Posted on 08/26/2002 10:29:03 AM PDT by Willie Green
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:40:49 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
America's war on drugs is roiling the small but growing industrial hemp business, throwing the industry's customers into doubt and confusion. It is also causing something of an international flap.
Caught in the middle is John Roulac, a Sebastopol businessman, who says he has found himself enmeshed in a Kafkaesque tale of circular logic and rigid, incomprehensible bureaucracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
All dried-up businesses should have that kind of growth.
All posters should actually *read* what it is they post so as to not make asses of themselves.
Back up the link one level, and find the page with the raw data on the figures for fiber imports from 1995-1999, and you'll see just how "honest" their conclusions on market demand are. Also note that the figures for 1999 are only from Jan-Sept, and that the entire report is only concerned with hemp fiber. It states at the top of the pages with the import figures that there is no data available for hemp seed or hemp seed oil imports.
Let's just say that I'm not a pot-smoking paranoid market anarchist and let it go at that.
Hmmm. Well, now that you mention it, I'd have to go back and look through some past threads to be sure but I can say I don't recall vehemently disagreeing with him.
But then, I don't recall what I had for breakfast.
You do realize that marijuana is safer and far less addictive than alcohol. I fail to see why alcohol abuse is ok, but some marijuana abuse is not, especially when the latter is safer.
Not true.
Alcohol is a food with nutritional value.
Unlike cannabis, it can be consumed in moderation with no adverse affects.
Cannabis, OTOH, is consumed soley for the purpose of degrading cognitive abilities.
You're getting rather far afield, unless there's proof that hemp seed oil and other hemp products are addictive at all. Therein lies the absurdity of this story a "slippery slope" argument can be made for medical marijuana, but the items discussed in this article contain only miniscule amounts of THC. Since there's no psychoactive effect, the efforts to stop hemp products are just a waste of the government's time and money (aka our money).
I didn't bring up the abuse arguement, I was merely responding to it. Therefore, I didn't put it 'far afield'
Totally a false statement. You can digest marijuana with low THC with little to no adverse side effects. However you completely IGNORE the fact that 99% of alcohol consumption is NOT for 'nutritional value', it is for getting anywhere from a very slight buzz to full scale drunkeness.
Comparing Addictive Qualities of Popular Drugs (Higher score indicates more serious effect) |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Drug | Dependence | Withdrawal | Tolerance | Reinforcement | Intoxication |
Nicotine | 6 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
Heroin | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
Cocaine | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
Alcohol | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 6 |
Caffeine | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Marijuana | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Withdrawal: Presence and severity of characteristic withdrawal symptoms.
Reinforcement: A measure of the substance's ability, in human and animal tests, to get users to take it again and again, and in preference to other substances.
Tolerance: How much of the substance is needed to satisfy increasing cravings for it, and the level of stable need that is eventually reached.
Dependence: How difficult it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm.
Intoxication: Though not usually counted as a measure of addiction in itself, the level of intoxication is associated with addiction and increases the personal and social damage a substance may do.
Source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 "Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use."
An exhaustive search of the literature finds no deaths induced by marijuana. The US Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) records instances of drug mentions in medical examiners' reports, and though marijuana is mentioned, it is usually in combination with alcohol or other drugs. Marijuana alone has not been shown to cause an overdose death.
Source: Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), available on the web at http://www.samhsa.gov/; also see Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and John A. Benson, Jr., "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), available on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/marimed/; and US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition" (Docket #86-22), September 6, 1988, p. 57.
A John Hopkins study published in May 1999, examined marijuana's effects on cognition on 1,318 participants over a 15 year period. Researchers reported "no significant differences in cognitive decline between heavy users, light users, and nonusers of cannabis." They also found "no male-female differences in cognitive decline in relation to cannabis use." "These results ... seem to provide strong evidence of the absence of a long-term residual effect of cannabis use on cognition," they concluded.
Source: Constantine G. Lyketsos, Elizabeth Garrett, Kung-Yee Liang, and James C. Anthony. (1999). "Cannabis Use and Cognitive Decline in Persons under 65 Years of Age," American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 149, No. 9.
The DEA's Administrative Law Judge, Francis Young concluded: "In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.:
Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," [Docket #86-22], (September 6, 1988), p. 57.
When examining the medical affects of marijuana use, the National Commission on Marihuana 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 marihuana. Experiments with the drug in monkeys demonstrated that the dose required for overdose death was enormous and for all practical purposes unachievable by humans smoking marihuana. This is in marked contrast to other substances in common use, most notably alcohol and barbiturate sleeping pills. The WHO reached the same conclusion in 1995.
Source: Shafer, Raymond P., et al, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Ch. III, (Washington DC: National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972); Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use, August 28, 1995, (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, March 1998).
The World Health Organization released a study in March 1998 that states: "there are good reasons for saying that [the risks from cannabis] would be unlikely to seriously [compare to] the public health risks of alcohol and tobacco even if as many people used cannabis as now drink alcohol or smoke tobacco."
Source: Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use, August 28, 1995, (contained in original version, but deleted from official version) (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, March 1998).
And of course we have the sheer stupidity of how marijuana became illegal in the first place.
What do you mean here? As has already been pointed out, it would destroy a marijuana crop to plant it near industrial hemp. So what kind of smokescreen are you talking about?
Because there are always those who must, for some reason we can't understand, rise up and save us from ourselves.
Legalized hemp as a smokescreen for legalizing dope.
But you knew that.
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