August 16, 2009 – Editor’s note: There are millions of regular pot smokers in America and millions more infrequent smokers. Smoking pot clearly has far fewer dangerous and hazardous effects on society than legal drugs such as alcohol. Here is High Times’s top 10 reasons that marijuana should be legal, part of its 420 Campaign legalization strategy.

10. Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana. The government has tried to use criminal penalties to prevent marijuana use for over 75 years and yet: marijuana is now used by over 25 million people annually, cannabis is currently the largest cash crop in the United States, and marijuana is grown all over the planet. Claims that marijuana prohibition is a successful policy are ludicrous and unsupported by the facts, and the idea that marijuana will soon be eliminated from America and the rest of the world is a ridiculous fantasy.

9. Arrests for marijuana possession disproportionately affect blacks and Hispanics and reinforce the perception that law enforcement is biased and prejudiced against minorities. African-Americans account for approximately 13% of the population of the United States and about 13.5% of annual marijuana users, however, blacks also account for 26% of all marijuana arrests. Recent studies have demonstrated that blacks and Hispanics account for the majority of marijuana possession arrests in New York City, primarily for smoking marijuana in public view. Law enforcement has failed to demonstrate that marijuana laws can be enforced fairly without regard to race; far too often minorities are arrested for marijuana use while white/non-Hispanic Americans face a much lower risk of arrest.

8. A regulated, legal market in marijuana would reduce marijuana sales and use among teenagers, as well as reduce their exposure to other drugs in the illegal market. The illegality of marijuana makes it more valuable than if it were legal, providing opportunities for teenagers to make easy money selling it to their friends. If the excessive profits for marijuana sales were ended through legalization there would be less incentive for teens to sell it to one another. Teenage use of alcohol and tobacco remain serious public health problems even though those drugs are legal for adults, however, the availability of alcohol and tobacco is not made even more widespread by providing kids with economic incentives to sell either one to their friends and peers.

7. Legalized marijuana would reduce the flow of money from the American economy to international criminal gangs. Marijuana’s illegality makes foreign cultivation and smuggling to the United States extremely profitable, sending billions of dollars overseas in an underground economy while diverting funds from productive economic development.

6. Marijuana’s legalization would simplify the development of hemp as a valuable and diverse agricultural crop in the United States, including its development as a new bio-fuel to reduce carbon emissions. Canada and European countries have managed to support legal hemp cultivation without legalizing marijuana, but in the United States opposition to legal marijuana remains the biggest obstacle to development of industrial hemp as a valuable agricultural commodity. As US energy policy continues to embrace and promote the development of bio-fuels as an alternative to oil dependency and a way to reduce carbon emissions, it is all the more important to develop industrial hemp as a bio-fuel source – especially since use of hemp stalks as a fuel source will not increase demand and prices for food, such as corn. Legalization of marijuana will greatly simplify the regulatory burden on prospective hemp cultivation in the United States.

5. Prohibition is based on lies and disinformation. Justification of marijuana’s illegality increasingly requires distortions and selective uses of the scientific record, causing harm to the credibility of teachers, law enforcement officials, and scientists throughout the country. The dangers of marijuana use have been exaggerated for almost a century and the modern scientific record does not support the reefer madness predictions of the past and present. Many claims of marijuana’s danger are based on old 20th century prejudices that originated in a time when science was uncertain how marijuana produced its characteristic effects. Since the cannabinoid receptor system was discovered in the late 1980s these hysterical concerns about marijuana’s dangerousness have not been confirmed with modern research. Everyone agrees that marijuana, or any other drug use such as alcohol or tobacco use, is not for children. Nonetheless, adults have demonstrated over the last several decades that marijuana can be used moderately without harmful impacts to the individual or society.

4. Marijuana is not a lethal drug and is safer than alcohol. It is established scientific fact that marijuana is not toxic to humans; marijuana overdoses are nearly impossible, and marijuana is not nearly as addictive as alcohol or tobacco. It is unfair and unjust to treat marijuana users more harshly under the law than the users of alcohol or tobacco.

3. Marijuana is too expensive for our justice system and should instead be taxed to support beneficial government programs. Law enforcement has more important responsibilities than arresting 750,000 individuals a year for marijuana possession, especially given the additional justice costs of disposing of each of these cases. Marijuana arrests make justice more expensive and less efficient in the United States, wasting jail space, clogging up court systems, and diverting time of police, attorneys, judges, and corrections officials away from violent crime, the sexual abuse of children, and terrorism. Furthermore, taxation of marijuana can provide needed and generous funding of many important criminal justice and social programs.

2. Marijuana use has positive attributes, such as its medical value and use as a recreational drug with relatively mild side effects. Many people use marijuana because they have made an informed decision that it is good for them, especially Americans suffering from a variety of serious ailments. Marijuana provides relief from pain, nausea, spasticity, and other symptoms for many individuals who have not been treated successfully with conventional medications. Many American adults prefer marijuana to the use of alcohol as a mild and moderate way to relax. Americans use marijuana because they choose to, and one of the reasons for that choice is their personal observation that the drug has a relatively low dependence liability and easy-to-manage side effects. Most marijuana users develop tolerance to many of marijuana’s side effects, and those who do not, choose to stop using the drug. Marijuana use is the result of informed consent in which individuals have decided that the benefits of use outweigh the risks, especially since, for most Americans, the greatest risk of using marijuana is the relatively low risk of arrest.

1. Marijuana users are determined to stand up to the injustice of marijuana probation and accomplish legalization, no matter how long or what it takes to succeed. Despite the threat of arrests and a variety of other punishments and sanctions marijuana users have persisted in their support for legalization for over a generation. They refuse to give up their long quest for justice because they believe in the fundamental values of American society. Prohibition has failed to silence marijuana users despite its best attempts over the last generation. The issue of marijuana’s legalization is a persistent issue that, like marijuana, will simply not go away. Marijuana will be legalized because marijuana users will continue to fight for it until they succeed.

Source.

For over thirty years the US administration has under successive Presidents, provided a means for people suffering from painful, debilitating and sometimes terminal medical conditions, to have safe access to medical marijuana, putting to bed once and for all the myth that cannabis has no scientific rights to its claims of being an effective pharmaceutical drug.

Indeed if we listen to our political leaders today, cannabis has absolutely no medical worth, and is a dangerous narcotic which has no use to us as a species as it can ‘kill and maim’.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown even coined the term “lethal” when explaining to the British public why, whist all around the world administrations were making allowances for the use of cannabis, Great Britain was going the other way, increasing the punishments for those caught in possession.

Once upon a time any positive comments regarding the efficacy of cannabis as living medicine were limited to a few alternative therapists, perhaps specialising in wholly natural, holistic treatments for the human body and mind.

But recently this stance has been challenged with the glut of respected American organisations such as the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, the American College of Physicians and the Multiple Sclerosis society (amongst many others), who have grown to realise, under the weight of literally thousands of study’s and reports, that cannabis in its many guises, is proving to be an effective treatment for a great many of these conditions.

When you add to this the naturally low toxicity of medical marijuana, doctors and scientists are beginning to recognise the adverse public relations campaign which has been carried out for the past 90 years for exactly what it is.

Nothing more than a propaganda brief designed to protect the financial interests of one or two blue chip industries who feel threatened by the premonition of a new global industrial hemp business like that which is forming in Canada currently, and British orporate interests are doing everything they can to suffocate it.

Propaganda Masterclass
To find out exactly what is possible using widescale propaganda we need only to look to the second world war and the Nazi party.

It was Adolf Hitlers Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels who summed up the very essence of propaganda when he said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Using all means available to the Nazi party Adolf Hitler, who was in total control of every piece of information served up to the German people, was able to control, in a similar vein to how cannabis exposure is controlled today, exactly what information was disseminated in the German press.

How else could a former soldier from Austria who attained the heady rank of ‘Private’, control an entire race which is normally renowned for its teutonic efficiency in everything it does?

It was an effective campaign which facilitated Hitler’s sales pitch for world domination being swallowed hook line and sinker by an unsuspecting German nation and as time passes us by its becoming widely known that, whilst the passionate and charismatic Adolf Hitler was the perfect front man for the Third Reich, the majority of information served to the German people actually came from the office of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, using tactics and methodology which are still in use today.

You only need to read a British newspaper to see it in all its glory.

As a result the United Kingdom press pack simply refuses to cover any of the positive material relating to cannabis coming from Europe and the United States, in the hope that its people will not get to hear about it. Preferring instead to concentrate on the negative aspect of cannabis use.

Thus the biggest issue for the pioneers in the newly forming medical marijuana industry is not to prove the fact cannabis is an efficient and effective means of treating any number of mental and physical conditions as this has already been proven time and again.

The biggest problem with being at the forefront of an industry serving a public which has been drip fed on a constant stream of lies and adverse publicity (think ‘Reefer Madness’), is setting about untangling this 90 year old web of deceipt, and it takes a brave man to stand up in the public glare and attempt to put this situation to rights.

Steve Kubby
Some would say Steven Wynn Kubby IS that brave man.

In 1968, at the age of 23, he began experiencing symptoms of hypertension and palpitations.

He was diagnosed with malignant pheochromocytoma, a rare, normally terminal form of adrenal cancer.

Kubby underwent surgery to remove tumor’s in 1968, 1975 and 1976.

In 1976, his medical records show that the cancer had metastasised to his liver and beyond and what makes this a truly fantastic story is the fact that all other patients with this diagnosis have had a 100% mortality rate within five years.

His physician, Dr. Vincent DeQuattro, a specialist from the USC School of Medicine, monitored his condition and treated him with conventional therapies, including chemotherapy, until referring him to the Mayo Clinic in 1981 for yet another surgery and radiation therapy.

For the next 25 years, Kubby claimed to control the symptoms of his disease solely by smoking medical marijuana and by maintaining a healthy diet.

His original doctor, an expert on this condition who was shocked to learn he was still alive said, “In some amazing fashion, this medication has not only controlled the symptoms of the pheochromocytoma, but in my view, has arrested its growth.”

Reason enough for a person to have complete blind faith in cannabis when all around him are telling him otherwise.

Cannabis Science Inc.
More recently Steven Kubby has searched out a higher platform from which to inform people of the benefits of using cannabis as medicine, as he pioneers a path out from illegality and onto the world stage with his company Cannabis Science Inc, which you can buy stock in today.

Along with Prof. Robert Melamede, who was until recently chairman of the Biology Department at UC, (University of Colorado), Steve Kubby has created and launched the first company to deal primarily in intellectual properties – patents on products and processes – leaving capital-intensive problems such as regulatory compliance, mass production and marketing to the “old guard” pharmaceutical companies who license those patents.

But what makes Cannabis Science Inc stand apart from the pharmaceutical industry which we know and love, is whilst the existing pharmaceutical industry is heavily geared, by inclination and in terms of infrastructure, toward the development and testing of synthetic compounds, Cannabis Science inc will focus on a relatively new and under-explored niche in the pharmaceutical market: Whole-plant cannabinoid compounds derived from certified organic ingredients.

Its an exciting new market and one which is sure to bloom as the pharmaceutical industry, and the press which is used so blatantly to sell their products realises they can no longer bludgeon global citizens with blizzards of material from the reefer madness era of times gone by.

Whether you personally agree or disagree with the use of cannabis in medicine is of little consequence. The fact is, its doing what Steven Kubby has always said it can do, which makes Cannabis Science Inc one of the most exciting stocks on the market currently, and a hugely worthwhile long term investment. Source.