February 8th, 2013 there were two RS's introduced in the Senate Affairs Committee.  They were RS 21862 and 21872. One is to “permanently ban” marijuana from Idaho, in all forms. The other is to demand that the Federal Government enforce its laws that and crack down federally.
     “We went to the hearing today to oppose the legislation. There were several people there for comment. It went to committee because there were too many of us to take comment from at that hearing. The Chairman at one point asked a question along the lines of almost implying that it was a joke. As he said something like, "do you expect this to get far in committee?" That's a loose quote. We had activists there signed up to speak, including myself, and they had people speaking for those laws signed up as well. They looked shocked that we were there. Our new petition comes back from the Idaho AG with recommendations no later than Tuesday. We feel that this is a knee jerk response to our petition.” Lindsey Rinehart
     “We have contacted the Idaho ACLU. Had we not been there, this would have been voted through to print without committee and would have gone straight to the Floor for a vote. We wouldn't have had a chance. I know it sounds backwards, but in this one case, it going to committee was better than what would have happened. We have a chance to fight back now.” Lindsey Rinehart
     “I called the secretary for this committee and she said that we need to watch the legislative page for when the next committee is. She said we will probably get about 2 days notice. We need this to be standing room only and in our favor. Supposedly, The Association of Idaho Cities was the organization that put forth the one just for Idaho.” Lindsey Rinehart
     “We will need this meeting to be PACKED and it will be very short notice.  Please e-mail me at [email protected] to have your phone number placed on a Text list for when this goes to committee.  We Need as many supporters of medical marijuana there as possible.” Lindsey Rinehart.

     Thank you Lindsey for sharing this information and allowing me to have it published on other sites. I look forward to our continued work in the future, and watching our relationship grow into some beautiful buds….no pun intended, or was there? You decide.

An effort is currently building in Congress to change the United States cannabis laws. This effort includes moves to legalize the industrial production of hemp and establish a hefty federal marijuana tax.
     While passage this year may be a long shot, lawmakers from both parties have been quietly working on several bills; the first of which Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado plan to introduce Tuesday.
     Polis' measure would regulate cannabis in a manner similar to the way the federal government handles alcohol. In states that legalize pot, growers would have to obtain a federal permit. Oversight of marijuana would be removed from the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), and be given to the newly renamed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana, and Firearms.  It would remain illegal to bring marijuana from a state where it is legal to a state where it is not legal.
     The bill is based on a legalization measure previously pushed by former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
     Blumenauer's bill would create a federal cannabis excise tax of 50 percent on the "first sale" of marijuana, typically, from a grower to a processor or retailer. It also would tax cannabis producers or importers $1,000 annually and other marijuana businesses $500. His office said Monday it does not yet have an estimate of how much the taxes might bring in; but a policy paper Blumenauer and Polis are releasing this week suggests, based on admittedly vague estimates, that a federal tax of $50 per ounce could raise $20 billion per year. They call for directing the money to law enforcement, substance abuse treatment, and the national debt.
     Last fall's votes in Colorado and Washington State to legalize recreational marijuana should push Congress to end the 75-year federal cannabis prohibition, Blumenauer said.
     Washington state officials have estimated that its legal marijuana market could bring in about half a billion dollars per year in state taxes.
     "You folks in Washington and my friends in Colorado really upset the apple cart," Blumenauer said. "We're still arresting two-thirds of a million people for use of a substance that a majority feel should be legal...It's past time for us to step in and try to sort this stuff out."
     Advocates who are working with lawmakers acknowledge it could take years for any changes to get through Congress, but they are encouraged by recent developments. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last week came out in support of efforts to legalize hemp in his home state of Kentucky, and U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, is expected to introduce legislation allowing states to set their own policy on cannabis.
     Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, has indicated he plans to hold a hearing on the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws and has urged an end to federal "mandatory minimum" sentences that lead to long prison stints for drug crimes.
     "We're seeing enormous political momentum to undo the drug war failings of the past 40 years," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, who has been working with lawmakers on cannabis-related bills. "For the first time, the wind is behind our back."
     The Justice Department has not said how it plans to respond to the votes in Washington and Colorado. It could potentially sue to block the states from issuing licenses to marijuana growers, processors, and retail stores on the grounds that doing so would conflict with federal drug law.
     Blumenauer and Polis' paper urges a number of changes, including altering tax codes to let marijuana dispensaries deduct business expenses on federal taxes, and making it easier for cannabis related businesses to get bank accounts. Many operate on a cash basis because federally insured banks will not work with them, they noted.
     Blumenauer said he expects to introduce the tax-code legislation as well as a bill that would reschedule marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act, allowing states to enact medical cannabis laws without fear that federal authorities will continue raiding dispensaries or prosecuting providers. It makes no sense that marijuana is a Schedule I drug, in the same category as heroin and a more restrictive category than cocaine, Blumenauer said.
     The measures have little chance of passing, said Kevin Sabet, a former White House drug policy adviser. Sabet recently joined former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former President George W. Bush, and speechwriter David Frum in forming a group called Project SAM, for "smart approaches to marijuana," to counter the growing legalization movement. Sabet noted that previous federal legalization measures have always failed.
     "These are really extreme solutions to the marijuana problem we have in this country," Sabet said. "The marijuana problem we have is a problem of addiction among kids, and stigma of people who have a criminal record for marijuana crimes.” "There are a lot more people in Congress who think that marijuana should be illegal but treated as a public health problem, than think it should be legal."
     Project SAM suggests people should not get criminal records for minor marijuana offenses, but instead could face probation or treatment

     A recent national poll concluded that 43 percent of Americans believe unemployment and job creation is the most important issue facing our country. Therefore, it is no surprise for Republicans and Democrats in Washington claim to be big supporters of creating jobs.
     The truth is however, that D.C. policy-makers on both sides of the aisle stifle jobs and opportunity with regulations and policies that hurt our work force; and often, it flies in the face of common sense. The perfect example of this is the debate over industrial hemp.
     Prior to World War II, Kentucky led the nation in providing 94 percent of all industrialized hemp. However, it became outlawed under an umbrella law that made marijuana illegal. This was simply because they are in the same botanical family and look similar.
     However, there are major differences in the two plants. Cannabis consists of a significantly higher percentage of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a mind-altering chemical, while industrial hemp plants contain less than 0.3 percent.
     Comparing hemp to marijuana is like comparing poppy seeds found on bagels to OxyContin. Poppy seeds are in the same family of opiate; the same family that contains codeine, morphine, OxyContin and even heroin.
     Yet, you can buy and consume food containing poppy seeds, as thousands of Americans do each day, without experiencing the narcotic effects the rest of its plant is harvested for.
     Therefore, the issue with hemp is not that the plant is harmful. It's that the plant might be mistaken for cannabis.
     This presents some challenges for law enforcement. Nevertheless, we can address those challenges. In addition, we can return to growing and producing hemp in Kentucky as well as other parts of America, and in the process, create jobs and opportunity in the USA.
     Let me share an example of the economic potential for industrial hemp.
      Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps is based in California and sells products made from hemp plants. David Bronner, the company's CEO, says it grossed over $50 million in sales this past year. However, since the production of industrial hemp is outlawed in America, the company must import 100 percent of the hemp used in their products from other countries.
     The company sends hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars every year to other countries because American farmers are not allowed to grow this plant. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not allow the legal farming of hemp.
     Today, hemp products are sold around the U.S. in forms of paper, cosmetics, lotions, auto parts, clothes, cattle feed, and so much more. If we were to start using hemp plants again for paper, we could ultimately replace using trees as the main source for our paper supply.
     One acre of industrial hemp plants can grow around 15,000 pounds of green hemp in about 110 days. For every ton of hemp converted into paper, we could save 12 trees. It is a renewable, sustainable, environmentally conscious crop.
     Back in August, Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and a bipartisan group of legislators promised Kentuckians that they would join the fight to allow the growth and production of industrial hemp. Comer stated that day that the soil and the climate in Kentucky are perfect for the growth of hemp, and that could ultimately allow the commonwealth to be the nation's top producer.
     Recently, Comer revived the long-dormant Kentucky Hemp Commission by calling its first meeting in more than 10 years. This took real leadership and I applaud him for his action. To help get the ball rolling, Dr. Bronner wrote a $50,000 check to the commission.
     My vision for the farmers and manufacturers of Kentucky and other parts of America is to see us start growing hemp, creating jobs, and leading the nation in this industry again. These jobs will be ripe for the taking, but we must act now.

     Cannabis politics extend back to the Europeans’ arrival in the Americas. Cannabis was indispensable to the imposition of their will by sea power. Eighty tons of hemp sales and rope drove Columbus’s three ships.
     In 1524, the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered cannabis growing wild in what is now Virginia, and in 1619, King James I decreed that each adult colonist must grow 100 cannabis plants per year.
     From 1621, when Oxford scholar Robert Burton recommended cannabis for the treatment of depression, through the next three centuries, medical journals prescribed it for a wide array of ailments.
     In 1839, British East India Company Surgeon William B. O’Shaughnessy published the first comprehensive study of medical cannabis in the West. Because of their remarkable efficacy, cannabis therapies quickly spread and entered the U.S. pharmacopeia in 1854, but in the early 1890s, some British colonial administrators in India expressed concerns about the widespread use of “ganja” as an intoxicant. A Temperance League MP persuaded Lord Kimberly, Secretary of State for India, to convene the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission. Formed in 1893, it interviewed 1,193 witnesses and produced a 3,281-page report.
     It concluded, “Moderate use of hemp drugs appears to cause no appreciable physical injury of any kind…no injurious effects on the mind…no moral injury whatever.”
     In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Mexican agricultural workers brought the recreational smoking of cannabis to the U.S. It spread among jazz musicians and African-Americans. The mainstream population’s ignorance and fear of these socially marginal groups made possible William Randolph Hearst’s and Harry Anslinger’s fraudulent crusade against cannabis, as described in part 2 of Medicine and Beyond.
     Despite that crusade, before the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 outlawed cannabis, fear of violent cannabis addicts was not widespread, significant, or in most cases, genuine, however, few in Congress knew that. Nor, for that matter, did many legislators know that marijuana was cannabis.
     New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was skeptical. He asked the New York Academy of Medicine to conduct a comprehensive study of the subject. The Academy put together a team of physicians, pharmacologists, psychologists, and sociologists.
     They studied the use and effects of cannabis in “tea pads” over 500 venues in New York City where people could purchase and smoke cannabis in a social setting. They also conducted extensive clinical experiments and administered a battery of tests to cannabis smokers.
     After five years of study, they published The LaGuardia Committee Report in 1944. It contradicted every allegation that Anslinger had made. Among its findings were that

• Smoking marijuana does not lead to addiction or to morphine, heroin, or cocaine use;
• Aggression, violence and belligerence are not common consequences of smoking marijuana; and
• Publicity concerning catastrophic effects of smoking marijuana is unfounded.

      Anslinger was furious; even more so when the American Medical Association published an editorial affirming the Commission’s work. He ultimately mobilized a successful intimidation campaign against the AMA.
     States began increasingly adopting harsh marijuana laws. In Georgia, for example, a second marijuana offense was punishable by the death penalty.
     Widespread cannabis smoking by White middle-class youth in the 1960s began to crack the political consensus, and in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that the Marihuana Tax Act was unconstitutional.
     Richard Nixon’s election campaign had successfully exploited the Southern anti-civil-rights backlash and sensationalized drug use. His administration wrote the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified cannabis as a “Schedule 1” drug. This most restrictive category is for drugs that have “no therapeutic value” and a “high potential for abuse.” Cocaine and Methamphetamine are not even considered Schedule 1 drugs.
     Nixon sought to prove marijuana’s “pandemic virulence” by creating the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, headed by Pennsylvania’s former Republican Governor Ray Shafer. After exhaustive study, the Commission concluded, “The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior.”
     It questioned the law’s constitutionality and recommended decriminalization. The findings and recommendation were consistent with Britain’s 1969 Baroness Wootten Report and Canada’s 1970 LeDain Commission Report.
     Marijuana’s Schedule 1 status usurped the FDA’s authority to determine its medical potential. In 1972, the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws legally petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration’s predecessor to reschedule cannabis, in order to permit medical research. The agency refused to even file the petition.
     On appeal, the D.C. Circuit Court ordered the DEA to file it. Therefore, the DEA denied the petition without holding the legally required hearings. Similar judicial rulings and DEA noncompliance continued through fourteen years and three appeals.
     Finally, in the summer of 1986, rescheduling hearings began before Judge Francis Young. Two years later, he ruled, “marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”  He characterized its classification as “unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious.” Nevertheless, the DEA Administrator refused to implement his ruling.
     A two-year study by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, published in 1999, reached the same conclusions that Judge Young and his predecessors had. However, the DEA denied new rescheduling petitions filed in 1995 and 2002. It has not yet acted on a 2011 petition by the Governors of Rhode Island and Washington state.
     Throughout this period, the DEA worked to obstruct and suppress medical research of cannabis, except for that which proposes to study its ill effects. Of course, such studies are all either inconclusive or end up demonstrating the opposite.
     For example, Medical College of Virginia researchers were funded to produce evidence that marijuana damages the immune system. Instead, in 1974 they discovered that cannabinoids inhibited the growth of breast cancer, lung cancer, and leukemia in mice. Inevitably, they were ordered to shut down their research. Subsequent studies in Spain, Italy, and Florida have confirmed their findings.
     While the federal government has remained intransigent, state governments have gradually relaxed penalties on marijuana possession, and a 1996 ballot measure made California the first state to legalize medical cannabis. In November 2012, Washington and Colorado fully legalized cannabis. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia now allow its medical use. This sets up a fascinating constitutional conflict between states’ and federal rights.
     Attitudes about cannabis seem to be less driven by political orientation than by how deeply one has examined the evidence. Pot smoking is often associated with the goofy Left. However, in 1981, House Speaker Newt Gingrich introduced (unsuccessful) legislation to legalize medical cannabis. In addition, conservative icon William F. Buckley wrote, “The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well meaning conservatives and countless frightened parents.”
     I sincerely don’t understand the vehement political opposition to cannabis. Perhaps it is just a rear-guard campaign in the culture wars; or perhaps there are plenty of public officials who know the truth but lack the courage to act on it.
     Upton Sinclair captured the essence of it, when the journalist and novelist, whose work is credited with motivating passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

     The problem with conspiracy theories is Occam’s razor, the principle that favors the simplest explanation that fits all the evidence. There is no conspiracy in the truth though.
     The evidence that explains how cannabis became illegal in the U.S. is ample, in plain view, and unequivocal. Rather than dots, it forms lines among a few public officials and powerful interests who had much to gain from the growth of the petroleum industry.
     In their own minds, they weren’t just protecting their business interests. They were being virtuous, but in the end, they caused incalculable harm as well.
     At the beginning of the 20th Century, cannabis was a major U.S. cash crop, prized for its long fibers, which were manufactured into high-quality cloth, paper, rope, and sails. The word canvas comes from cannabis. Widely prescribed by physicians to treat a variety of ailments, it occupied an honored position in the Western nations’ pharmacopeias, and cannabis seed oil was an essential ingredient in paints and varnishes.
     Rudolf Diesel assumed that his engine would run on cannabis-seed and other botanical oils. Henry Ford produced a Model T that burned ethanol distilled from cannabis biomass. He later built a prototype car whose light, stronger-than-steel body was made from cannabis fiber.
     Meanwhile, petroleum was a rapidly emerging industry. Price fixing, extorting railroads, and brutal labor practices enabled John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company to refine 90% of U.S. petroleum and make him the country’s richest man.
     The late 19th Century had been a time of rich experimentation in all branches of medicine. Brilliant herbalist physicians like Samuel Thomson, Benedict Lust, and Alva Curtis formed medical schools and societies.
     The modern pharmaceutical industry emerged over the same period, using compounds developed in dye making and other chemical processes. Rockefeller was a heavy investor in chemical-based drug production.
     He read Andrew Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth and was inspired in 1909 to endow the Rockefeller Foundation. Charles Eliot at the Rockefeller Foundation and Simon Flexner at the Rockefeller Institute conceived a high-profile study that would affirm drug-based medical schools and discredit others.
The Carnegie Foundation sponsored the study, and on Flexner’s recommendation, hired his brother, Abraham Flexner, to conduct it. He had no background in science or medicine, but he owned a for-profit school.
     Flexner’s work was rigorous. It concluded that there were too many doctors, too poorly trained. It advocated specific medical school entrance requirements, training periods, and curricula. It recommended greatly reducing the number of schools, and was influential with its ideologies.
     The Rockefeller foundation began making large grants to favored medical schools, while Abraham Flexner joined the Rockefeller Institute, working with others to lobby regulatory authorities and grant makers to force closure of disfavored schools.
     Meanwhile, Andrew Mellon was becoming the third richest man in America. In addition to his family’s bank, he owned Gulf Oil, Alcoa, and he invested in DuPont, the corporate giant that was developing petroleum-based products like nylon to replace natural fibers. He contributed heavily to pass the 18th Amendment, and when it was adopted in 1919, it killed the ethanol industry, which was making inroads in the fuel market. The next year he financed DuPont’s takeover of General Motors.
      Publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst’s interests intersected at several points with those of Rockefeller and Mellon. An unabashed racist, he, Rockefeller, and Mellon backed the eugenics movement. His mills, which produced paper, used in his magazines and 28 major newspapers, used DuPont chemicals.
     Cannabis produces four times the paper fiber per acre as timber and makes higher quality paper at a fraction of the energy costs; and with fewer toxins. However, Hearst owned massive timberlands, and wood pulp was adequate for newsprint.
     Trading on insider information, his father, a U.S. Senator, had bought the 850,000-acre Babicora ranch in Mexico for 20-to-40 cents per acre, and with the help of Dictator Porfirio Diaz, expanded it to a million acres. During the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa’s men raided the ranch, hid out in its forests, and indulged in their favorite relaxant, cannabis. They called it marijuana, which means “Mary Jane” in Spanish. Hearst hated Mexicans, hated their Revolution, and hated cannabis.
     In 1921, Andrew Mellon began an eleven-year term as U.S. Treasury Secretary. Within his Treasury Department, he created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1931 and appointed Harry Anslinger, his niece’s husband, to head it.
     A little later in the decade, the Department of Agriculture developed technology that lowered the costs greatly improved the efficiency of making hemp-based paper; and with alcohol again legal, Ford built a biofuel plant in Iron Mountain, Michigan.
     Critics of cannabis history raise questions regarding the extent to which Mellon invested in DuPont and the extent to which the Hearst Empire’s vertically integrated timber and mill operations satisfied its newsprint needs, but certain facts are undisputed.
     Anslinger worked quietly with Treasury Department officials to develop legislation, disguised as a revenue bill, to outlaw cannabis, and he collaborated with Hearst in an extensive propaganda campaign to demonize “marihuana.”
      As one of Hearst’s biographers wrote, he “routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures, and distorted real events.” Among them were dozens of lurid articles about marijuana-fueled murders or sexual transgressions against White women and children committed by Black and Latino “marihuana addicts.”
     Because Anslinger’s legislation was a revenue bill. the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, it did not come to Congressional committees dealing with agriculture, health, or the judiciary. It came to the Ways and Means Committee, where it was pre-wired.
     Supporting testimony consisted of Mr. Anslinger reading Hearst newspaper stories, a New Orleans District Attorney’s report that a lot of that city’s prisoners were “marihuana addicts,” and a pharmacologist expressing the opinion that continuous consumption of cannabis disintegrated one in 300 dogs’ personalities.
     The American Medical Association’s Legislative Council, who had helped draft the Uniform Narcotic Drug act, testified against the bill. Pointed out was the lack of any credible medical evidence and it was questioned why the law was developed in secret, excluding the medical community.
     The full House of Representative considered the bill at the end of a long day. Most members knew nothing about it, so some asked to delay the vote. House leaders rolled over these objections and passed it without a roll call. Most Congressmen, like most Americans, didn’t know that cannabis, hemp, and “marihuana,” were the same thing.
     That year, DuPont Corporation’s Annual Report crowed, “The revenue raising power of government may be converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization."
     The “reorganization” caused hardships for farms and businesses in the agricultural, paint, paper, textile, and other industries. The nation’s growing dependence on petroleum ultimately created intractable geopolitical and environmental problems. Cannabis was removed from the American pharmacopeia in 1942, and over the years, replaced by synthetic drugs with harmful side effects causing untold suffering.
     In many ways, the quality of medical education did improve with the implementation of the Flexner recommendations, but osteopathic, eclectic, naturopathic, and homeopathic institutions closed, and we have lost much of their clinical wisdom.
     In 1904, there had been 160 American medical schools, graduating 28,000 MDs per year. By 1935, there were only 66, graduating a little over 12,000. The sharp admission pool reduction resulted in a profession with few practitioners who weren’t white and male, and healthcare became much more expensive.
     Because of this legislation, the FBI reports that 853,838 Americans were arrested last year for cannabis-related offenses.

     Only 37% of citizens who voted in last November’s election opposed Question 3; the ballot measure that legalizes and regulates the medical use of cannabis in Massachusetts. However, officials in Wakefield and Reading have already banned treatment centers. Those in Melrose and Peabody are considering bans and politicians in Boston, Framingham, and Quincy are discussing narrow restrictions.
     Similar to voters who opposed the measure, their concerns about public health, crime, and young people’s wellbeing are sincere; although attitudes regarding cannabis seem to be much more related to the extent of one’s understanding or ignorance of the evidence than to the righteousness of one’s concerns.
     Among the claims regarding cannabis’s medicinal value that most evoke skepticism from doubters is the range of ailments for which it is efficacious: multiple sclerosis, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis C, glaucoma, cancer, depression, PTSD, osteoporosis, diabetes, nausea, eczema, Crohn’s disease, and many others.
     I understand why scoffers would see such claims as a litany of excuses for so called “patients” to legally get high. How could one plant possibly contain so many different compounds that are effective in treating so many different conditions?
     The answer is one of God’s, or evolutions, or both, if you believe as I do; awe-inspiring mysteries. It is the endocannabinoid system, which for 600 million years has existed in all animals more advanced than mollusks.
     Its purpose appears to be homeostasis; establishing and maintaining health by stabilizing the body’s internal environment in response to fluctuations in the external environment. It helps to regulate immunity, inflammation, neurotoxicity, blood pressure, body temperature, appetite, gastrointestinal functioning, bone formation, analgesia, and physical and psychological responses to stress and trauma.
     It operates through the activation of its own receptors, molecules embedded in or on a cell that receive chemical signals that direct the cell to do something. The “signal” is a molecule external to the cell called a ligand that binds to the receptor. Each ligand, like a key, can only fit into specific receptors that unlock specific responses.
     The human neurological, circulatory, digestive, endocrine, immune, and musculoskeletal systems are strewn with endocannabinoid receptors, and their ligands are cannabinoids.
     Researchers have so far identified five cannabinoids that the human body itself produces, and at least 85 that cannabis plants produce. Cannabinoids not only regulate cells, but also facilitate communication among cell types.
     For 70 years, federal policies have discouraged cannabis research. Nevertheless, scientists worldwide have published over 20,000 studies of cannabis and its medicinal properties, including 2,700 in 2009, 1,950 in 2010, and over 2,500 last year.
     Here are just a few examples of findings that, collectively, tempt one to call cannabis a “miracle drug.”
     Neuropathy is nerve damage resulting from a variety of causes, including physical trauma, diabetes, liver failure, cancer, toxins, Lyme disease, HIV, and shingles. The pain caused by neuropathy is notoriously difficult to treat. In 2010, four separate University of California studies using FDA clinical trial designs found that cannabis reduced patients’ pain to an extent as good as, or better than, currently available medications, but with less harmful side effects.
     Cannabis is efficacious in treating the cramping, inflammation, pain, diarrhea, and weight loss associated with such gastrointestinal diseases as colitis, Crohn’s disease, and irritable bowel syndrome. For example, a Mayo Clinic study involving 52 patients found that a cannabinoid relaxed the colon and reduced stomach cramps after eating.
     Cannabis is an effective anti-convulsant and anti-spasmodic. It has been used to treat epilepsy for over a thousand years. Today, numerous epileptics report that cannabis use completely eliminates their grand mal seizures.
     Its effectiveness in treating Multiple Sclerosis symptoms is very well established. One 434-day study involving 167 patents found that cannabinoids relieved spasticity, pain, and bladder incontinence, without requiring dosage increases. Recent studies suggest that cannabinoids can inhibit the progression of MS as well. This is because of cannabinoids’ capacity to stabilize the immune system.
     A growing body of clinical and preclinical studies is finding that cannabinoids can reduce the spread of specific cancer cells, both by instructing the cells to kill themselves (apoptosis) and by blocking the formation of blood cells that feed tumors (angiogenesis). Most study thus far has focused on brain and breast tumors.
     Skeptics might reasonably ask why caregivers cannot just prescribe compounds whose effects mimic those of various cannabinoids. One important reason is that cannabinoids’ effects are synergistic. That is, they interact with each other, with different receptors, and with over 100 terpenoids and 20 flavonoids found in cannabis to create effects that are greater and different than the sum of their parts. Science is still far from fully understanding these interactions.
     A second reason is safety. “Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” I’m quoting the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former Administrative Law Judge, Francis J. Young.
     Consider, for example, that at least seven cannabinoids are known to reduce inflammation, and while at least 16,500 Americans die each year from taking anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin, Advil, Motrin, and Tylenol; the World Health Organization says that no death has ever resulted from a cannabis overdose.
     Physicians have been using cannabis effectively for 5,000 years. Cannabis cultivators like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson extolled the plant’s many virtues.
     After extensive study of Indian medical literature and clinical practice, Dr. William B. Shaunessy introduced cannabis to the West’s modern pharmacopeia in 1839. Queen Victoria’s doctor prescribed cannabis to treat her menstrual cramps. He wrote that it was, “by far the most useful of drugs” in treating migraine, neuralgia, convulsions, and insomnia.
     When it was made illegal in 1939, cannabis was the active ingredient in dozens of medicines marketed by Merck, Eli Lilly, Parke Davis, and other pharmaceutical companies.
     So how did a plant that provides such exceptional benefits to humankind come to be so reviled and illegal? How did those who use, grow, and sell it come to be despised and imprisoned? Watch for part two of this article to find out.

     Events in celebration of April 20th, cannabis day, have become widespread. From bong circles in dorm rooms and cultural celebrations to smoke-outs in city parks, four-twenty parties are eagerly planned across the country. Though well-known and widely-celebrated, four-twenty is often stigmatized and stereotyped as a “stoner” holiday.  It is undeniably a day to celebrate marijuana by enjoying it, but it is more than just an excuse to light up. The popular celebration of four-twenty and cannabis culture in general, is blatantly dismissive of U.S. policy.
     As smokers nationwide celebrated their cannabis use, the Obama Administration was amid a historic crackdown on voter-approved medical marijuana programs. To tip the scales a little, a recent Gallup poll showed that, for the first time, 50% of Americans support cannabis legalization. Nonetheless, 46% of drug arrests are related to marijuana possession; and pot arrestees are disproportionately people of color.  In many states, a cannabis arrest can result in the removal of children from parents, the inability to receive federal aid for school, and jail time. Four-twenty, a celebration of marijuana despite the federal government’s staunch position on the plant, represents mass non-compliance with our country's absurd prohibition laws.  
     Ditching cannabis prohibition would save $7.7 billion on state and federal expenditures, and taxing marijuana like alcohol or tobacco could generate an additional $6.2 billion in revenue, totaling $13.7 billion annually. The economic potential of legalization recently led three hundred economists to sign an open letter to the President, Congress, Governors, and State Legislators asking they allow America “to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition.”   
     On top of everything else, legalizing pot could help ease devastating violence in Latin America. In Mexico alone, 50,000 people have lost their lives to the drug war in the past five years. As experts routinely profess, legalizing marijuana alone could save thousands of lives in Mexico. But while Latin American leaders urge the U.S. to consider drug policy alternatives, including legalization, the Obama Administration refuses to implement reform at home or abroad.
     Four-twenty thus, is a cultural reminder of the vast disparity between marijuana laws and reality. It is a evidence that, despite 40 years of a disastrous war on drugs, people, including Obama, continue to experiment with, and safely enjoy, cannabis.

     Last year, over 850k people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rights experts all moving in favor of relaxing cannabis prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy.
     There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past.
     However, there are entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to keep our broken drug laws on the books:

1.) Police Unions: Police departments across the country have become dependent on federal drug war grants to finance their budget. A police union lobbyist in California coordinated the effort to defeat Prop 19, a ballot measure in 2010 to legalize cannabis, while helping his police department clients collect tens of millions in federal marijuana-eradication grants. And it’s not just in California. Federal lobbying disclosures show that other police union lobbyists have pushed for stiffer penalties for marijuana-related crimes nationwide.

2.) Private Prison Corporations: Private prison corporations make millions by incarcerating people who have been imprisoned for drug crimes, including marijuana. Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies, revealed in a regulatory filing that continuing the drug war is part in parcel to their business strategy. Prison companies have spent millions bankrolling pro-drug war politicians and have used secretive front groups, like the American Legislative Exchange Council, to pass harsh sentencing requirements for drug crimes.

3.) Alcohol and Beer Companies: Fearing competition for the dollars Americans spend on leisure, alcohol and tobacco interests have lobbied to keep cannabis out of reach. For instance, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors contributed campaign contributions to a committee set up to prevent marijuana from being legalized and taxed.

4.) Pharmaceutical Corporations: Like the sin industries listed above, pharmaceutical interests would like to keep cannabis illegal so Americans don’t have the option of cheap medical alternatives to their products. Howard Wooldridge, a retired police officer who now lobbies the government to relax marijuana prohibition laws, reported that next to police unions, the “second biggest opponent on Capitol Hill is big Pharma” because cannabis can replace “everything from Advil to Vicodin and other expensive pills.”

5.) Prison Guard Unions: Prison guard unions have a vested interest in keeping people behind bars just like for-profit prison companies. In 2008, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent a whopping $1 million to defeat a measure that would have “reduced sentences and parole times for nonviolent drug offenders while emphasizing drug treatment over prison.

     The government of Columbia pushed on Saturday for the most far-reaching change to policy on drugs since US president Richard Nixon declared war on narcotics four decades ago.
     Hosting the sixth Summit of the Americas, for which 33 leaders of the hemisphere's 35 nations – including President Barack Obama, had assembled in Cartagena. President Juan Manuel Santos proposed the establishment of a taskforce of experts, economists, and academics to analyze the realities of global drug addiction, trafficking, and profiteering, with a view to a complete overhaul of strategy.
     Santos's close aide and ambassador to London, Mauricio Rodríguez, said the outcome "could mean anything from blanket legalization to a new and different war on drugs. We just do not know until we have the data, investigate every option with open minds, and have the full picture drawn up by experts who know the terrain, and are not motivated by interests, ideology, or emotion. Whatever it is, it must be real change, based upon new paradigms.
     He added: "Why is Colombia leading this? Because we learned the hard way, and we have the moral authority; In the 1980s we failed to face the reality, and as a result our society was taken to the brink and almost destroyed by violence and the drug cartels. And we do not want other places, in Central America or Africa, to go through the pain we went through. They, and all of us, have to act fast, because the many-headed monster grows very fast and destroys very fast.”
     "For so many years it has been easy for politicians to blame drug-producing nations like Colombia for poisoning their lovely kids. And the result has been a stigma on Colombia. But that game, that farce, is now over. We are not pointing any fingers, and Colombia will not act unilaterally. But we are saying that there is a shared responsibility between consuming and producing nations who must all now co-operate on a global scale to stop the scourge of drugs in our societies."
     Rodríguez cited a recent debate broadcast on Google and YouTube by the London-based organization, Intelligence Squared as having “demonstrated why we have got nowhere: emotion, insults, and celebrities.”
     He said the taskforce urged by the Colombians “needs to be made up of real experts: people who know the realities of drugs, the sociology and anthropology of drugs, the economics of drugs, and the trafficking and laundering routes; and people who know what drugs do on the ground.”
     The body would “look at the social issues, the reasons why people take drugs: poverty, social breakdown, abuse, and dysfunction.”
     Talking about the Colombian city of Medellín, once the drug murder capital of the world and now regenerated, Rodríguez said: "We need to look at the kinds of social urbanism that we applied to Medellín, which can isolate the criminals and give people other things to do with their lives, rather than resort to drugs."
     Last week Colombia announced the results of research which shows that only 5% of profits from Colombia's drug trade remain in the country. Hundreds of billions of dollars of drug money finds its way, said Rodríguez, into "the distribution networks in the consuming countries, and the international banking system.”

     The "real value of the drugs,” said the ambassador, "is not added in the countries of production, but once the product is moved; mainly to the US and Europe. And it is therefore clear that more must be done to fight international money-laundering of drug profits by the banking community."