tune of millions of dollars of tax money. These overzealous law officers often abuse the constitution in order to expedite their warrants, in the process destroying the very fabric that keeps this country strong. With domestic marijuana completely legal, these officers will then have to rely on actual investigations instead of smells. They won’t be able to trick their dog into barking at just the right moment. The dog won’t be trained for anything but explosives. Hard drugs slip right by anyway.

These days, you can’t trust anyone with a secret. If you smoke pot, or deal it to your friends, keep that secret between those people who are already involved in it. No new members should be allowed in the group. You should be especially wary if one of the people in the group wants to introduce somebody new who you do not already know. Often times this is a result of said friend getting busted, and said new person is an undercover cop or an informant working with said friend. Informants are a bad breed, because they get away with their crimes (which they were dumb enough to get caught for in the first place) by turning in other people who they know are committing other crimes. The police make a ‘plea bargain’ that involves testimony or active participation in the form of controlled buys, hidden microphones, cameras, and more. What it amounts to is your friends’ friend is going to be filling out some paperwork on you, and that paperwork will pave the way for a warrant. This is how 75% of all marijuana trafficking busts occur—the cops put the pressure on whomever they happen to bust for pot, for information. If they talk, they go free and dozens of other people then get arrested, put in the same bad position, and given the same bad choice.

There are a lot of things they won’t tell you. Civil Disobedience is a method of showing lawmakers that a law is either unwanted or unenforceable. It is not recommended, but is quite effective if enough people participate. It tends to take on many forms. The most common form of civil disobedience is observed while driving. You may or may not follow the posted speed to the letter (er, number) but you have to admit that some drivers do speed. There are always drivers speeding, but usually you see most of them speeding just a little, maybe 8 or 10 over the posted speed, just enough to avoid a ticket. Well, that’s just a perfect example of what civil disobedience will get you—ten more miles per hour! That’s right, because so many people drove a little over the posted speed, they started allowing you a few miles over in most places. The same can happen with marijuana if enough people started to grow it. To make anything like that work, you would have to have lots of people getting arrested for growing lots of pot, each one demanding a full jury trial, and exercising each of their rights. The courts would soon clog shut, and they would instruct the police to be more realistic.

Coal Consumption to be cut by one third. Carbon Dioxide net output can be reduced by 40 percent by growing fields of hemp and burning them in power plants as a supplement to coal. Most existing coal based power generation plants, which currently account for a quarter of Maine’s electricity, could accept biomass directly, without modification. By blending the coal with a biomass such as hemp, nitrous oxides and other harmful pollutants are reduced dramatically, and carbon dioxide is actually removed from the air by growing the hemp first. With the supply of coal a limited strategic resource, we should conserve it in as many ways as we can. We should look toward renewable sources of energy, and the best one we know of is domestic marijuana. Reducing pollution and conserving future resources are two more great reasons to legalize it.

Cooking with marijuana is an age-old tradition. Pot-brownies have been with us since brownies, and pot-cookies are a newer version of the same great thing. To make either one, mix up a traditional brownie or cookie mix. Experiment with which particular recipe you like or what flavor cookie suits you. Add in a quarter ounce of finely ground, bone-dry marijuana buds. Be careful to remove any stems or seeds from the batter. Bake as you normally would, keeping a close eye on it the first couple of times, until you get the hang of it. When eaten, a couple of brownies or cookies has the same effect as smoked marijuana, but it hits you differently. You get more of a body high than a head high, and it takes longer to hit you. It is overall a very relaxing high, and lasts quite a while. It is by far the very safest way to consume marijuana or hashish - in food.

There’s a big difference between growing pot right here (which is currently illegal) and importing it (as we currently do). In fact there are many differences. Imported pot is often laced with solvents or other chemicals to conceal their smell, making it easier to get thru customs. They are also sometimes treated with agents to make them sticky, or weigh more. Domestic pot is grown right here in this country, by you or your neighbor. There is nothing added to domestic pot, it is sold fresh every fall for about three weeks, until supplies run out. Then its back to imported pot for most people who smoke. Approximately ten percent of the population smokes marijuana on a regular basis. That means that 25 to 30 million Americans smoke pot. With that number as a guideline, you can project the amount of revenue that is lost each year. It would take about 20 square miles, or 12800 acres to grow the necessary 68 million pounds of pot needed for a year’s supply for the current users alone. With street prices for good marijuana being in the neighborhood of $200 an ounce, that would amount to well over $200 billion a year, cutting our trade deficit in half. That’s before we export any.

FLAX AND HEMP: FROM THE SEED TO THE LOOM

From: Mechanical Engineering Magazine, February 1937

This country imports almost all of its fibers except cotton. The Whitney gin, combined with improved spinning methods, enabled this country to produce cotton goods so far below the cost of linen that manufacture practically ceased in the United States. We cannot produce our fibers at less cost than can other farmers of the world. Aside from higher cost of labor, we do not get as large a production. For instance, Yugoslavia, which has the greates fiber production per acre in Europe, recently had a yield of 883 lbs. Comparable figures for other countries are Argentina, 749 lbs.; Egypt, 616 lbs.; and India, 393 lbs.; while the average yield in this country is 383 lbs. To meet world competition profitably, we must improve our methods all the way from the field to the loom. Flax is still pulled up by the roots, retted in a pond, dried in the sun, broken until the fibers separate from the wood, then spun, and finally bleached with lye from wood ashes, potash from burned seaweed, or lime. Improvements in tilling, planting, and harvesting mechanisms have materially helped the large farmers and, to a certain degree, the smaller ones, but the process from the crop to the yarn are crude, wasteful, and injurious. Hemp, the strongest of the vegetable fibers, gives the greatest production per acre and requires the least attention. It not only requires no weeding, but also kills off all the weeds and leaves the soil in splendid condition. This, irrespective of its own monetary value, makes it a desireable crop to grow. In climate and cultivation, its requisites are similar to flax, like flax, should be harvested before it is too ripe. The best time is when the lower leaves on the stalk wither and the flowers shed their pollen. Like flax, the fibers run out where the leaf stems are on the stalks and are made up of laminated fibers that are held together by pectose gums. When chemically treated like flax, hemp yields a beautiful fiber so closely resemblimg flax that a high-power microscope is needed to tell the difference--and only then because in hemp, some of the ends are split. Wetting a few strands of fiber and holding them suspended will definitely identify the two because upon drying, flax will be found to turn to the right or clockwise, and hemp to the left or counterclockwise. Before [World War I], Russia produced 400,000 tons of hemp, all of which is still hand-broken and hand-scutched. They now produce half that quantity and use most of of it themselves, as also does Italy from whom we had large importations. In this country, hemp, when planted one bu. per acre, yields about three tons of dry straw per acre. From 15 to 20 percent of this is fiber, and 80 to 85 percent is woody material. The rapidly growing market for cellulose and wood flour for plastics gives good reason to believe that this hitherto wasted material may prove sufficiently profitable to pay for the crop, leaving the cost of the fiber sufficiently low to compete with 500,000 tons of hard fiber now imported annually. Hemp being two to three times as strong as any of the hard fibers, much less weight is required to give the same yardage. For instance, sisal binder twine of 40-lb. tensile strength runs 450 ft. to the lb. A better twine madeof hemp would run 1280 ft. to the lb. Hemp is not subject to as many kinds of deterioration as are the tropical fibers, and none of them lasts as long in either fresh or salt water. While the theory in the past has been that straw should be cut when the pollen starts to fly, some of the best fiber handled by Minnesota hemp people was heavy with seed. This point should be proved as soon as possible by planting a few acres and then harvesting the first quarter when the pollen is flying, the second and third a week or ten days apart, and the last when the seed is fully matured. These four lots should be kept separate and scutched and processed separately to detect any difference in the quality and quantity of the fiber and seed. Several types of machines are available in this country for harvesting hemp. One of these was brought out several years ago by the International Harvester Company. Recently, growers of hemp in the Middle West have rebuilt regular grain binders for this work. The rebuilding is not particularly expensive and the machines are reported to give satisfactory service. Degumming of hemp is analogous to the treatment given flax. The shards probably offer slightly more resistance to digestion. On the other hand, they break down readily upon completion of the digestion process. And excellent fiber can, therefore, be obtained from hemp also. Hemp, when treated by aknown chemical process, can be spun on cotton, wool, and worsted machinery, and has as much absorbance and wearing quality as linen. Several types of machines for scutching the hemp stalks are also on the market. Scutch mills formerly operating in Illinois and Wisconsin used the system that consisted of a set of eight pairs of fluted rollers, through which the dried straw was passed to break up the woody portion. From there, the fiber with adhering shards--or hurds, as they are called--was transfered by an operator to an endless-chain conveyor. This carries the fiber past two revolving single drums in tandem, all having beating blades on their periphery, which beat off most of the hurds as well as the fibers that do not run the full length of the stalks. The portion of line fiber to tow is 50 percent each. Tow or short tangled fiber then goes to a vibrating cleaner that shakes out some of the hurds. In Minnesotsa and Illinois, another type has been tried out. This machine consists of a feeding table which the stalks are placed horizontally. Conveyor chains carry the stalks along until they are grasped by a clamping chain that grips them and carries them through half of the machine. A pair of intermeshing lawnmower-type beaters are placed at a 45-degree angle to the feeding chain and break the hemp stalks over the sharp edge of a steel plate, the object being to break the woody portion of the straw and whip the hurds from the fiber. On the other side and slightly beyond the first set of lawnmower beaters is another set, which is placed 90-degrees from the first pair and whips out the hurds. The first clamping chain transfers the stalks to another to scutch the fiber that was under the clamp at the beginning. Unfortunately, this type of scutcher makes even more tow than the so-called Wisconsin type. This tow is difficult to reclean because the hurds are broken into long slivers that tenaciously adhere to the fiber. Another type passes the stalks though a series of graduated fluted rollers. This breaks up the woody portion into hurds about 3/4 inch long, and the fiber then passes on though a series of reciprocating slotted plates working between stationary slotted plates. Adhering hurds are removed from the fiber which continues on a conveyor to the bailing process. Because no beating of the fiber against the grain occurs, this type of scutcher makes only line fiber. This is then processed by the same method as those for flax. Paint and lacquer manufacturers are interested in hempseed oil which is a good drying agent. When markets have been developed for the products now being wasted, seed and hurds, hemp will prove, both for farmer and the public, the most profitable and desireable crop that can be grown, and one that will make American mills independent of importations. Recent floods and dust storms have given warnings against the destruction of timber. Possibly, the hitherto waste products of flax and hemp may yet meet a good part of that need, especially in the plastic field which is growing by leaps and bounds.