What is industrial hemp? How does it differ from marijuana?
Hemp is a distinct variety of the plant species cannabis sativa L. It is a tall, slender fibrous plant similar to flax or kenaf. Farmers worldwide have harvested the crop for the past 12,000 years for fiber and food, and Popular Mechanics once boasted that over 25,000 environmentally friendly products could be derived from hemp. [...]
Critics of the medical use of marijuana say…
Critics of the medical use of marijuana say There are traditional medications to help patients and marijuana is not needed; and, Permitting the medical use of marijuana sends the wrong message to kids. How do you respond to these concerns? For many patients, traditional medications do work and they do not require or desire medical [...]
What about The Supreme Court?
The Supreme Court recently ruled that federal law makes no exceptions for growing or distributing marijuana, even if the goal is to help seriously ill patients using marijuana as a medicine. How does this decision impact patients in the nine states that have legalized the medical use of marijuana under state law? Why does Congress [...]
Why should we decriminalize or legalize marijuana?
As President Jimmy Carter acknowledged: “Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use.” Marijuana prohibition needlessly destroys the lives and careers of literally hundreds of [...]
How can you say you’re against minors smoking when you put on that Rally every year?
We do program for an older generation (i.e, ourselves) in our band and speaker selections, but minors show up anyway. It is true that with sufficiently dreary programming we could empty the Common of all but the most zealous, but we are reluctant to do that. The Drug War targets young people in two ways: [...]
Why should marijuana be regulated (as opposed to prohibited)?
There are two meta arguments for legalization. The first is based on Natural Law or Natural Rights: people have a right to manage their own bodies as they see fit, so long as they do not interfere with the rights of others to do the same. The second is that a cure that leaves the [...]
What do we mean by reform?
The core is decriminalization of possession and cultivation of small amounts for personal use. Many of us would be willing to continue the ban on large- scale commercial production and distribution. It is a measure of how Draconian the drug war has become that this latter position is approximately how the Volstead Act regulated alcohol. [...]
