It seems clear that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson smoked cannabis and Jefferson grew it at Monticello. George Washington advocated growing it, and in private letters discussed separating the female plants from the male plants NOT suitable for smoking. It was on the U.S. Pharmacopeia until under the table dealings by the liquor industry with Congress, and Randolph Hearst, got it rendered illegal as a condition for re-legalizing alcohol and to protect Hearst's forest holdings for paper making (he was weary of most paper in the US, even for Bibles, being made from cannabis). Anti-cannabis laws are what have ravaged millions of American's lives for 70 years now, NOT the cannabis itself, which has been openly enjoyed and praised by respected folks, like Carl Sagan. (see his treatise below). If you and I cannot enjoy a natural herb grown and enjoyed and esteemed by the Founding Fathers, this is hardly "the land of the free". If monstrous, traiterous war criminals like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld can face NO legal consequences for their murderous deceits and edicts, and instead get lifelong pensions AND "socialized medical care" paid for by you and me, then Americans can sure as hell enjoy the simple, life-enhancing gift from nature called cannabis! The human brain has canabinoid receptors, plus makes its own cannabinoids, so it is clear we share an evolutionary relationship with this sublime plant. Time for widespread civil disobedience on the matter...grow it and smoke it in defiance of the War Machine that empowers the rich and gets the rest of us impoverished or killed or rendered too fearful to discover and express our highest selves.
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Carl Sagan's essay on cannabis:
Below are a few citations from an essay that astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in 1969 for Marihuana Reconsidered, a book published by Dr. Lester Grinspoon. At that time Sagan was 35 years old. He continued using cannabis for the rest of his life. "The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse." "A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I'm down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex - on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking." "I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate." "When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights."
"The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."
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