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ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Farmers from North Dakota and Vermont and four others trying to plant hemp seeds at the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration have been arrested. Arlington County police spokeswoman Detective Crystal Nosal says six people were charged with trespassing on Tuesday. They were among 21 people protesting the ban on farming of hemp, which is related to the illegal drug marijuana. The Hemp Industries Association says the protesters turned to civil disobedience for the first time. The group is lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill. They want to grow hemp for non-drug products. North Dakota farmer Wayne...

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist and perennial third-party presidential candidate. He has now added a new title to his business card: fiction writer. His latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue — pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully...

Personally, I am thankful to providence for bestowing Woody Harrelson, zombie fighter, unto this earth to defend us all from those wayward and dangerous zombie paparazzi. Why, we'd be overrun with the shuffling menaces were it not for the brave and selfless actions of Woody Harrelson, zombie fighter! It is my pleasure to recount Captain Zombie Killer's latest epic struggle with the flesh eating, undead from last week. It seems that a zombie paparazzi was about to attack an entire airport full of innocent folks until Captain Zombie Killer stepped in to save us yet again. Of course, there was...

Paul, Frank introduce bill to legalize hemp @ 2:04 pm by Eric Zimmermann An unlikely duo has teamed up to legalize hemp. Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have introduced legislation to exclude "industrial hemp" from the definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act. (h/t Washington Independent). Introducing the legislation, Paul said: It is unfortunate that the Federal Government has stood in the way of American farmers, including many who are struggling to make ends meet, competing in the global industrial hemp market. Indeed, the founders of our Nation, some of whom grew hemp, would surely...

A jury sentenced a Lakeview man to 10 years in prison for growing nearly 7,500 marijuana plants. Andrew Stever, 40, was sentenced on Monday after a three-day trial in the Federal District Court in Medford.Ten years is the mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of growing 1,000 or more pot plants. In July 2007, officers from several local, state and federal agencies found 7,459 plants growing on Stever's Lakeview property, which bordered Forest Service land. Two men fled the scene, leaving behind personal property and three firearms, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Portland. Physical evidence and testimony linked...

It used to be that marijuana came to the Bay Area from the legendary back country of Humboldt County or the desert fields beyond Tijuana. Now the fields are in the Bay Area, and everywhere else in the state. Marijuana is one of the top cash crops in California, NBC Bay Area's Mike Luery reported. Many of the fields are located next to popular trails and in the middle of state parks. A fierce battle is being waged in our own back yard to remove the pot groves. They are hidden in brush so thick that specially trained officers must...

AMHERST, Massachusetts — With gas and oil prices at an all-time high, the alternative solution for residents throughout Amherst and the country for energy is hemp. Gas prices recently broke the $3-a-gallon mark for the first time in the region, which has drivers and residents who rely on gas for their cars as well as oil for heat struggling. The thought of hemp production as a cheap alternative to oil and gas is appealing because it can be converted to “biomass” that is in turn converted to energy. “Biomass can be converted to methane, methanol, or gasoline at a fraction...

Long before we are extinguished by global food shortages or raised sea levels, I predict, we are fated to die of boredom, struck down in our prime by the devastating virus 0157eco-smugness. Doctors will be powerless to stop as the bug invades our minds, causing nervous paralysis leading to eventual seizure. We are doomed, for sure, to terminal ennui brought on by environmental righteousness. This is the terrible paradox of the environmental movement. The paradox that, if society proceeds down the true path of eco-purity, we may well save the planet; but will simultaneously discover that life is too dull...

A Federal judge has dropped charges against a Lisbon man after his lawyer successfully argued that the marijuana authorities seized on his Keystone Road property was actually wild hemp. 52-year-old Patrick Green was arrested in August and accused of having nearly 900 marijuana plants and pot being prepared for sale in his barn on Keystone Road. Authorities said they were tipped off to Green’s activities by parents of youths who may have been involved in the drug activities. Green’s lawyer Melissa Tuohey argued that the plants were hemp and not marijuana, and were growing in an area known to have...

State field director predicts second, even first in Iowa It seems like when we're young, we like to break a few rules.  Staying out a little too late, sneaking a drink before that official legal age, or backing a candidate who's outside the established mold (YEEEEEAH!) Several of those dynamics were on display Saturday at Olive Court, a notoriously wild tailgate spot three blocks from Iowa City's Kinnick Stadium.  It was here, just a year ago, that John Kerry was infamously photographed with a beer bong.  And into the anarchy marched the Ron Paul revolution. Ron Paul wasn't imbibing...

You know those self-righteous, college-going hippies who smugly inform you that they purchase Noam Chomsky books and Che Guevara T-shirts as a form of rebellion against commerce and American consumption? This video provides some insight into that mentality.

Pakalanalani (Heavenly Plant), as she calls herself, checks out the bright sunshine falling on Hempfest in Myrtle Edwards Park Saturday morning. The forecast called for rain but the day started bright and sunny.

The festival Vivian McPeak and Gary Cooke visualized from day one was something like Woodstock, but their event had hundreds of thousands of people packed in a Seattle park celebrating a green leafy substance. Even some of their friends thought the idea of a big party pushing for reform of anti-marijuana laws was half-baked. "When we told people 15 years ago there would be 150,000 people coming to a protest festival with 60 bands from around the country all playing for free and the cops would smile, they didn't think it could happen," McPeak said. "It defied conventional wisdom."

If you are at all familiar with the Chronicle’s Reefer Madness columns, then I guess you’ve probably figured out that I am a total hemp nut. Yes, it’s true; I’m crazy for the stuff. I’ve got hemp clothing that wears better than any cotton competitor; I’ve got hemp lotion, which is great and non-greasy – an important quality when you live in hot-as-the-sun-itself Texas; I use hemp oil in my cooking, and sprinkle hemp nut – quite liberally – on almost everything I eat. Given my affection for all things hemp, you can imagine how pleased I was to get...

The New Hampshire House voted Thursday to allow farmers to grow hemp - a close relative of marijuana - despite federal hurdles to planting the controversial crop. Supporters pointed out that hemp, which has a very low content of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, has unfairly been characterized as the same as marijuana. "You don't smoke hemp. A wheelbarrow full would only make you sick," insisted Hopkinton Democrat Derek Owen. "Hemp is one of the oldest and most useful and strongest natural plants known to man," he told the House. Peterborough Republican Andrew Peterson spoke briefly against the bill,...

BISMARK, N.D. (AP)-North Dakota issued the nation's first licenses to grow industrial hemp Tuesday to two farmers who still must meed federal requirements before they can plant the crop.The farmers must get approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration, which treats hemp much the way it does marijuana and has not allowed commercial hemp production but has said it would consider applications to grow it.

BISMARCK, N.D. - David Monson began pushing the idea of growing industrial hemp in the United States a decade ago. Now his goal may be within reach — but first he needs to be fingerprinted. Monson plans this week to apply to become the nation's first licensed industrial hemp farmer. He will have to provide two sets of fingerprints and proof that he's not a criminal. The farmer, school superintendent and state legislator would like to start by growing 10 acres of the crop, and he spent part of his weekend staking out the field he wants to use. "I'm...

Sept. 18, 2006, 3:14PM Willie Nelson cited for marijuana in Louisiana Associated Press LAFAYETTE, La. — Willie Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after a traffic stop this morning on a Louisiana highway, state police said. The citations were issued after a commercial vehicle inspection of the country music star's tour bus, state police said in a news release. "When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana," the news release said. A search of the bus produced 1...

Biodiesel can be made from domestically produced, renewable oilseed crops such as hemp. With over 30 million successful U.S. road miles hemp boidiesel could be the answer to our cry for cheaper fuel. We have spent the last century polluting our beautiful country with our petroleum based fuels that could have easily been replaced with fuels derived from hemp. It would only take 6% of our U.S. land to produce enough hemp, for hemp fuel, to make us energy independent from the rest of the world. Help us teach America the truth. Make yourself a human billboard that speaks only...

Providence, R.I. (AP) -- Rhode Island on Tuesday became the 11th state to legalize medical marijuana and the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that patients who use the drug can still be prosecuted under federal law. The House overrode a veto by Gov. Don Carcieri, 59-13, allowing people with illnesses such as cancer and AIDS to grow up to 12 marijuana plants or buy 2.5 ounces of marijuana to relieve their symptoms. Those who do are required to register with the state and get an identification card. Federal law prohibits any use of marijuana, but Maine,...

ST. LOUIS, Dec. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- On Monday, Dec. 12, lawyers Bruce Ellison and David Frankel representing Alex White Plume and his family of the Lakota Nation who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation, made oral arguments in the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in front of a three judge panel to reverse efforts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to place an injunction preventing the White Plumes from growing industrial hemp. In what has been deemed a sovereignty case that is very uniquely framed, the White Plumes planted industrial hemp on their family land for three...

While police continue to sweep heroin and crack fiends from the Boston Common and Public Garden, Mayor Thomas M. Menino is preparing to launch an anti-litter campaign for all the city's parks. Even with police trying to shut down the startling open-air drug abuse in and around the two premier greenspaces, some of it observed in broad daylight by the Herald in recent weeks, Menino said it was the right time to launch the litter crusade. Cleaner parks might discourage drug abuse, he said. ``Cleaning the parks sends a message that we're not going to tolerate it,'' he said yesterday....

The history of cannabis, rather like the substance itself, has the capacity to be either strangely illuminating or just plain confusing. On the one hand, it throws up some odd conundrums: why is it that today's illicit drug of choice for millions, when it was legally available in 19th-century Europe and America, was used recreationally by only a small, self-conscious bohemian elite? On the other hand, it offers plausible insights into some aspects of the modern debate. The controversy over its medical use is a prime example. Cannabis was widely used as a tincture and patent medicine in the Victorian...

NEWS ADVISORY U.S. Newswire / Medialink Worldwide 6/27/2005 10:15:00 AM Contact: Adam Eidinger, 202-744-2671 or adam@mintwood.com WASHINGTON, June 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- For the first time since the federal government outlawed hemp farming in the United States, a federal bill has been introduced that would remove restrictions on the cultivation of non-psychoactive Industrial Hemp. At a Capitol Hill lunch on June 23 to mark the introduction of H.R. 3037, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005, about 100 congressional staff feasted on Bahama Hempnut Crusted Wild Salmon and Fuji Fennel Hempseed Salad. The five course gourmet hemp meal was prepared...

Michigan Lawmaker Seeks Hemp Candy Ban Pot Suckers Called Drug 'Stepping Stone' A Lenawee County state legislator wants a ban enacted on all candy products containing hemp or hemp flavoring. Dudley Spade ( D., Tipton ) introduced his legislation last week after learning that 19 Spencer Gifts shops in Michigan are selling hemp-flavored lollipops called Pot Suckers. "We should not have these out and available for kids to acquire these kinds of tastes. I'm concerned it could be a stepping stone to smoking marijuana," Mr. Spade said. "I think it's ridiculous," said Steven Trachtenberg, president of ICUP Inc., the Trenton,...

Raspberry, butterscotch, sour apple . . . and pot? Marijuana-flavored lollipops may seem an unlikely product, but sugary treats with weed-inspired flavors such as Purple Haze, Acapulco Gold and Rasta are appearing on the shelves of convenience stores and smoke shops nationwide. Marketers call them a harmless novelty. Anti-drug advocates say the candies encourage people, particularly teens and young children, to smoke pot. "This kind of thing is reprehensible," said state Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta lawmaker who has organized demonstrations against the candy. "It's nothing but dope candy, and that's nothing we need to be training our children to...

And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land. -- Ezekiel 34/29 THE REAL REASON CANNABIS HAS BEEN OUTLAWED HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ITS EFFECTS ON THE MIND AND BODY. MARIJUANA is DANGEROUS. Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the...

ELIZABETH LARA / HERALD NEWSJessica Shapiro hold sa picture of her late fianceé, Sean McGrath, lighting up a joint in the hospital during his two-year battle with cancer. Sean McGrath was 28 years old when he died. He would have been younger, his family says, had he not smoked marijuana for much of his two-year battle with biliary cancer, the illness that ravaged his digestive system and eventually killed him."Unless he was sleeping, he was nauseous," says Jessica Shapiro, Sean's fianceé, who began dating him shortly after the two graduated from high school in Hamilton.Within four months of Sean's...

http://www.drlwilson.com/articles/hemp.htm THE TRUTH ABOUT HEMP Recently, a store opened in town that sells hemp clothing. I wandered in one day and began talking to the owner. I was amazed to learn about the hemp plant, which is not the same as marijuana. The hemp plant is an amazing example of nature's blessings. No other plant can produce clean fuel, medicine, high-quality protein, a superb edible oil, lubricating and fuel oils, plastics, building material, clothing and paper. It requires no pesticides, grows almost anywhere on marginal soil, prevents soil erosion, and can be grown on the same land year after year....

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration said Wednesday it will impose new limits on imports of clothing from China. The action follows complaints that a surge of Chinese apparel to the United States was hurting U.S. companies. The administration will restrict a number of items that China can ship to the United States: men's and boys cotton and man-made fiber shirts, man-made fiber trousers, man-made fiber knit shirts and blouses and combed cotton yarn that China. American retailers are concerned that the move will raise the prices of these goods for U.S. consumers. The government committee, led by the Commerce...

Hi conservatives, just wan't to say that I'm sure most of you have a narrow news fed view of the cannabis plant and the people who enjoy the fruits of this blessed plant that GOD made, not the U.S. Government, so as I sit here jonesin for some weed, I wanted to say thank you so much for letting me know how lame it is to be without, because of your support and lack of voice against oppression in this country, people worse off than me suffer, in prison, a wheelchair, or on their deathbeds. But I will admit an...

AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE 12-05-04 To those who support our constitutionally limited “Republican Form of Government“, Raich v. Ashcroft is not about “medical Marijuana” but rather, the case presents a chance to correct a despotic decision made by the SCOTUS in 1942 concerning Congress’ power to regulate commerce in which the Court gave a new meaning to the word “commerce” in order to allow part of FDR’s NEW DEAL socialism [price controls] to pass as being constitutional, when it was not. The following article is worth reading, and can be found at findlaw.com.The Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument on a...

A CHANGE IN MARIJUANA PROSECUTION EYED Chicago Considers Bid To Issue Fines In Certain Cases CHICAGO -- Mayor Richard M. Daley has endorsed a proposal to issue fines for possession of small amounts of marijuana rather than clog the courts with cases that tend to be thrown out by judges. Daley said the volume of marijuana cases that are tossed out by local courts -- upwards of 90 percent, according to one recent study -- mean minor possession is virtually decriminalized in Chicago now. "If 99 percent of the cases are thrown out, when is there a credible arrest for...

Few Americans typically give much thought to the $200 million hemp industry: a $200 million market that includes such wide-ranging products as bread, clothing and soap. But this week hemp producers are getting a powerful marketing boost from an unlikely source—the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Nearly two and a half years ago, the put a chill into the hemp marketplace by interpreting the definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act to include hemp food products. Their logic was that ingestible hemp contained THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and therefore was a Schedule 1 controlled substance, just like marijuana. Never mind that hemp...

Student Pulled from Class for Wearing Hempstead Shirt ATLANTA -- The town of Hempstead, New York, has a message for school officials in Gwinnett (gwih-NET') County, Georgia: Look at a map. That's after a student at a suburban Atlanta high school was thrown out of class for wearing a shirt that said Hempstead on it. Hempstead is the name of his hometown. But school officials apparently thought it was a reference to marijuana. His family says Terrell Jones was pulled out of class at Grayson High School Monday -- and wasn't allowed to return until he persuaded school officials to...

AFP , IECAVA, LATVIA Sunday, Apr 25, 2004,Page 12 Garlic butter. Peanut butter. Or just butter. All may be household names. Now farmers in the Baltic state of Latvia want to introduce a hitherto unknown butter, cannabis butter, to the world. "I love it, especially like my grandma used to make," Latvian farmer Dainis Lagzdins said as he invited AFP to taste the dark green butter, a local specialty made of cannabis seed, which he calls a "miracle of taste and flavor." "Mmm, the taste is heavenly," he said. Latvian farmers use centuries-old recipes to make the butter or spread...

<p>April 9 (Bloomberg) -- You don't have to ponder the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to notice the Bush administration has trouble admitting it erred.</p> <p>Consider a smaller, quieter misadventure. Consider the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's war on hemp, a harmless and healthy food source.</p>

No smoking . . . Dr Bolton with his hemp crop. Photo: Jeff Dawson If Keith Bolton has his way, hemp - the great symbol of the hippy North Coast - will be coming to a sewage treatment plant near you very soon. And to your wardrobe, your pantry, your car and your medicine cabinet. Interestingly, the strongest opponents of the Southern Cross University academic's dream are the drug dealers in nearby Nimbin. Man has cultivated hemp for fibre, food and medicine for at least 6000 years and Dr Bolton says that, after a 70-year "blip in history" caused...

Saturday, February 07, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M. Nation Digest Court rejects effort to ban foods that contain hemp SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court in San Francisco yesterday rejected a government effort to ban the sale of bread, protein powders and other foods made from hemp, the psychoactively benign botanical cousin of marijuana. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals undercuts an attempt to halt domestic consumption of hemp launched by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in October 2001. The decision leaves unresolved the bigger battle over the federal government's prohibition on domestic...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the U.S. government overstepped its boundaries when it banned the sale of food made with hemp, a plant related to marijuana. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that although the Drug Enforcement Administration has regulatory authority over marijuana, the agency did not follow the law in asserting authority over all hemp food products as well. "It validates what we've been saying along, that hemp foods have nothing to do with the drug war," said David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps and a member of the...

Canada's top court ruled Tuesday to keep marijuana possession illegal, dealing a blow to activists who had argued the drug causes no serious harm. In a 6-3 decision spanning 400 pages, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that possession, even in small amounts, would remain a criminal offense. In a separate, unanimous decision, it maintained trafficking was illegal. The judgment prompted praise from law enforcement groups and disappointment from proponents of legalization. "My huge patriotism may slowly be dissipating. I have a lot of faith in my country, in freedom and justice, but it doesn't seem like we have a...

A leading official of a group that promotes hemp says it could replace tobacco as a money-making crop in North Carolina if it weren't a member of the cannibis family. Gale Glenn says the kind of hemp she's talking about can be harvested to make clothes, paper and other textile products, the kind that produces the longest and strongest natural fibers in the world. As a former Kentucky tobacco farmer, Glenn sees industrial hemp as the perfect money-making alternative crop, and from her Durham home, she has been lobbying Congress, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House for...

<p>Consuming a chunk of organic health food is a act of drug abuse in the eyes of the Drug Enforcement Administration — if it contains, as some snacks do, hemp as an ingredient. An appeals court in Alaska says residents can possess up to a quarter-pound of pot for their own use. In a Zogby poll conducted last month in New Hampshire, 84 percent of voters said they supported changing federal law to allow patients to use medicinal marijuana without fear of arrest. Marijuana continues its beeline for the mainstream after years of reefer madness. Federal officials are ready to do battle, with the next target being hemp as food. While it sounds simple enough — one side of mostly pro-marijuana advocates looking to climb another rung on the ladder toward pot tolerance — the fact that the hemp food case even has legs portrays the continued move toward societal legitimacy of the illegal weed. "There is a lot more tolerance for marijuana," said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors pot legalization and most other liberalization of marijuana laws. "And it appears that there are more people rallying around this issue." What people are not seeing, said Ed Childress, a DEA spokesman in Washington, "is the marijuana-legalization lobby at work behind the scenes, with better resources." Two years ago, DEA head Asa Hutchinson said that foods using seeds from the hemp plant violated federal law. He ordered a crackdown on the foods, but his dictate was stayed by a court order. Courtroom wrangling has drawn out the battle. For now, purveyors of the products are free to sell. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will begin hearing arguments in the case next week. "It was really a matter of hemp not existing as something that can be consumed," said Richard Meyer, a DEA spokesman in San Francisco. If the DEA gets its way, insisting that hemp-as-food violates federal law, Lynn Gordon says, she stands to lose $800,000. Miss Gordon's Minneapolis-based French Meadow Bakery produces, among other things, bread with hemp seeds as a primary ingredient. She distances herself from the pro-pot lobby. "I don't advocate marijuana use, I don't smoke marijuana," Miss Gordon said. But her multigrain Healthy Hemp bread uses hemp seeds that she purchases legally from Canada, where hemp plants are grown for industrial use and consumption. "This is not to get people high, it is something that tastes good." Hemp-food advocates say sterilized hemp seed and oil are exempt from the Controlled Substances Act under the statutory definition of marijuana, just as poppy seeds are exempted under the statutory definition of the opium poppy. The growing support for marijuana in all forms is at odds with a federal government that has gone to great lengths to fight it. Increasing leniency, such as that in Alaska, eventually could doom the federal efforts. "I do not believe in drugs," said Erwin A. Sholts, chairman of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, which advocates the use of hemp for both food and industrial use. "But if the DEA doesn't wake up and smell the flowers, there may be something passed in Congress that they can't live with."</p>

HAMPTON -- After driving 13,000 miles in three months in a hemp biodiesel-fueled Mercedes, crammed with three other people, Grayson Sigler still doesn't call himself an activist. At best, he said, he's a "reluctant spokesperson." Two years ago, the Hampton pianist and graphic designer set out on a round-the-country trip to promote biodiesel fuel made from hemp seed oil. The Daily Press featured his trip in August 2001, a month after he started.

Just looking around this web site I think it might be wise to let you good old Americans get a view of the medical cannabis issue in Europe. First of all Europe is making massive headway in cannabis research. There is now no less than 60 companies making medical cannabis products and several countries have recently legalized it. There is a massive turn around here on the issue and the UN is loosing its grip on marjuana laws in Europe. I would like to point you all in this direction. http://www.cannabis-med.org/ Medical MD's make up the board of directors. Enjoy.

<p>Now, it seems, is the best of times, and the worst of times, for the marijuana movement.</p> <p>While most Americans say they support medical marijuana, the federal government has won several high-profile criminal cases against cannabis clubs and pot growers in the past year.</p>

JUNEAU - Marijuana reform will be a major topic tackled at this year's Alaska Libertarian Party convention, being held Saturday in the Douglas Conference Room at the Prospector Hotel. Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, will give a lecture at 6 p.m. about the national efforts to reform marijuana laws. MPP is a national organization based in Washington, D.C., that has been active in challenging government policy toward marijuana.

Alaska Libertarians and other anti-drug war activists have filed a lawsuit against the state's lieutenant governor for rejecting an initiative to decriminalize hemp. On January 28, the Free Hemp in Alaska (FHA) organization filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in Anchorage to force the state to place the initiative on the August 2004 ballot. In the lawsuit, FHA attorney Ken Jacobus argued that initiative backers filed enough signatures to qualify the measure, even though they failed to follow all of the state's record-keeping rules. "Why disenfranchise thousands of voters?" asked FHA Chair Scot Dunnachie. "Maybe it's because the lieutenant governor...

Alaska Libertarians file suit over rejected hemp initiative [February 17] Alaska Libertarians and other anti-drug war activists have filed a lawsuit against the state's lieutenant governor for rejecting an initiative to decriminalize hemp. On January 28, the Free Hemp in Alaska (FHA) organization filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in Anchorage to force the state to place the initiative on the August 2004 ballot. In the lawsuit, FHA attorney Ken Jacobus argued that initiative backers filed enough signatures to qualify the measure, even though they failed to follow all of the state's record-keeping rules. "Why disenfranchise thousands of voters?" asked...

Abraham Lincoln once said, "A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principle upon which our government was founded." Marijuana is a burning issue in society. People are thinking about the different aspects of the prohibition of marijuana. Studying this topic can help make one aware of the political and cultural aspects of this issue. In deciding whether the prohibition of marijuana is worth the effort to ban the substance, history, health, and social aspects of the substance must be factored in. The history of marijuana goes back as far as humans learned to cultivate crops. Around 100,000 years...