OK, I'm going to cheat over the next few days: instead of spontaneous posts I'm going to serialise an article I wrote called, 'Prohibitive Costs' which was published last year in CCNEWZ, ( www.ccnewz.com ) Not only do they have great taste in who they publish (!) but it's always full of lots of useful and interesting stuff, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

introduction

So, you’re a dopefiend. Well, in our society this title of drug user outranks any other role you may play and outshines any contribution you may make. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how much tax you pay or how many people you help, in the eyes of many your drug use is your defining feature.

This same-brush-tarring is made all the worse by the sheer weight of ignorance attached to this label. The infamous pastime of drug use is seen today as, at best a weakness and at worst, the root of all evil. Indeed it wasn’t so very long ago that US cannabis users were being accused by their own government of funding global terrorism and so being partly responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre(1).

A recent television documentary considering paedophiles showed two men being convicted of producing and distributing child pornography; they each received a three year prison sentence. Medicinal user and UK coffeeshop pioneer Colin Davies received the same sentence for his attempts to establish a safe and regular supply of cannabis for other medicinal users.

These cases demonstrate just how dangerous the authorities consider drug use to be. It is this perceived threat to society that is used to justify the introduction and enforcement of vindictive and oppressive laws. However we know that that these laws do not achieve their stated aims in the real world, our world.

The actual toll that these laws and attitudes take on our everyday lives seems obvious, at first. Heavy fines and prison time can cripple and even destroy lives. A criminal record, especially a drugs offence, limits employment possibilities. Some people are denied the only or best medicine that can alleviate their suffering, and of course we taxpaying drug users pay for all this to be done to us!

There are, however other wider ranging implications. It is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the mainstream media that the hemp plant can be used to produce economically and environmentally superior alternatives to oil, timber, plastics, concrete and textiles. Hemp can be grown almost anywhere in the world and, due to its deep root structure, is ideally suited to recovering land damaged by famine. Hemp seed has the exact ratio of fatty to amino acids required by the human body making it one of the most nutritious seed crops known to exist(2).

The hemp plant has the potential to make great advances against both hunger and pollution while at the same time creating many new industries and therefore jobs. The LA based business co-operative, BACH(3), have found more then 50,000(4) commercially viable uses for hemp and yet all this potential is ignored and wasted due to the way in which our society views drug use.

So while prohibition gets some people locked up it also locks us all into a world where solvable problems kill thousands daily. But what else is kept from us by the attitudes that fuel prohibition? Is drug use really just a mindless hobby and is the prohibitionists’ dream of a world without drug use even feasible?

references

1. weed and terror advert screened during 2002 superbowl:
letter in High Times June 2002 #322

2. most nutritional seed crop:
“Emperor Wears No Clothes”
Jack Herer, 1994

3. BACH:
Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp,
PO Box 71093,
Los Angeles,
CA 90071
USA

4. 50,000+ commercial uses for Hemp:
“Emperor Wears No Clothes”
Jack Herer, 1994