I spoke at the Hemp Festival tonight at Ohio State University, sponsored by the Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. I’ve never been able to understand why you would outlaw a miracle plant like hemp – that doesn’t even get you high — just because it’s the male cousin of marijuana. It’s a bit like outlawing corn because somebody can make cornmash from it during Prohibition. Or outlawing barley because it’s used to make beer. The famous but ignored Popular Mechanics article from the 1930s called hemp “the wonder product” and talked about 25,000 products that can be made from it. Hemp can be used for multiple purposes: fuel, food products, oils, clothing, paper products or a whole car, as Henry Ford demonstrated.

The war on drugs that Reagan pushed was really targeted against marijuana, after all, the CIA’s assets (like the Contras) were bringing in cocaine by the carload and the Reagan administration told the CIA that they didn’t have to report it to the DEA.

The attack on pot is really an attack on a counterculture that doesn’t support the military-industrial complex, the petrochemical plastics industry or the prison industrial complex. Mussolini and the fascists in Italy came to power with a war on marijuana.

After all, we live in a drug culture with corporate happy pills like Prozac and Zoloft and pharmaceutical companies pushing synthetic heroin like Oxycotin. Whack your kid with Ritalin to treat his Attention Deficit Disorder, just don’t get caught with hemp seeds that you can’t get high off of, or you go to jail.

In my campaign for governor, I intend to remind the people of Ohio that both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew the Indian hemp seed. It’s weed that produces sustainable economies and sustainable products. We can’t give in to the propaganda of the elite and ignorance of the general public. We should create a new movement of Johnny and Janie Hempseeds, planting the hemp seeds all over the Buckeye State.

2 replies
  1. Dave Kovacs
    Dave Kovacs says:

    “Mussolini and the fascists in Italy came to power with a war on marijuana.”

    There is a red herring for you. Bad argument, bad argument.

    I do think there needs to be a decriminalization of drugs like pot and a renewal of hemp’s ecological potential.

    Would Bob as governor work to reduce the criminal penalties on pot-smokers?

    I think this is a good issue that can bring in young voters to the Fitrakis movement. Just beware of using fallacious arguments like guilt-by-association with Mussolini.

    DKK

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