Diego

Every person in the United States has heard of the illicit substance called marijuana. Yet, unknown to most people, there is one place in the United States where marijuana is grown legally. That place is the Medicinal Plant Garden, right here at the University of Mississippi. The Medicinal Plant Garden, a part of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (RIPS) is part of the Marijuana Plant Facility The garden is over 20 years old, but the laboratory was created only four years ago. According to Dr. Mahmoud Elsohly, research scientist for RIPS, the laboratory of the Medicinal Plant Facility is used to study various applications of marijuana. For example, the scientists grow marijuana to test its physical makeup, analyze marijuana confiscated by the DEA, law enforcement agencies, and various narcotics groups, to find the potency ratings of the drugs, and extract THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) from plants they harvested. One project that the Medicinal Plant Facility is currently working on is a medicine made from THC for use in a suppository form to replace Marinol, a capsule made of 95 percent THC and used for nausea and vomiting problems in cancer patients as well as fighting the wasting sickness, or anorexia-cachexia, suffered by 70 to 90 percent of AIDS patients. Another practice done by the lab is to send marijuana to the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina for use in the Compassionate IND program. This program gives marijuana to people who use it to allieviate symptoms of their diseases, such as glaucoma, cancer, and AIDS victims. However, there are only a small handfull (about eight people) receiving the marijuana, out of several thousand who have applied. Marijuana has been used by many cultures for various ailments. Israeli scientists, for example, found the skeleton of a fourth century woman who they believed died in childbirth. Ashes nearby were found to be the burned remains of the cannabis, or marijuana, plant. The scientists say this suggests that ancient Middle Eastern women used inhaled marijuana smoke to reduce labor pains. These days, the medical profession have found several applications for the marijuana plant. In medicine, THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) has been found again and again to help patients battling the life-threatening diseases of cancer and AIDS to fight the intense nausea that causes their wasting sickness. Marijuana also helps glaucoma (an eye disease that causes blindness) victims by reducing the interocular pressure. It reduces, sometimes eliminating altogether, the seizures of epileptic patients, along with reducing nerve disorders of multiple sclerosis patients. As a final interesting note, a recent discovery by a South Florida doctor concerns the fact that if THC is placed in a test tube with the herpes virus, the THC will kill the herpes virus.

Hemp as public enemy #1 Hemp was the first plant known to have been domestically cultivated. The oldest relic of human history is hemp fabric dated to 8,000 BC from ancient Mesopotamia, an area in present-day Turkey. It has been grown as long as recorded history for food, fuel, fiber, and for another legitimate use, which is not even discussed here for the sake of brevity medicine. So, with all these uses and benefits, why is cannabis cultivation illegal in the United States today? Here is a brief history of cannabis prohibition: Hemp was a primary source of paper, textile, and cordage fiber for thousands of years until just after the turn of the 20th century. It was at this time that companies like DuPont first developed chemicals that enabled trees to be processed into paper. DuPont's chemicals made wood pulp paper cheaper than paper made from annual crops like hemp. At the same time Wm. Randolph Hearst, the owner of the largest newspaper chain in the United States, backed by Mellon Bank, invested significant capital in timberland and wood paper mills to produce his newsprint using DuPont's chemicals. DuPont also developed nylon fiber as a direct competitor to hemp in the textile and cordage industries. Nylon was even billed as synthetic hemp. DuPont was also manufacturing chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers useful in the cotton industry, another hemp competitor. Mellon Bank, owned by U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, was also DuPont's primary financier. Mellon's niece was married to Harry Anslinger, deputy commissioner of the federal government's alcohol prohibition campaign. After the repeal of Prohibition, Anslinger and his entire federal bureau were out of a job. But Treasurer Mellon didn't let that happen. Andrew Mellon single-handedly created a new government bureaucracy, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, to keep his family and friends employed. And then he unapologetically appointed his own niece's husband, Harry Anslinger, as head of the new multimillion dollar bureaucracy. At the same time, a machine was developed that was to hemp what the cotton gin was to cotton: it allowed hemp's long, tough fiber to be mass processed efficiently and economically for the first time. Popular Mechanics, in February 1937, predicted hemp would be the world's first "Billion Dollar Crop" that would support thousands of jobs and provide a vast array of consumer products from dynamite to plastics. This potential rejuvenation of hemp was a major threat to Secretary Mellon's friends and business associates, especially Randolph Hearst with his wood paper industry and Lammont DuPont with his petrochemical and synthetic fiber conglomerates. After all, hemp farmers wouldn't need DuPont's chemicals to grow their hemp because the crop is self-sufficient. The hemp-based ethanol fuel that was mentioned in the Popular Mechanics' article probably didn't sit too well with the oil companies of the time. They also couldn't have been too thrilled to learn that this same plant produced high-strength plastics without a petroleum base. The hemp-based plastics developed at the time were stronger and lighter than steel, which we can imagine wasn't the best news for the steel industry. In addition, the growing pharmaceutical companies were producing synthetic drugs to replace natural medicines. Hemp extract was used for thousands of years to effectively treat everything from epileptic fits to rheumatoid arthritis. Chances are, hemp's resurgence wasn't good news for these drug companies either. What we see is that the potential revival of the hemp industry was a threat to almost all the corporate giants of the time, and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was at the top of this food chain. So Commissioner Anslinger, Mellon's appointee, begins researching rumors that immigrants from Mexico are smoking the flowers of the hemp plant. Racism was rampant at the time, and there was a government movement to curb the number of immigrants crossing the U.S. border at Mexico. Anslinger plugged into the racist sentiment, and began referring to the "hemp" that Americans knew cannabis to be, as "marijuana," the Mexican slang word for the plant. He labeled it as a "narcotic" even though cannabis flowers cannot cause narcosis, and spread exaggerated stories and outright lies that Mexicans and blacks became violent and disrespectful to whites when they smoked the "evil menace marijuana." This slander of cannabis was all just fine for Anslinger's friends, the Mellons, the DuPonts, and the Hearsts. In fact, Hearst's newspapers picked up on the propaganda and fueled the fire by publishing hundreds of lurid stories about people raping and murdering while under the influence of marijuana. The sensationalism sold lots of newspapers, and the people of the country actually based their opinions on this one-sided information. Of course the stories never mentioned the hemp that people used everyday as rope, paper, medicine, and more. The stories always referred to cannabis by the Mexican slang word, marijuana. With the moral and prohibitive fervor of the time duly stirred, Anslinger took his show to Congress. At the proceedings of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, Anslinger didn't mention that marijuana was hemp. And because anti-marijuana propaganda didn't mention that basic fact, hemp industries found out almost too late about the effort to criminalize cannabis cultivation. Testimony was heard from the full gamut of hemp companies and advocates, from birdseed suppliers to cordage manufacturers, from farmers to physicians, all touting hemp's importance in American history and the many industrial, agricultural, medicinal, and economic benefits of cannabis. Only after their testimony, was the wording of the bill changed to allow for the continued legal cultivation of industrial hemp. Anslinger even backed off on hemp prohibition in a very cunning maneuver. After the Act was passed, Anslinger single-handedly usurped congressional power by mandating hemp prohibition. He justified his action by saying that his agents couldn't tell the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana in the field, so hemp cultivation made enforcement of marijuana prohibition impossible. This unconstitutional usurpation of congressional law is still in effect today as the Department of Justice and the DEA still cling to Anslinger's unjust and unjustifiable prohibition on domestic hemp cultivation. Hemp for victory With the United States entering World War II only four years after hemp's prohibition, and the synthetic fiber industry still in its infancy, the armed forces experienced a dangerous shortage of fiber for the war effort. In 1942, the U.S. government performed a convenient about-face on the hemp issue. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) produced and distributed a motion picture called "Hemp for Victory" in which the federal government not only promoted the many uses of cannabis hemp, but also detailed the most efficient cultivation and harvesting methods. The picture pronounced, "Hemp for mooring ships! Hemp for tackle and gear! Thread for shoes for millions of American soldiers! And parachute webbing for our paratroopers! Hemp for Victory!" By the end of the war, hemp was no longer needed for strategic purposes and synthetic fiber was being produced more efficiently and abundantly than ever. The same soldiers that hemp had supplied with ship's rigging, rope, tackle, gear, shoes, and parachutes turn against their recent ally. The Marines themselves, armed with flame-throwers, and Air Force pilots in crop dusters are ordered to destroy the same million acres of hemp that were recently planted for the war effort. These actions were the beginning of the modern war on marijuana, or more correctly, the modern war on cannabis, including non-drug hemp. http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0199/et0199s11.html

I don't smoke it.. The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of Hemp, which began to be worked in the Eighth Millennium (8,000-7,000 BC). The word "canvas" is derived from the Dutch pronunciation, twice removed from French and Latin, of the Greek root word "Kannabis" which can be traced back to the early Sumerian/Babylonian word "K(a)N(a)B(a)" which is one of the longest surviving root words in human language. Hemp provides the worlds longest, strongest, softest, most durable natural fibre. Warmer and more absorbent, Hemp has greater tensile strength than cotton. Cotton became established in the 19th Century because it lent itself readily to mechanised processing by the early cotton 'gin. Machinery for processing Hemp did not become available until the 1930's by which time synthetic fibres produced by the chemical industry had appeared on the scene. Cotton requires another of the chemical industry's products - artificial fertiliser. Unlike cotton, hemp needs no fertiliser or pesticide to aid in its cultivation. It is estimated that half of all the agricultural chemicals used in the USA are employed in the growing of cotton. IF Hemp is planted at a density of 900 plants to the square yard and harvested after two or three month's soft, linen-quality fibres are produced. Whereas an acre of cotton yields about 500 pounds of fibre, the same acre of Hemp will give 1500 pounds of fibre. Garments made from Hemp are durable and long lasting. The original Levi's were made Hemp cloth during the '49 California gold rush.

no inanimate object is evil..in and of themselves inanimate objects cannot abuse themselves.. cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, guns, money and Dungeons and Dragons and now video games have been abused and blamed as causes of criminal activity when in fact if left on a table they are incapable of doing anything

should marijuana be legalized ?

I'm just taking a break from "Grand Theft Auto/San Andreas" I love that game

Video games and violence Joseph Adam Sujka | Posted October 22, 2005 Ever feel like you are going in circles? The relationship between video games and teen violence seems to come up every once in a while and spout the same ideas about teens and how violent we are. Another cookie-cutter article appeared Sept. 18, not purporting answers but just stirring the pot. That is not what this is about, though. This is about video games and violence. The bottom line, no matter how you look at it, is that parents need to monitor what their kids are buying and doing. Video games have labels telling what the content of the game is. There is even another label on the back telling what things are in the game that garnered it that rating. Things on the back include, "cartoon violence, mild language, sexual situations." There are tools out there to make it so that parents can parent, but most would rather blame the video-game companies rather than their lack of interest in what their kids do. This circular reasoning by adults in this country has gone too far. In the past, for instance, if a child was playing king of the mountain on a pile of gravel and he or she fell and got hurt, the parents would reprimand the child for not being safe. Today, the parents would sue the owner of the pile for damages and hospital bills for their children. This is the same situation in regards to video-game companies. Rather than monitoring what their children do, parents would rather blame video games and their content and not take responsibility for their actions. It does not matter if video games cause violence in children because even if they do, the result will still be the same. Parents will have to monitor what they buy or let their children buy and video-game stores will have to be very stringent on what games they sell to what people. The whole argument is at its core an excuse for parents to not be parents, and the responsibility needs to lie squarely on the shoulders of parents rather than video-game companies.

because of the priest incident ?

I wonder what their first clue was

sounds like someone was molested by a priest

no such thing as too much money

it is crazy !

Thanks y'all

I was born and raised in Alaska one day I will move back..interestingly my mother never had a license or permit to carry her Colt Python .357 magnum but she carried it everywhere she went

I was driving northbound on I-85 in Atlanta headed for a large Honda dealership because I needed a driver side half shaft/cv axle for my old Accord