The straightaway surface problem on one street in Sao Paulo has created a poor season's start for IndyCar.
This, after a stagnant preseason of bad news ranging from Graham Rahal without a ride, no sponsors for too many teams and races, the failure-to-thrive Versus TV deal still without DirectTV and the whole new what-will-they-decide-and-when 2012 rules package that doesn't know if it wants to be progressive or conservative.
And if IndyCar bipartisanship is anything like it is in Washington there may be a crisis brewing.
The new car is all we have to be passionate about. It's the key to whether or not IndyCar will be around in five years. It's the audacity of hope, to steal a phrase.
Meanwhile, we have this year and next to get through. With the same teams at the top, with or without sponsors, the same relatively ugly car we've seen for far too many seasons and a few new races at new venues.
Like the first one of the season at a virgin street course in Brazil. IN BRAZIL. It's bad enough we have as many Japanese drivers as we do Americans and that the National Guard, Boy Scouts of American and U.S. Air Force cars are driven by a two Brits and a Brazilian. But to begin this season with an out of country wimper instead of a bang -- especially when NASCAR is off! -- is just plain dumb.
Then the weekend starts off the same way it did for CART when they ran the first San Jose Grand Prix.
At least that race was in the middle of the season.
This is not the way you want to take the green for 2010.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
World's Fastest Model T Powered Streamliner
I met Joel Young about a year ago when he came to look at an old race car I had placed in storage, under lots of tarps and plastic, in my condo development’s RV parking lot, while waiting for my ship to come. My plan was to use the 1991 Wildcat Indy Lights car as the foundation for an all-new, affordable, revolutionary, never-been-tried, dirt-or-pavement/oval-or-road course race car.No, I was never going to build it myself, not with my own two hands. (Back in my youthful motorcycle days a friend's father, a mechanic by trade, once said I handled tools like a whore handles a baby.) My folly was to fund the project, perhaps via a winning PowerBall ticket, and handsomely pay master fabricator Tom Brawner, cousin of the late and great Clint Brawner and a friend I have known for years, to turn my dream into a reality.
Then one day Tom called and asked if I was interested in selling the car. The Wildcat had been sitting for almost five years by then, my luck with both the economy and the Arizona Lottery had not changed one iota and the thought of immediate cash was more than attractive.
So my answer was an emphatic yes. Tom brought his friend Joel out to Tempe so he could "kick the tires" and I noticed he was mainly interested in the Hewland gearbox .
I then learned that Mr. Young wanted to build a Bonneville race car, powered by a full-race, turbocharged Ford flathead that started life in a Model T. His plan was to be ready for the August, 2009 edition of Bonneville Speed Week with a car that would set a record in a class for vehicles powered by stock block, American –made flatheads.
Joel Young obviously had a dream, too – and unlike me, he possessed the ability, expertise and cash to make it a reality. I accepted his check and then helped he and Tom load the Wildcat onto their trailer.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago and, while talking to Tom on the phone one day I asked how Joel and the Wildcat were doing. Was the plan for Bonneville still on track? Tom said the project was definitely moving forward, but without the Wildcat and without the Hewland gearbox. Their best laid plans had gone awry as the Hewland's ring and pinion were simply unsuitable, ratio -wise. Beside, the very wide Indy Lights car just wasn’t great for high straight line speeds so they had come up with an alternative solution, one they were feeling better and better about.
And what, pray tell, was the solution?
Tom answered by asking if I had ever seen or heard of an old streamliner called the Thermo King Special.
Oh, yes. Almost everyone who followed land speed record chasing in the seventies remembers the beautiful, red-white-and-blue Thermo King car.
Built back in 1971 by a group of engineering students from the College of the Redwoods in Northern California, under the direction of Bob Haveman, the Thermo King Special was a ‘Corsair’ streamliner powered by a blown diesel engine originally used to power transport refrigeration units. There were a couple of Corsairs built, but this particular one, the one Joel had acquired, set its last record (199.019 mph for F/DS cars) in 1979 at Bonneville. Then it was retired, supposedly forever.
“The car was in museums for awhile,” said Young, “and then bought and sold a couple of times over the years. It was destined for the scrap heap until it was saved and then shown at the old Automotive Motorsports Foundation’s exhibit at the Arizona Historical Society Museum in Tempe. When the exhibit closed and after we found out the Wildcat wasn’t a good option we decided it might be fun to give the Corsair one more chance at glory, so we tracked it down and bought it and started the renovation process. It’s been an adventure, that’s for sure.”
As a result of almost three decades of total neglect the Corsair had to be completely rebuilt. Young, Brawner and fellow team members Brad Taylor and Dennis Cling spent hours resuscitating the streamliner with maximum performance potential as their goal – although safety was really their foremost concern.
“We had to make a roll cage and replace a lot of pieces that were rusted out, or just worn out and broken,” said Brawner, “while keeping as much of the original car as possible. It really was a well thought out design, but adapting it to run with the turbo flathead and meet the safety specs of today was like building a ship in a bottle.”
The heart of the ‘new’ race car, the engine, was both the responsibility and passion of Young. The semi-retired owner of Matrix Machine in Phoenix, which specializes in hi-tech, military-spec machining and fabrication, has always been a fan of Henry Ford and his visions and capabilities despite "the father of mass automobile production's" humble background and beginnings.
Like Ford, Young is a self-taught mechanic/tinkerer/engineer who never graduated from college. Also like Ford, when he opened his own business he recognized the benefits of paying his employees higher wages, with better working conditions and the best benefits possible to attract and retain the best people. Today that business is one of his legacies, now operated by his daughter and son-in-law – although neither are named Edsel – and still doing business according to the best practices and examples Henry Ford set for America and the world.
Perhaps that's why Young is simply obsessed with the Ford Model T. He owns and drives various versions, both on the street and in competition, and he’s always thinking of ways to improve upon a basic engine design that’s now over a century old. Hence the Model T streamliner project featuring an engine that was modified and developed without any cutting edge CAD systems, design programs or virtual engineering methods.
“One thing you have to remember,” said Young, “is that the Model T engine originally put out about 20 horsepower. It had three main bearings and the crankshaft was referred to as a bent wire because it flexed so much. To go fast on the salt and to set a record we wanted over 150 horsepower. So we went to work and came up with an engine that should do just fine.”
Fine is a relative term, but Young’s fabrication and machining skills and engine building expertise should not be discounted. Starting with a block from a 1927 tin lizzy he added two more main bearings in the girdles, a custom crankshaft and installed a Garret T04 turbocharger that came right off the old record-setting Thermo King diesel engine. The custom-built head features titanium valves and with a high lift cam, Haltech engine management system and a healthy dose of methanol in the tank the bored and stroked 194 c.i.d. engine showed almost 180 horespower on the chassis dyno in June.
Toward the end of July the team got to make a brief test run on an abandoned runway at Coolidge Municipal Airport, just outside of Phoenix. They only had about a third of a mile to accelerate but they got up to 85 mph, fast enough to make sure nothing leaked and everything worked, including the original front suspension, spindles and brakes from an old VW microbus and the Chevy Corvair steering box!
The car was then painted using the same design scheme as it boasted back in the seventies, with Matrix Machine on the side along with a large Ford logo on both sides of the engine cowl. Then they packed up and headed to Bonneville.
On Saturday, August 8th the Matrix Machine team presented the car for technical inspection, hoping there would be no problems but prepared for anything and everything. There was absolutely no cause for worry as the car went through without incident other than a lot of comments about how well the car was prepared.
Sunday morning saw Young climb into the cockpit for his initial run only to discover he could not shift into third gear. Like much of the mechanicals the gearbox was the same unit originally installed in the old Thermo King diesel car, an English –built, 60's era Jack Knight two speed with overdrive. He turned out early but the team decided to get back in line and make another run, even if the car was stuck in second.
Again, the tranny wouldn’t cooperate but at least they had a run in the books. The Matrix Machine Special ran 122.079 mph, breaking the old 4-cylnder flathead Ford record of 99.448 mph, so they opted to put the car in impound for the night and make a backup run, still using second gear only, on Monday.
That attempt produced a speed of 131.959 mph for an average speed of 127.049 mph, a new record. But there weren’t a lot of high fives going around as the team knew they had a lot more speed to show, if only they could get third and fourth gear to engage.
The car was moved back to tech so the SCTA folks could seal the engine and they could continue to run; otherwise they would have had to pull the head to check the engine displacement to make the record official. They went back to the pits to adjust the shifter, put the car back in line and prepared to make one more run Monday afternoon with all systems go – including the transmission.
That run resulted in a speed of 166.264 mph. After another night in impound the Matrix Machine Special made its final run on Tuesday morning, running 153.968 mph due to slick salt and a less than perfect start. Nevertheless, Joel Young put his name in the record books for V4F Blown Fuel Streamliners with an average speed of 160.116 mph.
Young was elated over the record, the effort and especially how they really had no major problems at Bonneville. “This year is the 100th Anniversary of the Ford Model T and just like the original," said Young, "this car performed like a champ.”
But Young is already looking forward to next year. "We're looking at what we'll have to do to make a ring and pinion for that Hewland five-speed because we think we can get over 200," he said. "And wouldn't it be a kick to join the 200 MPH club using a Model T engine?"
Friday, March 6, 2009
Economic Bale Out, or its time for America to wake up and smell the hemp.
My kids are amused by me because I am a graying, cynical baby boomer who believes that the current era of Washington corruption and corporate business-as-usual practices mean the rich get richer while the middle class gets fleeced. I think we need regulation and government oversight for the same reasons we need laws and order; too many humans are naturally predisposed to lying, cheating and stealing for maximum personal gain with little or no regard for their fellow citizens, the big picture or anything close to morality.
I believe the closing of loopholes that now enable corporate and Wall Street malfeasance, the ending of ridiculous no-bid government contracts, blatant favoritism toward big business and the neutering of special interest groups makes perfect sense, as does affordable health care for all and an environmental policy based in science instead of voodoo
I believe all this is possible. Which is why my wonderful children chuckle at me; I’m a cynic with Pollyanna tendencies.
Our new President’s New Deal –style renewable energy strategy, including new jobs beyond the “you-want-fries-with-that?” level can immediately begin to wean us (meaning both the U.S. and the planet) off our addiction to petroleum -- including its thousands and thousands of derivative products that are spoiling our land, polluting our air and crippling our economy.
And I think it’s high time we admitted we screwed up on a law that was passed when we were struggling to make it out of the Great Depression; one that banned an entire industry which, if allowed, could help us in so many ways to fix our economy, energy crisis and environment.
We need to repeal the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Because the same plant our society has defiled since the early 1900s as a result of greed and racism can actually help bail us out of the many messes we’ve put ourselves in.
Hemp is one of the oldest of crops to be domesticated by humans and was the main agricultural crop in China as long ago as 4500 B.C. From the early 1600s to 1937, hemp was a major crop in America, too.
Today, many chemists and agri-scientists believe that almost anything that can be made from a hydrocarbon can be made from a carbohydrate like hemp. With all the advances that modern technology has brought about, there are nearly 25,000 different uses for hemp ranging from nutritious food sources to plastics to medicine to building composites to paper and clothing. Hemp can create paints, varnishes, detergents, livestock feed, plastics and even dynamite.
Hemp can be processed to create fuel to run internal combustion engines. Compared with gasoline made from oil ethanol from hemp is less dangerous, less likely to explode and it won’t foul the air or contribute to global warming when burned. Petroleum –based fuel needs complex refining equipment and procedures to create a consistent gasoline product. It also needs to be shipped or pipelined to refineries, sometimes with environmentally disastrous consequences.
Not so for ethanol from hemp.
Hemp produces more biomass than any plant species currently being cultivated, including corn. And it’s a nuisance weed that is frost tolerant, requires only moderate amounts of water and grows in all fifty states.
It’s a weed that has the potential to become a major source of ethanol fuel immediately; to wean us off oil while we develop new or even more efficient energy solutions.
On an annual basis, 1 acre of hemp will produce as much fiber as 3 acres of cotton. Hemp is stronger and softer than cotton, lasts twice as long and won’t mildew. Fully half of the world's pesticides/herbicides – the chemicals that contaminate our land and water -- are used on cotton; hemp requires no ‘cides whatsoever and very little fertilizer to generate maximum production.
An acre of hemp will also produce as much paper as 2 to 4 acres of trees without causing massive deforestation and environmental damage. Hemp paper can be recycled many more times than tree-based paper, and requires less toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process than paper made from trees. Hemp can also be used to produce fiberboard that is stronger and lighter than wood while being naturally fire retardant.
Hungry? Hemp seeds contain a protein more nutritious and economical to produce than those found in soybeans, which means Americans can enjoy everything from tofu and veggie burgers to cheese, butter, salad oils, flour, milk and ice cream from hemp.
And hemp’s chemical qualities and long tap root make it a natural for crop rotation. Fact: hemp is being grown in the outlaying regions of Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, to leach out the radioactive soil while rejuvenating and fertilizing the soil naturally.
Hemp is a major natural resource that can benefit both the economy and the environment.
Did you know that Washington and Jefferson grew hemp? Or that Jefferson drafted the original Declaration of Independence on paper made from hemp? Or that in 1794 a retiring President Washington told his fellow Americans, who were still mostly farmers, to "Make the most you can of the Indian hemp seed and sow it everywhere."
Ben Franklin started one of the first paper mills and his products were made from hemp. Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag with cloth made from hemp. Francis Scott Key wrote the first verse of “The Star Spangled Banner” on a hemp envelope. Abraham Lincoln read at night using lamps that burned oil made from hemp seeds.
So what happened? After more than 300 years as America’s premier agricultural crop, why did hemp go the eventual way of the buggy whip, vacuum tubes and the 8-track tape player?
Well, it wasn’t because the market dried up. In 1937 hemp was outlawed, along with any and all other cannabis products, for some of the most shameful reasons one could imagine.
America’s hemp history begins in 1619, at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, when this land’s first marijuana law was enacted – but not by the Colonists. It was the British who ordered all farmers to grow “the Indian hempseed” for King James’s economy.
An international favorite for textiles and medicine, hemp was considered good stuff. Few people valued the crop for its conscious-altering effect because man didn’t really need anything other than beer (which could also be made from hemp) and other kinds of drinkable, fermented plant matter to get a little buzz now and again.
Over the next 200 years there were periodic "must grow" laws where Americans were subject to jail for not growing hemp; i.e. during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767 because the colonial Army needed rope, clothing and other materials to fight the War of Independence. By 1850, according to the United States Census, there were 8,327 hemp "plantations" (minimum 2,000-acre farms) growing the cannabis.
The works of Mark Twain were printed on hemp paper. The covered wagons that brought American settlers to the West used hemp canvas. The original Levis-brand pants were made from durable hemp denim.
Then came the turn of the century, when immigrants from south of the border began coming to America after the Mexican Revolution to find work and build a better life. Most were only qualified to work in the fields – any kind of fields -- and resentment soon developed between the smaller farms and the big company farms that latched onto the cheap Mexican labor.
That cheap labor came with something the American farmers had never had to deal with before: a kind of hemp that could be smoked like tobacco to alter consciousness and create a calming effect. As they and other cultures had done for centuries the Mexican laborers used marijuana to get high at night after their dawn-to-dusk work days were over; much like many of today’s workers from all classes “relax” or unwind with their favorite beer, wine or liquor after work and on weekends.
NOTE #1: God did not place THC-heavy cannabis plants that would get people high all over the earth; some climates are not conducive to weeds that feature high-enough levels of THC. But no civilization in world history has avoided independent discovery of how to rot fruits, vegetables or some other plant matter to create a liquid that would make them feel goofy when consumed.
About the same time as the Mexicans came to America, Carrie Nation and her intemperate followers were campaigning against the evils of demon rum. America was turning into a more capitalistic society as a result of the industrial revolution. The big Texas Oil Rush had established petroleum as a cheap, plentiful energy and manufacturing resource. And religions still held massive power to influence laws and society as a whole.
In 1910, six years after the Church of Latter Day Saints finally issued a manifesto against bigamy, a bunch of Mormons who still wanted to live the Big Love lifestyle fled to Mexico. After a few years they got homesick and came back to Utah.
Guess what they brought with them when they returned? Mexicans and Marijuana.
The Mormons were not amused. They didn’t like the weed and they really didn’t like the dark skinned people who came back with the prodigal bigamists. The church immediately ruled against the “drug” and since the state of Utah automatically enshrined church doctrine into law, the first state marijuana prohibition in America was established in 1915.
Other states, which also held racist views against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, quickly followed suit. Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927) passed laws outlawing marijuana too. Mainly because they didn’t want Mexicans in their states.
Because newspapers, which had their own secret agenda, were publishing untrue, Reefer Madness –like horror stories of the violence and crime that was inherent to the Mexican people.
The eastern states were also showing their racist side, but as much toward blacks – specifically the jazz musicians and their fans – as Mexicans. When jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago and then to Harlem, “reefer” came along with it; marijuana had become an integral part of the music scene.
Remember, this was only about 50 years after more than 617,000 Americans had died in the Civil War, a conflict that resulted in freedom for about four million slaves. Still insulted over having to co-exist with free Negroes the religious white had no interest in welcoming Mexicans as equals.
This was also the time when everyone in America was being forced to deal with prohibition. From 1919 to 1933, after the passage of the 18th Amendment, it was illegal to create, consume or transport alcohol for human consumption.
NOTE #2: From Policy Analysis No. 157, the CATO Institute, written by Mark Clayton in 1991: “National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)--the "noble experiment"--was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure.”
The Texas oil rush, which may still go down in history as the beginning of the world’s end, made a select few people, banks and corporations very rich, very powerful, and very, very greedy. So it was no surprise that when prohibition went into effect the oil companies began pushing law enforcement agencies to arrest farmers who were using their crops, including hemp, to create fuel for their machinery and tractors. The oil barons wanted to quash all competition and ethanol, the fuel that farmers could make on their own, became their Prohibition-inspired target.
NOTE #3: What do Gottlieb Daimler, Rudolf Diesel and Henry Ford have in common? They all invented automobiles with the intention of using bio-fuel, not kerosene or gasoline derived from non-renewable resources, for their internal combustion engines. Ford was also a proponent of hemp, eventually building a car made of resin-stiffened hemp fiber, which reduced the weight by one third, which ran on ethanol made from the hemp plant.
Prohibition ended during the middle of the Great Depression, not so much because the government realized its futility but because the politicians wanted and needed the significant revenue that was going to moonshine-providing gangsters like Al Capone.
The only control the U.S. Government had over drugs was the federal tax penalty for opiates and cocaine, as a result of the Harrison Act of 1914; all other drug laws were the responsibilities of the States. And while the Harrison Act still allowed legal uses of opiates and cocaine, their uses were taxed to create a revenue stream ‘needed’ by the federal government as that was the only way drug arrests would hold up in court.
Since marijuana could not be deemed illegal at the federal level, the same control-through-taxes rationale was considered as a way to control this relatively “new” hemp variant associated with blacks and Mexicans. So in 1930 America established the Federal Bureau of Narcotics with a man named Harry J. Anslinger its first director.
Who was Harry Anslinger? He was the son-in-law of Andrew Mellon, then Secretary of the Treasury, and the principle banker to America’s largest petrochemical firms. Mellon was among the biggest power brokers of his time with lots of friends in high places.
And why did Anslinger want to control (criminalize) marijuana on the federal level? Because he and his rich, powerful backers recognized the Bureau of Narcotics as an agency that could define both the problem and solution to white America’s real drug “problem” -- Mexicans and blacks.
With his appointment Anslinger was able to take direct aim at marijuana, under the guise of taxing it, and began working to make it illegal. He took full advantage of the themes of racism and violence being published about stoned Mexicans and blacks to draw national attention to the marijuana problem he wanted to create. It’s an accepted belief his efforts were essentially a conspiracy orchestrated by, among others, the DuPont chemical company (which along with Gulf Oil and Standard Oil banked with Mellon) and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to make the possession or cultivation of any kind of hemp product a criminal offense.
Why Hearst and DuPont? Hearst had lost hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland to Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution and hated Mexicans with a passion. His significant timber industry supported his newspaper chain and the last thing he wanted to see was the development of hemp paper, which would be cleaner, cheaper and better than paper from his trees. He had the power, through his many newspapers, to publish the most outrageous lies about Mexicans and the evil weed. Those lies sold newspapers then the same way they do for the National Enquirer (or any current media owned by Newscorp) now, which made him even richer.
DuPont had just patented nylon and didn’t want hemp as competition either. They also made a lot of the dangerous, toxic chemicals that were necessary for making paper from wood. Plus, they made insecticides for various crops including cotton – which hemp didn’t require.
Then there were the pharmaceutical companies that could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages for medicinal use. And if people could grow medicinal-use cannabis on their own they would have no need to purchase it from large, profit-first corporations.
Within five years Anslinger’s plan to criminalize hemp was nearing fruition, brought by a man who was on record as saying, "Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind” and “Most marijuana users are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers."
In 1937 the act was brought up before a committee hearing in Washington. Protestors that were ignored included the National Seed Institute (which said that hemp oil was essential in the manufacture of paints and other industrial processes); representatives of the American Medical Council (who testified against Anslinger’s act due to the importance of marijuana for pharmaceutical purposes); and Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Council of the American Medical Association.
Woodward was the most vocal protester. The good doctor berated the legislature and the Bureau for using the term marijuana in the bill without publicizing it as legislation about cannabis or hemp. He publicly slammed Anslinger and his new bureau for distorting earlier AMA statements that had nothing to do with marijuana, making them appear, i.e. “taken out of context” to be an AMA endorsement of Anslinger's view.
At the hearing Anslinger’s team was armed with scrapbooks of newspaper clippings that presented false stories of rapes, murders and mayhem by Mexicans and Blacks while high on marijuana. They had more scrapbooks of mean, nasty, agenda-driven Hearst editorials against marijuana and the people who used it.
Woodward stated that the AMA was opposed to the legislation and implied accusations of misconduct against Anslinger and the committee but the die was already cast. The legislation was hurriedly passed through committee to the floor of the house, where the entire discussion of the bill is said to have consisted of the following exchange:
Unidentified Member from New York: "Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?"
Speaker of the House Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn, from Texas: "I don't know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it's a narcotic of some kind."
Member from New York: "Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?"
Member of Anslinger’s committee: "Their Doctor Wentworth [sic] came down here. They support this bill 100 percent."
On August 2, 1937, with an outright lie the only discussion on the floor, cannabis sativa became illegal at the federal level. The Marijuana Tax Act was signed just as hemp was set to become the first plant to become a $1 billion industry in America.
The New York Times’ coverage of the legislation featured one sentence: "President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions."
The bill eliminated the competition for DuPont’s new synthetic fiber industry based on petrochemicals, removing the only viable textile alternative to cotton to ensure the demand for pesticides and herbicides.
The act removed any immediate competition to timber as alternative raw material for paper, cardboard or building materials. It killed off the only real option that would reduce deforestation and greatly reduce the land and water contamination from chemicals necessary for paper processing.
The Marijuana Tax Act put a halt to the research and development of hemp for medicinal use.
And how ironic that during World War II the military realized a desperate need for products that only hemp could provide immediately. So just five short years after Congress criminalized any kind of hemp production, the United States government launched a ‘Hemp for Victory’ campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9UF-pFhJY) as part of the war effort. Then the war ended, the government cancelled virtually all the hemp-farming licenses and we even eradicated all hemp cultivation in Japan.
So much for hemp. Or so the government thought.
By the late fifties marijuana, as an alternative to alcohol, was making a major societal comeback – even though, like liquor during prohibition, it had never really gone away. Marijuana was rapidly gaining a new reputation among America's youth as a natural substance that, when smoked or ingested, made people feel good without making them violent or sick (although they did get the munchies). Of course, this empirical evidence was in direct opposition to the propaganda used to make it illegal. But since the jazz folks and beatniks weren’t becoming rapists and murderers from smoking pot, eventually college kids all over America – the youngest of the baby boomers – discovered the joys of toking.
Note #4: Marijuana made a huge impact at the “Aquarian Exposition” at Max Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, New York in 1968. The four-day music festival that featured 32 of the era’s most popular acts turned into a muddy, disorganized mess when the concert, planned for about 200,000, saw nearly half a million youngsters show up. There were road closures, food shortages, completely inadequate sanitation facilities … and very few fights. Local officials credited the non-violent experience of peace and love to the rampant marijuana usage; they shuddered to think of what could have happened if alcohol had been the drug of choice.
In 1972 the Presidential Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, authorized by one Richard Millhouse Nixon, conducted the most comprehensive study on marijuana in history, including the cost of law enforcement, the medical and health ramifications, and especially the impact of imprisoning victimless-crime criminals. When the study was complete the Commission said, among other things, that America should make possession of a small amount of marijuana legal for personal use.
Nixon buried the report. And marijuana has remained illegal, at the federal level, ever since.
Over 7 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges since 1990, and 90% of them were arrested for possession, not cultivation or sale. Despite reported usage remaining constant, arrests have doubled since 1990 while arrests for cocaine and heroin have sharply declined. And today the greatest substance abuse danger for Americans of all ages is not pot or coke or heroin; it’s pharmaceuticals, or “legal” drugs that are prescribed by doctors who have succumbed to the pharmaceutical industry’s pressure to treat illnesses, both real and imagined, with profitable prescription drugs.
Last year over $10 billion of America’s tax dollars were spent on 1) anti-marijuana law enforcement, 2) the incarceration of otherwise law abiding citizens, and 3) anti-marijuana PR campaigns. Blacks are arrested at twice the rate of whites for marijuana possession, and Hispanics are arrested more often than whites as well. Prisons necessary to house these non-violent ‘criminals’ have become an industry of their own; now mostly privatized, of course, so corporations in cahoots with federal, state and local governments can continue to benefit (profit) from this manufactured threat against society.
Apologies if it appears this has turned into a decriminalize pot piece, although it can’t be disputed that the decriminalization and even legalization of marijuana – with regulation and taxes, of course -- could do the same thing for America’s economy that the repeal of the prohibition did.
But hemp, as an industrial crop instead of just a “drug” can do so much more.
Scientists who know much more than the me-first-agenda politicians (who remain heavily influenced by big business lobbyists, of course) agree that the single most effective way to halt the greenhouse effect is to stop burning fossil fuels. And the one and only way to reduce the growing blanket of C02 that is warming the earth is by growing more plants to absorb the C02.
Like hemp.
In the 1930s USDA scientists projected that at the rate America was using paper they would deplete America’s accessible forests in their lifetimes. They knew that sulfur acid and other chemical’s runoff from paper mills, which was used to break down the lignin in wood pulp, was a major force of waterway pollution and resultant health issues among our citizens. Then they discovered that the waste material left in the fields after hemp harvests was far richer in cellulose and contained less lignin than wood pulp. They found that hemp paper was stronger, made better cardboard and that hemp plantations offered a yield far greater than any tree farm – with little needs for harmful chemicals. They re-discovered what the Chinese, English and early Americans had know for centuries right about the same time this miracle crop became illegal.
Today, hemp is the only crop capable of becoming America’s biomass energy standard for the present and future – but it remains a crime to cultivate it. It can be grown for fuels on energy farms, for textiles, for oil and high protein foods, for pharmaceutical grade extract medicine and yes, recreational herbal products for adults.
Note #5: From http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/08/pot.eradication: Illegal immigrants connected to Mexico's drug cartels are growing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marijuana in the heart of American’s National Forests. It's a booming business that, federal officials say, feeds Mexico's most violent drug traffickers. In one eight day period this past summer, a federal, state and county law enforcement initiative called Operation LOCCUST eradicated 420,000 marijuana plants in California’s Sequoia National Forest worth more than $1 billion on the street. By comparison, authorities eradicated 330,000 plants over the six-month growing season last month. The pot production has intensified because it has become harder and harder to smuggle marijuana across the U.S.-Mexico border.
The legalization and taxation of marijuana as a recreational product can potentially put the dangerous drug cartels out of business. It will drastically reduce the investment America is wasting on the largest, dumbest battle of the entire “war on drugs” and cease the imprisonment of otherwise responsible, law abiding American citizens.
A green, multi-faceted hemp strategy can provide income for farmers in every state in the Union and create tens of thousands of sustainable new jobs. The immediate re-introduction of hemp farming can slow or even reverse global warming, reduce chemical contamination of our soil and water and save our forests.
Hemp farming can become the foundation for a non-polluting, trillion dollar a year energy production industry. In concert with new solar and wind technologies, hemp can help us break our self-destructive addiction to fossil fuels.
At one time a change in the government’s views about cannabis was about as likely as the prospect of an African-American being elected President of the United States.
No wonder this graybeard cynic has reason for optimism.
I believe the closing of loopholes that now enable corporate and Wall Street malfeasance, the ending of ridiculous no-bid government contracts, blatant favoritism toward big business and the neutering of special interest groups makes perfect sense, as does affordable health care for all and an environmental policy based in science instead of voodoo
I believe all this is possible. Which is why my wonderful children chuckle at me; I’m a cynic with Pollyanna tendencies.
Our new President’s New Deal –style renewable energy strategy, including new jobs beyond the “you-want-fries-with-that?” level can immediately begin to wean us (meaning both the U.S. and the planet) off our addiction to petroleum -- including its thousands and thousands of derivative products that are spoiling our land, polluting our air and crippling our economy.
And I think it’s high time we admitted we screwed up on a law that was passed when we were struggling to make it out of the Great Depression; one that banned an entire industry which, if allowed, could help us in so many ways to fix our economy, energy crisis and environment.
We need to repeal the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Because the same plant our society has defiled since the early 1900s as a result of greed and racism can actually help bail us out of the many messes we’ve put ourselves in.
Hemp is one of the oldest of crops to be domesticated by humans and was the main agricultural crop in China as long ago as 4500 B.C. From the early 1600s to 1937, hemp was a major crop in America, too.
Today, many chemists and agri-scientists believe that almost anything that can be made from a hydrocarbon can be made from a carbohydrate like hemp. With all the advances that modern technology has brought about, there are nearly 25,000 different uses for hemp ranging from nutritious food sources to plastics to medicine to building composites to paper and clothing. Hemp can create paints, varnishes, detergents, livestock feed, plastics and even dynamite.
Hemp can be processed to create fuel to run internal combustion engines. Compared with gasoline made from oil ethanol from hemp is less dangerous, less likely to explode and it won’t foul the air or contribute to global warming when burned. Petroleum –based fuel needs complex refining equipment and procedures to create a consistent gasoline product. It also needs to be shipped or pipelined to refineries, sometimes with environmentally disastrous consequences.
Not so for ethanol from hemp.
Hemp produces more biomass than any plant species currently being cultivated, including corn. And it’s a nuisance weed that is frost tolerant, requires only moderate amounts of water and grows in all fifty states.
It’s a weed that has the potential to become a major source of ethanol fuel immediately; to wean us off oil while we develop new or even more efficient energy solutions.
On an annual basis, 1 acre of hemp will produce as much fiber as 3 acres of cotton. Hemp is stronger and softer than cotton, lasts twice as long and won’t mildew. Fully half of the world's pesticides/herbicides – the chemicals that contaminate our land and water -- are used on cotton; hemp requires no ‘cides whatsoever and very little fertilizer to generate maximum production.
An acre of hemp will also produce as much paper as 2 to 4 acres of trees without causing massive deforestation and environmental damage. Hemp paper can be recycled many more times than tree-based paper, and requires less toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process than paper made from trees. Hemp can also be used to produce fiberboard that is stronger and lighter than wood while being naturally fire retardant.
Hungry? Hemp seeds contain a protein more nutritious and economical to produce than those found in soybeans, which means Americans can enjoy everything from tofu and veggie burgers to cheese, butter, salad oils, flour, milk and ice cream from hemp.
And hemp’s chemical qualities and long tap root make it a natural for crop rotation. Fact: hemp is being grown in the outlaying regions of Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, to leach out the radioactive soil while rejuvenating and fertilizing the soil naturally.
Hemp is a major natural resource that can benefit both the economy and the environment.
Did you know that Washington and Jefferson grew hemp? Or that Jefferson drafted the original Declaration of Independence on paper made from hemp? Or that in 1794 a retiring President Washington told his fellow Americans, who were still mostly farmers, to "Make the most you can of the Indian hemp seed and sow it everywhere."
Ben Franklin started one of the first paper mills and his products were made from hemp. Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag with cloth made from hemp. Francis Scott Key wrote the first verse of “The Star Spangled Banner” on a hemp envelope. Abraham Lincoln read at night using lamps that burned oil made from hemp seeds.
So what happened? After more than 300 years as America’s premier agricultural crop, why did hemp go the eventual way of the buggy whip, vacuum tubes and the 8-track tape player?
Well, it wasn’t because the market dried up. In 1937 hemp was outlawed, along with any and all other cannabis products, for some of the most shameful reasons one could imagine.
America’s hemp history begins in 1619, at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, when this land’s first marijuana law was enacted – but not by the Colonists. It was the British who ordered all farmers to grow “the Indian hempseed” for King James’s economy.
An international favorite for textiles and medicine, hemp was considered good stuff. Few people valued the crop for its conscious-altering effect because man didn’t really need anything other than beer (which could also be made from hemp) and other kinds of drinkable, fermented plant matter to get a little buzz now and again.
Over the next 200 years there were periodic "must grow" laws where Americans were subject to jail for not growing hemp; i.e. during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767 because the colonial Army needed rope, clothing and other materials to fight the War of Independence. By 1850, according to the United States Census, there were 8,327 hemp "plantations" (minimum 2,000-acre farms) growing the cannabis.
The works of Mark Twain were printed on hemp paper. The covered wagons that brought American settlers to the West used hemp canvas. The original Levis-brand pants were made from durable hemp denim.
Then came the turn of the century, when immigrants from south of the border began coming to America after the Mexican Revolution to find work and build a better life. Most were only qualified to work in the fields – any kind of fields -- and resentment soon developed between the smaller farms and the big company farms that latched onto the cheap Mexican labor.
That cheap labor came with something the American farmers had never had to deal with before: a kind of hemp that could be smoked like tobacco to alter consciousness and create a calming effect. As they and other cultures had done for centuries the Mexican laborers used marijuana to get high at night after their dawn-to-dusk work days were over; much like many of today’s workers from all classes “relax” or unwind with their favorite beer, wine or liquor after work and on weekends.
NOTE #1: God did not place THC-heavy cannabis plants that would get people high all over the earth; some climates are not conducive to weeds that feature high-enough levels of THC. But no civilization in world history has avoided independent discovery of how to rot fruits, vegetables or some other plant matter to create a liquid that would make them feel goofy when consumed.
About the same time as the Mexicans came to America, Carrie Nation and her intemperate followers were campaigning against the evils of demon rum. America was turning into a more capitalistic society as a result of the industrial revolution. The big Texas Oil Rush had established petroleum as a cheap, plentiful energy and manufacturing resource. And religions still held massive power to influence laws and society as a whole.
In 1910, six years after the Church of Latter Day Saints finally issued a manifesto against bigamy, a bunch of Mormons who still wanted to live the Big Love lifestyle fled to Mexico. After a few years they got homesick and came back to Utah.
Guess what they brought with them when they returned? Mexicans and Marijuana.
The Mormons were not amused. They didn’t like the weed and they really didn’t like the dark skinned people who came back with the prodigal bigamists. The church immediately ruled against the “drug” and since the state of Utah automatically enshrined church doctrine into law, the first state marijuana prohibition in America was established in 1915.
Other states, which also held racist views against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, quickly followed suit. Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927) passed laws outlawing marijuana too. Mainly because they didn’t want Mexicans in their states.
Because newspapers, which had their own secret agenda, were publishing untrue, Reefer Madness –like horror stories of the violence and crime that was inherent to the Mexican people.
The eastern states were also showing their racist side, but as much toward blacks – specifically the jazz musicians and their fans – as Mexicans. When jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago and then to Harlem, “reefer” came along with it; marijuana had become an integral part of the music scene.
Remember, this was only about 50 years after more than 617,000 Americans had died in the Civil War, a conflict that resulted in freedom for about four million slaves. Still insulted over having to co-exist with free Negroes the religious white had no interest in welcoming Mexicans as equals.
This was also the time when everyone in America was being forced to deal with prohibition. From 1919 to 1933, after the passage of the 18th Amendment, it was illegal to create, consume or transport alcohol for human consumption.
NOTE #2: From Policy Analysis No. 157, the CATO Institute, written by Mark Clayton in 1991: “National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)--the "noble experiment"--was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure.”
The Texas oil rush, which may still go down in history as the beginning of the world’s end, made a select few people, banks and corporations very rich, very powerful, and very, very greedy. So it was no surprise that when prohibition went into effect the oil companies began pushing law enforcement agencies to arrest farmers who were using their crops, including hemp, to create fuel for their machinery and tractors. The oil barons wanted to quash all competition and ethanol, the fuel that farmers could make on their own, became their Prohibition-inspired target.
NOTE #3: What do Gottlieb Daimler, Rudolf Diesel and Henry Ford have in common? They all invented automobiles with the intention of using bio-fuel, not kerosene or gasoline derived from non-renewable resources, for their internal combustion engines. Ford was also a proponent of hemp, eventually building a car made of resin-stiffened hemp fiber, which reduced the weight by one third, which ran on ethanol made from the hemp plant.
Prohibition ended during the middle of the Great Depression, not so much because the government realized its futility but because the politicians wanted and needed the significant revenue that was going to moonshine-providing gangsters like Al Capone.
The only control the U.S. Government had over drugs was the federal tax penalty for opiates and cocaine, as a result of the Harrison Act of 1914; all other drug laws were the responsibilities of the States. And while the Harrison Act still allowed legal uses of opiates and cocaine, their uses were taxed to create a revenue stream ‘needed’ by the federal government as that was the only way drug arrests would hold up in court.
Since marijuana could not be deemed illegal at the federal level, the same control-through-taxes rationale was considered as a way to control this relatively “new” hemp variant associated with blacks and Mexicans. So in 1930 America established the Federal Bureau of Narcotics with a man named Harry J. Anslinger its first director.
Who was Harry Anslinger? He was the son-in-law of Andrew Mellon, then Secretary of the Treasury, and the principle banker to America’s largest petrochemical firms. Mellon was among the biggest power brokers of his time with lots of friends in high places.
And why did Anslinger want to control (criminalize) marijuana on the federal level? Because he and his rich, powerful backers recognized the Bureau of Narcotics as an agency that could define both the problem and solution to white America’s real drug “problem” -- Mexicans and blacks.
With his appointment Anslinger was able to take direct aim at marijuana, under the guise of taxing it, and began working to make it illegal. He took full advantage of the themes of racism and violence being published about stoned Mexicans and blacks to draw national attention to the marijuana problem he wanted to create. It’s an accepted belief his efforts were essentially a conspiracy orchestrated by, among others, the DuPont chemical company (which along with Gulf Oil and Standard Oil banked with Mellon) and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to make the possession or cultivation of any kind of hemp product a criminal offense.
Why Hearst and DuPont? Hearst had lost hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland to Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution and hated Mexicans with a passion. His significant timber industry supported his newspaper chain and the last thing he wanted to see was the development of hemp paper, which would be cleaner, cheaper and better than paper from his trees. He had the power, through his many newspapers, to publish the most outrageous lies about Mexicans and the evil weed. Those lies sold newspapers then the same way they do for the National Enquirer (or any current media owned by Newscorp) now, which made him even richer.
DuPont had just patented nylon and didn’t want hemp as competition either. They also made a lot of the dangerous, toxic chemicals that were necessary for making paper from wood. Plus, they made insecticides for various crops including cotton – which hemp didn’t require.
Then there were the pharmaceutical companies that could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages for medicinal use. And if people could grow medicinal-use cannabis on their own they would have no need to purchase it from large, profit-first corporations.
Within five years Anslinger’s plan to criminalize hemp was nearing fruition, brought by a man who was on record as saying, "Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind” and “Most marijuana users are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers."
In 1937 the act was brought up before a committee hearing in Washington. Protestors that were ignored included the National Seed Institute (which said that hemp oil was essential in the manufacture of paints and other industrial processes); representatives of the American Medical Council (who testified against Anslinger’s act due to the importance of marijuana for pharmaceutical purposes); and Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Council of the American Medical Association.
Woodward was the most vocal protester. The good doctor berated the legislature and the Bureau for using the term marijuana in the bill without publicizing it as legislation about cannabis or hemp. He publicly slammed Anslinger and his new bureau for distorting earlier AMA statements that had nothing to do with marijuana, making them appear, i.e. “taken out of context” to be an AMA endorsement of Anslinger's view.
At the hearing Anslinger’s team was armed with scrapbooks of newspaper clippings that presented false stories of rapes, murders and mayhem by Mexicans and Blacks while high on marijuana. They had more scrapbooks of mean, nasty, agenda-driven Hearst editorials against marijuana and the people who used it.
Woodward stated that the AMA was opposed to the legislation and implied accusations of misconduct against Anslinger and the committee but the die was already cast. The legislation was hurriedly passed through committee to the floor of the house, where the entire discussion of the bill is said to have consisted of the following exchange:
Unidentified Member from New York: "Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?"
Speaker of the House Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn, from Texas: "I don't know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it's a narcotic of some kind."
Member from New York: "Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?"
Member of Anslinger’s committee: "Their Doctor Wentworth [sic] came down here. They support this bill 100 percent."
On August 2, 1937, with an outright lie the only discussion on the floor, cannabis sativa became illegal at the federal level. The Marijuana Tax Act was signed just as hemp was set to become the first plant to become a $1 billion industry in America.
The New York Times’ coverage of the legislation featured one sentence: "President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions."
The bill eliminated the competition for DuPont’s new synthetic fiber industry based on petrochemicals, removing the only viable textile alternative to cotton to ensure the demand for pesticides and herbicides.
The act removed any immediate competition to timber as alternative raw material for paper, cardboard or building materials. It killed off the only real option that would reduce deforestation and greatly reduce the land and water contamination from chemicals necessary for paper processing.
The Marijuana Tax Act put a halt to the research and development of hemp for medicinal use.
And how ironic that during World War II the military realized a desperate need for products that only hemp could provide immediately. So just five short years after Congress criminalized any kind of hemp production, the United States government launched a ‘Hemp for Victory’ campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9UF-pFhJY) as part of the war effort. Then the war ended, the government cancelled virtually all the hemp-farming licenses and we even eradicated all hemp cultivation in Japan.
So much for hemp. Or so the government thought.
By the late fifties marijuana, as an alternative to alcohol, was making a major societal comeback – even though, like liquor during prohibition, it had never really gone away. Marijuana was rapidly gaining a new reputation among America's youth as a natural substance that, when smoked or ingested, made people feel good without making them violent or sick (although they did get the munchies). Of course, this empirical evidence was in direct opposition to the propaganda used to make it illegal. But since the jazz folks and beatniks weren’t becoming rapists and murderers from smoking pot, eventually college kids all over America – the youngest of the baby boomers – discovered the joys of toking.
Note #4: Marijuana made a huge impact at the “Aquarian Exposition” at Max Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, New York in 1968. The four-day music festival that featured 32 of the era’s most popular acts turned into a muddy, disorganized mess when the concert, planned for about 200,000, saw nearly half a million youngsters show up. There were road closures, food shortages, completely inadequate sanitation facilities … and very few fights. Local officials credited the non-violent experience of peace and love to the rampant marijuana usage; they shuddered to think of what could have happened if alcohol had been the drug of choice.
In 1972 the Presidential Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, authorized by one Richard Millhouse Nixon, conducted the most comprehensive study on marijuana in history, including the cost of law enforcement, the medical and health ramifications, and especially the impact of imprisoning victimless-crime criminals. When the study was complete the Commission said, among other things, that America should make possession of a small amount of marijuana legal for personal use.
Nixon buried the report. And marijuana has remained illegal, at the federal level, ever since.
Over 7 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges since 1990, and 90% of them were arrested for possession, not cultivation or sale. Despite reported usage remaining constant, arrests have doubled since 1990 while arrests for cocaine and heroin have sharply declined. And today the greatest substance abuse danger for Americans of all ages is not pot or coke or heroin; it’s pharmaceuticals, or “legal” drugs that are prescribed by doctors who have succumbed to the pharmaceutical industry’s pressure to treat illnesses, both real and imagined, with profitable prescription drugs.
Last year over $10 billion of America’s tax dollars were spent on 1) anti-marijuana law enforcement, 2) the incarceration of otherwise law abiding citizens, and 3) anti-marijuana PR campaigns. Blacks are arrested at twice the rate of whites for marijuana possession, and Hispanics are arrested more often than whites as well. Prisons necessary to house these non-violent ‘criminals’ have become an industry of their own; now mostly privatized, of course, so corporations in cahoots with federal, state and local governments can continue to benefit (profit) from this manufactured threat against society.
Apologies if it appears this has turned into a decriminalize pot piece, although it can’t be disputed that the decriminalization and even legalization of marijuana – with regulation and taxes, of course -- could do the same thing for America’s economy that the repeal of the prohibition did.
But hemp, as an industrial crop instead of just a “drug” can do so much more.
Scientists who know much more than the me-first-agenda politicians (who remain heavily influenced by big business lobbyists, of course) agree that the single most effective way to halt the greenhouse effect is to stop burning fossil fuels. And the one and only way to reduce the growing blanket of C02 that is warming the earth is by growing more plants to absorb the C02.
Like hemp.
In the 1930s USDA scientists projected that at the rate America was using paper they would deplete America’s accessible forests in their lifetimes. They knew that sulfur acid and other chemical’s runoff from paper mills, which was used to break down the lignin in wood pulp, was a major force of waterway pollution and resultant health issues among our citizens. Then they discovered that the waste material left in the fields after hemp harvests was far richer in cellulose and contained less lignin than wood pulp. They found that hemp paper was stronger, made better cardboard and that hemp plantations offered a yield far greater than any tree farm – with little needs for harmful chemicals. They re-discovered what the Chinese, English and early Americans had know for centuries right about the same time this miracle crop became illegal.
Today, hemp is the only crop capable of becoming America’s biomass energy standard for the present and future – but it remains a crime to cultivate it. It can be grown for fuels on energy farms, for textiles, for oil and high protein foods, for pharmaceutical grade extract medicine and yes, recreational herbal products for adults.
Note #5: From http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/08/pot.eradication: Illegal immigrants connected to Mexico's drug cartels are growing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marijuana in the heart of American’s National Forests. It's a booming business that, federal officials say, feeds Mexico's most violent drug traffickers. In one eight day period this past summer, a federal, state and county law enforcement initiative called Operation LOCCUST eradicated 420,000 marijuana plants in California’s Sequoia National Forest worth more than $1 billion on the street. By comparison, authorities eradicated 330,000 plants over the six-month growing season last month. The pot production has intensified because it has become harder and harder to smuggle marijuana across the U.S.-Mexico border.
The legalization and taxation of marijuana as a recreational product can potentially put the dangerous drug cartels out of business. It will drastically reduce the investment America is wasting on the largest, dumbest battle of the entire “war on drugs” and cease the imprisonment of otherwise responsible, law abiding American citizens.
A green, multi-faceted hemp strategy can provide income for farmers in every state in the Union and create tens of thousands of sustainable new jobs. The immediate re-introduction of hemp farming can slow or even reverse global warming, reduce chemical contamination of our soil and water and save our forests.
Hemp farming can become the foundation for a non-polluting, trillion dollar a year energy production industry. In concert with new solar and wind technologies, hemp can help us break our self-destructive addiction to fossil fuels.
At one time a change in the government’s views about cannabis was about as likely as the prospect of an African-American being elected President of the United States.
No wonder this graybeard cynic has reason for optimism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
