Marijuana - It's Pro-Life!
A pamphlet entitled 10 Things Every Parent, Teenager and Teacher
Should Know About Marijuana produced by the Family Council on Drug Awareness
tells us marijuana is not physically addictive. The 1980 Costa Rican study,
the 1975 Jamaican study and the 1972 Nixon Blue Ribbon Report all concluded
that marijuana use does not lead to physical dependency.
The FBI reports that 65 to 75 percent of criminal violence is
alcohol-related. On the other hand, Federal Bureau of Narcotics director
Harry Anslinger testified before Congress in 1948 that marijuana leads to
nonviolence and pacifism.
In a message to Congress on August 2, 1977, President Jimmy Carter insisted:
"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an
individual than the use of the drug itself."
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Law Judge Francis L. Young wrote on
September 8, 1988: "Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal
effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the
extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented
cannabis-induced fatality Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the
safest therapeutically active substances known to man."
****
In the 1990 edition of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, marijuana advocate Jack
Herer wrote:
"On a global scale, the most energy efficient plant is hemp, an annually
renewable resource able to replace all fossil fuels... suddenly, for
whatever reason, we are now in an era when oil is not only prohibitively
expensive, but embargoes or wars by foreign nations, e.g., OPEC, Libya,
Iran, etc., can virtually hold the U.S. hostage; that's how dependent we are
on foreign sources of polluting petroleum products. Biomass conversion to
fuels should begin immediately to both stop planetary pollution and make us
energy independent."
Years before concern over "peak oil" became a contemporary energy and
environmental issue, Herer wrote:
"...when our petroleum resources have dwindled, America will have four
choices:
1. Burn all our poisonous coal.
2. Go to war over foreign oil.
3. Cut down our forests for fuel.
4. Grow and process a variety of environmentally safe fuels from biomass.
"Farming only six percent of continental U.S. acreage with biomass would
provide all of America's energy needs and end dependence on fossil fuels...
"Legal hemp would return billions of dollars worth of natural resource
potential back to the farmers and bring millions of good jobs in energy
production to America's heartland. Hemp energy farmers will become our
producers of raw materials for many of the nation's needs. Family farms will
be saved.
"Hemp grown for fiber will bring the paper and textile industry back to the
local communities and out of the hands of the multinational corporations.
"So what's the catch? The 'catch' is obvious: The energy companies! They own
most of the petrochemicals, pharmaceutical, liquor, and tobacco companies,
and are intertwined with the insurance companies and banks that own them in
such a way as to make untangling their various interlocking directorates
(plutocracies) a Herculean task for even the most dedicated researcher.
"Many politicians now in power, according to the press, are bought and paid
for by the energy companies, and their U.S. government arm is the CIA,
a.k.a., 'The Company' (Robert Ludlum, et. al.). The Bush-Quayle
administration is uniquely tied to oil, newspapers and pharmaceuticals -- as
well as the CIA.
"The world struggle for money is actually a struggle for energy, as it is
through energy that we may produce food, shelter, transportation and
entertainment.
"It is this struggle which often erupts into open war. It may not be that if
we remove the cause, the conflicts will also be removed, but the possibility
is strong enough that we must try.
"Ultimately, the world has no other rationale environmental choice but to
give up fossil fuels...
"Land reclamation is the final and perhaps most compelling economic and
ecological argument for hemp cultivation.
"Until this century, our pioneers and ordinary American farmers used
cannabis to clear fields for planting...
"Instead of a National Guard, why not establish a Natural Guard of
environmental soldiers to be our front line for survival -- planting trees,
harvesting biomass (e.g., hemp) from marginal farm lands?
"A Natural Guard of electricians, plumbers, engineers and laborers who are
put to work re-building the infrastructure of America: our roads, bridges,
dams, canals, sewers, railroad tracks, etc.
"Isn't this the humane, civilized and socially responsible way to use our
human resources, rather than warehousing people like animals in prisons?"
According to Herer, marijuana is biblical:
"And the earth brought forth grass and herb-yielding seed after its kind and
the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after is kind: and God saw
that it was good."
--Genesis 1:12
"God makes the earth yield healing herbs which the prudent man should not
neglect."
-- Sirach 38:4 (Catholic Bible)
****
Rose Evans, a widow and a grandmother, a pro-life Episcopalian fond of
Buddhism, and editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a
"consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious left, favors an end to
marijuana prohibition.
Rose wrote in May 1992:
"Polls indicate that 80 percent of Californians would prefer a sentence of
life without parole to the death penalty, and support it only because they
fear that killers will be released, endangering innocent lives.
"One of the tragic things about the current state of affairs is that almost
all of the state's 'liberal' Democrats have come out in support of the death
penalty. I've never seen so many 'seamless shroud' types! (As opposed to
'seamless garment' people who oppose the death penalty and abortion, the
'seamless shroud' is an expression to describe the position of those who
support both."
In the October 1992 issue of Harmony, Rose wrote:
"Before the Reagan-Bush years, it was unheard of to see people living and
sleeping in the streets. Now they are everywhere. San Francisco has a pretty
mellow climate, but people died in the streets of hypothermia last year.
"For 27 years, we did not execute anybody. Now we have an active death
penalty, we've carried out our first execution, and we have many more people
waiting to be killed.
"Our prison population has doubled. (Mostly nonviolent drug convictions.)
"We have many abortions, and many are driven by economic desperation.
Medical services for poor people has deteriorated, and some counties don't
have one obstetrician who will accept Medi-Cal (our state's version of
Medicaid) women as patients. 'Choice' is a joke for women who can't get
medical care, housing or any support.
"Tragically, most of our 'liberal Democrats' running for office here are not
only supporters of legal abortion, they are also supporters of capital
punishment.
"Consistent-ethic folks are in a dilemma... My own solution, like co-editor
Carol Crossed's, is to vote as well as I can in these terrible
circumstances, but give my work, my money and my energy to JustLife and all
the consistent-ethic candidates I can find."
In the July 1993 issue of Harmony, Rose wrote:
"This is a revolutionary change from the dominant ideology. The message
coming to us from major centers of power in our society is that our lives
are garbage. Our children's lives are garbage, our elders lives are garbage,
our brothers' and sisters' lives are garbage, the lives of our infants,
developing in the womb, are garbage.
"Some lives are less garbagy, if they are rich, powerful and effective; many
lives are especially garbagy, if they are Hispanic or African-American, if
they are prisoners, if they have been sentenced, if they are sick, mentally
ill, or addicted, if the Executive Branch has declared them enemies (openly
or secretly).
"The American high command refuses to count the enemy dead in Iraq, as if
these young sons of the poor were garbage. If the President's values were
right, peaceful solutions would have been pursued and they would not have
been dead.
"If the General's values were right, this war would have been fought with
the least possible loss of life, surrenders taken, no one burned alive in
retreating columns...
"The death penalty increases, and in an amazing burst of pro-death
psychology, even evidence of innocence is dismissed by our courts, and the
execution of apparently innocent people proceeds with a very considerable
amount of public indifference.
"Police work is unnecessarily violent, from the repeated beatings and
killings of arrestees (almost all of them belonging to racial minorities) to
the impatient violence of the assault on the Branch Davidians, ignoring the
time-proven rules of hostage rescue and confrontation defusing.
"The war on drugs continues to impose savage sentences... One-third of our
soaring prison population (including many women and mothers)are jailed on
drug charges. Young people who have no hope of meaningful, decently paying
jobs, are jailed when they turn to drug dealing, one of the few economic
fields open to them.
"The more than a million and a half abortions a year continue, and the
medical literature abounds with descriptions of the new techniques for
effective abortion of older infants in the late second and third trimester,
with their stronger and tougher tissues."
Rose wrote in terms of a secular slippery slope argument, familiar to
pro-lifers:
"The killing of children has long been seen as the worst of atrocities, but
this is acceptable to many in our ideological wars. Child abuse increases in
tandem.
"All of these things have one root: toughness -- a hard indifference; a
grasping for quick and violent solutions, no patience, no gentleness, no
compassion."
****
The following page of the July 1993 issue of Harmony contained an article
about Reverend Bernice King, the youngest child of slain civil rights leader
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saying she opposed the death penalty under any
circumstances, saying, "Sometimes I struggle with my feelings of anger, but
then I remember that my father was a Christian minister who preached a
message of forgiveness and nonviolence." Christianity, she pointed out,
calls for forgiveness as a way to spiritual wholeness.
****
The July 1993 issue of Harmony contained an article by writer and activist
Jean Blackwood, entitled, "The Pro-Life Movement, Animals and the
Environment," in which she wrote:
"Animal rights and environmental supporters do not tend to recognize the
inherent value of unborn humans. My membership in PETA got my name on the
mailing list for Planned Parenthood!...
"Many of the young people who make up the animal rights and environmental
movement grew up with pro-abortion rhetoric in their ears. They can make the
mental shift form banning CFCs, outlawing whaling, and abolishing clearcuts
to 'a woman's right to choose' with such alacrity that one might suspect no
self-contradiction was involved.
"The pro-life movement has some consistence problems too. It's been
dominated by some years now by a variety of Christian that is, I believe,
more human-centered than God-centered. Homo Sapiens is elevated to such a
high status by these people that other living things, in fact the whole
earth, becomes just so much stuff to be used.
"One fundamentalist explained it to me -- as the world is going to be zapped
by God (pretty soon, I guess) and left as a glowing cinder in space. Not
much point in being good stewards of a glowing cinder.
"At least two pro-life Christians have said to me, 'If animals aren't here
to eat, what are they here for?'
"I do not know what these people make of chickadees and butterflies. Or
dinosaurs.
"Anyhow, if any constructive dialog is to take place among pro-lifers and
Greens, then Harmony readers are probably among the best suited groups to
begin. But before you begin, take the time to read some of the literature of
the other movements.
"I'd especially urge you to read some of the copies of the Animals' Agenda
and the books Animal Factories, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, and
Diet for a New America.
"Get on the mailing list of a group like PETA or the Humane Society of the
United States. Read also magazines like Sienna, Wilderness, and Audobon.
"Read also Thoreau, John Muir, Jeremy Rifkin, Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry,
and even Al Gore. (You'll be surprised at how uncomfortable Gore sounds
defending abortion.)
"As you read, you'll find things to disagree with, but look for the links,
the shared values.
"Now that we've lost our supposedly 'pro-life' administration in Washington,
we urgently need to make new friends. A lot of unborn lives are depending on
our ability to make them see."
****
Rose Evans wrote in favor of the the legalization of marijuana for
therapeutic (medicinal) purposed during the first half of the '90s. Rose,
born in 1928, considered it a crime that many of her elderly friends in her
age group, suffering from numerous afflictions, were denied marijuana for
medicinal purposes.
After years of suppression by the government, the truth about medical
marijuana is finally out. Dr. Tod Mikuriya, former director of marijuana
research for the entire federal government, wrote in 1996: "I was hired by
the government to provide scientific evidence that marijuana was harmful. As
I studied the subject, I began to realize that marijuana was once widely
used as a safe and effective medicine. But the government had a different
agenda, and I had to resign."
Of all the reasons to legalize marijuana, the most compelling is its medical
usage. Marijuana has a wide variety of therapeutic applications, and is
frequently helpful in treating the following conditions:
AIDS. Marijuana reduces the nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite caused by
both the ailment itself and as a side effect of treatment with AZT and other
medicines.
Asthma. Several studies have shown that THC acts as a bronchodilator and
reverses bronchial constriction. Although conventional bronchodilators work
faster than marijuana, THC has been shown to last longer and with
considerably less risk.
Arthritis and Other Autoimmune Diseases. In addition to its effectiveness in
controlling the pain associated with arthritis, new evidence shows that
marijuana is an autoimmune modulator.
Cancer. Marijuana stimulates the appetite and alleviates nausea and
vomiting, common side effects of chemotherapy treatment. People undergoing
chemotherapy find that smoking marijuana is an anti-nauseant often more
effective than mainstream medications.
Chronic Pain. Marijuana alleviates the debilitating, chronic pain caused by
myriad disorders and injuries.
Epilepsy. Marijuana is used as an adjunctive medicine to prevent epileptic
seizures. Some patients find that they can reduce dosage of other
seizure-control medications while using cannabis.
Glaucoma. Marijuana can reduce intraocular pressure, alleviating pain and
slowing (and sometimes stopping) the progress of the condition.
Multiple Sclerosis. Marijuana limits the muscle pain and spasticity caused
by the disease, and relieves tremor and unsteady gait.
Muscle Spasm and Spasticity. Medical marijuana has been clinically shown to
be effective in relieving these.
Migraine Headaches. Marijuana not only relieves pain, but also inhibits the
release of serotonin during attacks.
Paraplegia and Quadriplegia. Many paraplegics and quadriplegics have
discovered that cannabis not only relieves their pain better than opiates,
but also suppresses their muscle twitches and tremors.
Attending Heald Business College in downtown Oakland in 1996, I overheard
two young girls, about 19 or 20 years of age, discussing the upcoming
elections.
The first, a white girl, said she was going to vote in favor of the
marijuana initiative, saying, "I think I should have marijuana."
The second girl, a black girl, said with amusement, "That's for people with
AIDS. They're not gonna give it to you!"
"They don't have to give it to me," replied the first girl. "I get it
anyway."
In 1996, California voters passed a law to regulate medical marijuana within
the state. In 2000, voters in California approved an initiative allowing
people who are arrested for simple possession of drugs to go through a
rehabilitation program rather than through the court process that would
result in prison. Since the program began, most agree it has been very
successful. It results in less recidivism and is considered cheaper than
imprisonment.
Tobacco kills about 430,700 each year. Alcohol and alcohol-related diseases
and injuries kill about 110,000 per year. Secondhand tobacco smoke kills
about 50,000 every year. Aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs kill
7,600 each year. Cocaine kills about 500 yearly alone, and another 2,500 in
combination with another drug. Heroin kills about 400 yearly alone, and
another 2,500 in combination with another drug. Adverse reactions to
prescription drugs total 32,000 per year, while marijuana kills no one.
A November 4, 2002 Time/CNN Poll found 80 percent of those polled felt
marijuana should be legal only for medicinal purposes. 72 percent felt
recreational users should get fines rather than jail time, which is
essentially decriminalization. The complete legalization of marijuana was
favored only by 34 percent of respondents, but this figure was twice as
large as it was in 1986. Marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco, and
our drug laws should reflect reality.
****
It's obvious marijuana should be legal for medicinal purposes. But what
about for recreational use?
Nearly 75 percent of the drug war is directed solely at marijuana, which is
safer than alcohol and/or tobacco.
According to a 2003 Zogby poll, two of every five Americans say “the
government should treat marijuana the same way it treats alcohol: It should
regulate it, control it, tax it, and only make it illegal for children.”
Close to one hundred million Americans, including over half of those between
the ages of 18 and 50, have tried marijuana at least once. Military and
police recruiters often have no alternative but to ignore past marijuana use
by job seekers.
After a Feminists For Life meeting at the University of San Francisco on May
19, 2002, we all met for dinner and dessert at the home of Rose Evans,
editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a
"consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious left.
Rose, who first became vegetarian in the '70s is a sweet old lady: the widow
of a university professor, a grandmother, a pro-life Episcopalian, and a
political liberal, in favor of legalizing victimless crimes like drugs and
prostitution.
During dessert, Rose asked me if I'd like some wine. I politely declined,
saying, I don't touch any mind-altering substances, including caffeine.
One woman dinner guest said mildly amused, "That chocolate cake you had for
dessert probably contains enough caffeine!"
(Chocolate contains traces of theobromine, a caffeine-like substance.)
Mary Rider, a pro-life vegetarian activist, who was then Executive Director
of the Seamless Garment Network (SGN), a coalition of peace and justice
organizations on the religious left (opposed to war, abortion, poverty,
racism, the arms race, the death penalty and euthanasia) and a *practicing*
Catholic (she was pregnant with her eighth child at the time!), on the other
hand, was respectful of anyone abstaining from all mind-altering substances,
including caffeine.
In December 2007, I was matched on eharmony.com with Deanna, a vegetarian,
living in Scottsdale, AZ. Deanna has asthma, and lives in Arizona because of
the warm climate: she said even in winter, the daytime temperature doesn't
go below 60 degrees.
Because she has asthma, Deanna has never smoked pot in her entire life. When
the subject of marijuana came up in a phone conversation, she merely said:
"How do you stand the smell?!"
In September 2010, Alice A. Huffman, President of the California State
NAACP, called on voters "to regulate and decriminalize marijuana.
"According to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, half of
California's marijuana possession arrestees were nonwhite in 1990 and 28%
were under age twenty.
"Last year, 62% were nonwhite and 42% were under age twenty. Marijuana
possession arrests of youth of color rose from about 3,100 in 1990 to about
16,300 in 2008 -- an arrest surge 300% greater than the rate of population
growth in that group.
"If one were to calculate the number of black juvenile and young adult men
alone, arrested in 2008 for nonviolent marijuana felony violations - over 5,
600 (and, which includes cultivation of a single plant), the criminal
justice cycle entry costs would exceed $1.3 billion annually.
"It is painfully evident that the war on drugs is a terribly failed policy
which has a cost that is too high for taxpayers, and our communities.
"Let's keep California on the right side of justice."
Downtown Oakland is now known as "Oaksterdam" with its medical marijuana
facilities!
"I don't get angry when my mom smokes pot..."
--Sublime, "What I Got"
Go on to: Maude
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