PART 1 - in this Multi-Issue FEATURE

Our country seems polarized, as with many other topics, on the legalization of marijuana. Over the next couple of SLV issues, we are going to explore cannabis, and give you some additional and possibly new and unique information about the plant and its many uses, so you can reach your own conclusions.

Statistic reports show that between 340,000 and 350,000 people die each year from tobacco. Another 150,000 die from alcohol consumption, not counting auto accidents related to alcohol. It appears very hard to find any deaths due to overdosing on marijuana. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded: “A careful search of the literature and testimony of the nation’s health officials has not revealed a single human fatality in the United States proven to have resulted solely from ingestion of marijuana. Experiments with the drug in monkeys demonstrated that the dose required to cause an overdose death was enormous, and for all practical purposes, unachievable by humans smoking marijuana. This is in marked contrast to other substances in common use, most notably alcohol and barbiturate sleeping pills.”

In the upcoming issue, we interview a grower and learn the secrets of how to grow and produce a high-quality, high-yield production of buds. We’ll inform you how to acquire the Medical Marijuana License here in Nevada. We’ll also explore cooking with cannabis, using recipes, and the difference between ingestion and smoking. The history of the cannabis plant is very interesting and will make you think about the future possibilities for use, medically, and also materially, with the use of hemp.

Grass, weed, pot, reefer, Mary Jane, bud and kush are all well-known names for marijuana that comes from the cannabis plant. There are many discussions about legalizing the drug and what the future of cannabis will bring. Will the government or large companies like Phillip Morris take over the whole industry and then tax it like they do cigarettes? In Northern California, known as the Emerald Triangle, producers are growing high-quality weed with THC levels (tetrahydrocannabinol: the primary active chemical in pot) of 20%. California’s annual weed industry is estimated to be around $14 billion. You don’t have to be a math expert to realize what kind of taxes that could generate.

Exploring medical marijuana and the laws of cannabis, is a little murky, at best. But things are definitely changing across our country. California’s Proposition 215 allows for the possession and cultivation of marijuana, but not the distribution or sale of it. In all fourteen states that now have legalized medical marijuana, the laws leave a huge amount of gray area that leave patients, caregivers, and dispensaries tiptoeing through a legal maze. Fourteen more states have put forth some form of legislation to do the same thing. Massachusetts decriminalized recreational marijuana last year, with only a $100 fine for possessing up to one ounce. In California alone, there are over three-hundred thousand and some say over four-hundred thousand medical marijuana users. A doctor can only recommend that a patient would benefit from using marijuana. They cannot prescribe it or dispense it. But California has 2100 dispensaries. That’s more than California’s Starbucks, McDonald’s and 711’s combined. Thousands of patients visit dispensaries everyday in California. You might only surmise that they are not all in constant pain. Last year, a new restaurant called Ganja Gourmet opened in Denver, Colorado, another state that has made medical marijuana legal. On the menu is “Pot Pot Pie”, “Panama Red” Pizza, Garlic Hummus with medicated olive oil, and of course, Brownies and other sweets made with Medicinal Ganja Butter.

2001 brought about Nevada’s law that allows medical patients with a Nevada Medical Marijuana License to use, grow, and possess 1 oz. of cannabis. You are allowed to grow seven plants. You can also appoint one person as a “caregiver”, to grow plants for you. Their services are, of course free, as no money can change hands. In order to qualify for the program, a patient must have a medical condition with the symptoms of chronic pain, nausea, muscle spasms or seizures. A medical marijuana card affords you full legal protection under the state’s medical marijuana laws. There is also a marijuana tax stamp law enacted which mandates that if you possess marijuana, legally you are required to purchase and affix a state-issued stamp on your contraband. If you don’t have a medical marijuana card, you are breaking not only the federal law, but the state law as well, and are subject to very harsh penalties. The federal government does not recognize medical marijuana. Nevada or any other state still can’t keep the Drug Enforcement Agency, (DEA) from doing federal law enforcement raids.

Cannabis was used as a painkiller from ancient times through the Nineteenth Century. As morphine became more popular, marijuana use as an analgesic declined. Marijuana has proved to be a valuable aid and treatment for nausea, pain relief, glaucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Tourette’s syndrome, asthma, migraines, morning sickness, childbirth, degenerative disk disease, back problems and appetite loss suffered with AIDS. It is highly effective as an antinauseant for cancer chemotherapy.

The Cannabis plant has been around since the beginning of time. It is thought to have originated in a region just north of the Himalayan Mountains. The Chinese culture has grown and used the Cannabis plant for thousands of years. In 6000 B.C., the Chinese used the seeds for food, and by 2727 B.C., it was documented that they used it as medication for health issues. They later grew the plant on a large scale for food and fiber. Between 900 and 1200, the use of marijuana had spread throughout the Arabic world. Smoking it became very popular among the Muslims, who are not permitted to drink alcohol. Christopher Columbus brought Cannabis Sativa to America in 1492, and here in the U.S., as well as other parts of the world, over the years it has been made illegal. Total prohibition started in France with Napoleon in 1798, when his soldiers returned from war. Completely opposite, in 1619 here in the U.S., there was a law “ordering” all farmers to grow the hemp plant. Over the next 200 years there were even more “must grow” laws. You could even be jailed for not growing hemp. It was considered an extremely important crop, because hemp was used for sails, canvas, cloth and ropes. In 1797, George Washington grew hemp as his primary crop at Mount Vernon, as did Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Hemp was allowed to be exchanged for legal tender in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. You could even pay your taxes with hemp. In the 1840’s, medicines and tonics with a cannabis base became popular products and sold at U.S. public pharmacies. Then in the early 1900’s, certain states began passing anti-marijuana laws. Utah, California, Texas, Louisiana and New York all jumped on the bandwagon, prohibiting it for nonmedical use.

Some historians say that Prohibition brought on the resurgence of marijuana. In the 1920’s, jazz musicians and people in the entertainment business went to marijuana clubs located in large cities. As jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago, and then on to Harlem, marijuana became part of the music scene, with hit R&B songs such as Louis Armstrong’s “Muggles”, Cab Calloway’s “That Funny Reefer Man” and Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag”. Then in 1930, Harry J. Anslinger became the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He declared a full-out war on drugs and reshaped America’s views on marijuana. Anslinger talked about wild reefer-madness-style tales of ax murderers high on marijuana. He said: “Most marijuana smokers in the U.S. were Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use.” He was also credited with saying: “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” Anslinger held his position until 1962. William Randolf Hearst, owner of the Hearst chain of newspapers, had heavily invested in the timber industry to help with the cost of his newspapers. He didn’t want to have hemp paper as competition. Dupont chemical company joined with Hearst and Anslinger to help outlaw cannabis. If people could grow their own medicine, thought Dupont, they would have no reason to purchase it from their company.  

In 1928, England banned marijuana, and in 1934, the Chinese government ended all cannabis cultivation. 1936 brought about the propaganda film “Reefer Madness”. The film stated that smoking marijuana would cause insanity. In 1937, cannabis was made illegal all across the United States with the Marijuana Tax Act. But, while it was illegal, the government used it as an effective truth drug during World War II. In 1943, the intelligence agency used it on gangster Lucky Luciano’s enforcer, Augusto Del Gracio. Del Gracio was supposedly given cigarettes spiked with THC from cannabis, and then he talked very openly about Luciano’s heroin operation. On the second inquiry he was said to have passed out for two hours.

In the late 40’s to early 50’s, the beat generation came about. They were mostly college-aged whites that were against the establishment. Marijuana became a large part of their subculture, as they smoked it at local jazz clubs. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were the popular beat poets of this period that experimented with reefer during this pre-sixties movement. When the 1960’s hit, an estimated 1 million Americans had tried marijuana. As the counterculture movement grew, and with events like Woodstock, by 1972 that number had reached approximately 24 million. Groups like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix were popular during this time and smoking marijuana had quickly become a staple of the hippie-culture. It has been said that “Hippies went to India and Afghanistan and smuggled out seeds up their asses to bring them here to the U.S.”

By 1970, some college campuses were reporting, that over seventy percent of the student body, were users of marijuana. It was widely used in Vietnam and was very popular with many soldiers. The use spread to Wall Street, and even the young professionals that worked there were now using. Then in 1972, President Nixon developed the Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA was given permission to enter homes without knocking, use wiretaps, and gather intelligence on anyone. From 1937 to 1947, the government spent $220 million on the war on drugs. Between 1948 and 1963, it had escalated to $1.5 billion, and then up to $9 billion by 1969. Since 1970, it is estimated that over $2 trillion of our tax dollars has been spent waging this drug war. In 2008, a Harvard economist estimated that legalizing drugs would pump $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy. Certain economists are now suggesting that we reform our drug policy and legalize marijuana.

In 1988 Judge Francis Young, after a thorough hearing that showed marijuana was clearly effective for “medical use” and should be reclassified as a prescriptive drug, he ruled: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known…It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance.” His recommendation was ignored.

In 1996 California passed Proposition 215 that allowed the sale and medical use of marijuana for patients suffering from cancer, AIDS, and other painful diseases. Federal law still prohibits possessing marijuana. Today Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have joined California in passing medical marijuana laws. In June 2003, Canada began to offer medical marijuana to their patients, but the United States Federal Government has remained unchanged. However in October of 2003, the U.S. government patented medical marijuana under U.S. Patent 6630507 through the Dept. of Health and Human Services. What does that indicate to you? SLV

Issue 52 featuring: Alexis Ford, Kimberly, Gia Jordan and Kagney Linn Karter