"Basically, when I look around, I see us living in a modern day Babylon, full of temptation, sin, distraction, corruption, injustice, and misguided fools being mentally enslaved. It seems to me the only way to wake people up from this kind of numbness is to destroy what they know: Their business, their places of commerce and their biggest place of gathering, the cities! Put it on their trains, on the lines they take to work, on their rooftops, on their highways, on anything just to make some people realize that culture isn't lost and that, at the very least, a small group of kids is fighting to keep it alive." --Daniel Oliver Tucker
"The words of the prophets were written on the subway walls and the tenement halls..." Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence"
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will. -- Yoda
[The following is excerpted from "Drug Wars" FRONTLINE, WGBH, Boston, 2000 www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline]--Marijuana cultivation began in the United States around 1600 with the Jamestown settlers, who began growing the cannabis sativa or hemp plant for its unusually strong fiber that was used to make rope, sails, and clothing. Until after the Civil War, marijuana was a source of major revenue for the United States. During the 19th century marijuana plantations flourished in Mississippi, Georgia, California, South Carolina, Nebraska, New York, and Kentucky. Also during this period, smoking hashish, a stronger preparation of marijuana derived from the dried resin of the plant, was popular throughout France and to a lesser degree in the US. Between 1850 and 1937 marijuana was widely used throughout United States as a medicinal drug and could easily be purchased in pharmacies and general stores. Recreational use was limited in the US until after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when an influx of Mexican immigrants introduced the habit. The Volstead Act of 1920, which raised the price of alcohol in the United States, positioned marijuana as an attractive alternative and led to an increase in use of the drug. "Tea pads," where a person could purchase marijuana for 25 cents or less, began appearing in cities across the United States, particularly as part of the black "hepster" jazz culture. By 1930 it was reported that there were at least 500 of these "tea pads" in New York City alone. During the Great Depression as unemployment increased, resentment and fear of the Mexican immigrants became connected to marijuana use. Numerous research studies linked marijuana use by lower class communities with crime and violence. In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act which criminalized the drug. From 1951 to 1956 stricter sentencing laws set mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related offenses. In the 1950s the beatniks appropriated the use of marijuana from the black hepsters and the drug moved into middle-class white America in the 1960s. The increasing use of marijuana by mainstream white Americans helped lead to the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, under which mandatory penalties for drug offenses were repealed by Congress and marijuana was categorized separately from other narcotics. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) was founded the same year. In the late 1970s, President Carter’s administration, including his assistant for drug policy, Dr. Peter Bourne, pushed for decriminalization of marijuana, with the president himself asking Congress to abolish federal criminal penalties for those caught with less than one ounce of marijuana. A grassroots parents’ movement responded by lobbying for stricter regulations and was instrumental in changing public attitudes. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, reinstating mandatory minimums and raising federal penalties for possession and distribution. In 1996, California enacted Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana use for people suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses and a similar bill was passed in Arizona the same year. Current domestic marijuana cultivation trends are towards indoor production due to law enforcement efforts to curtail outdoor cultivation. The majority of foreign marijuana is supplied by trafficking organizations in Mexico, although countries in the Far East, such as Thailand and Cambodia, also supply the United States.-- hee..hee.. pass it to the left... :)