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A Brief But Very Real and Blood Boiling History of Why Cannabis is Illegal

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 Cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells, save the lives of countless epileptic children, treat PTSD, heal bones, treat brain trauma, and a slew of other uses science is only beginning to understand. And yet, the only thing dangerous about this seemingly miraculous plant is that police will kidnap, cage, or kill you for possessing it.

Bill Murray makes a good point. #EndTheDrugWarThe Free Thought Project.com (Y)

To understand why the state is so adamant about locking people in cages over a plant, we have to look at the history of that plant’s prohibition.

Looking at the legislation, it’s obvious the Southwestern states outlawed marijuana to control an undesired Mexican population. It wasn’t marijuana that legislatures were fighting, it was its users; cheap Mexican labor was a problem. Congressmen rallied around statements such as, “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy”, and “Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona.”

Northeastern states had entirely different reasons for the ban. According to a 1919 New York Times editorial, “No one here in New York uses this drug marijuana. We have only just heard about it from down in the Southwest, but we had better prohibit its use before it gets here. Otherwise all the heroin and hard narcotics addicts…and all the alcohol drinkers…will substitute this new and unknown drug marijuana.”

Utah, however, enacted marijuana law for its own reasons. When the Mormon Church decreed polygamy a mistake in 1910, those in disagreement fled to Mexico. Failing to establish settlement, the group returned to Utah in 1914 with marijuana. The Church, opposed to euphoriants of any kind, declared marijuana prohibited and wrote it, with other religious prohibitions, into the state’s criminal law.

With 27 states prohibiting marijuana, it wasn’t long until federal legislation tried to control this “growing problem”. Not yet able to mandate criminal law, a common states’ rights issue of the time, the legislation came in the form of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

 

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 moved through congress very quickly. The Congressional committee hearings lasted one hour each over two days. The hearings featured several testimonies: Harry Anslinger(the newly named Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics), industry spokesmen for rope, paint, and birdseed, and medical testimony from Drs. James C. Munch and William C. Woodward.

Each argument can easily be paraphrased. Mr. Anslinger essentially said that marijuana was a “national menace”. The paint and rope spokesmen didn’t care; they could use other resources. The birdseed spokesman claimed they absolutely needed marijuana seeds to produce shiny coats, and to this day possess an exemption to use “denatured seeds.” Dr. Munch conducted an experiment, from which he couldn’t draw a conclusion. Dr. Woodward, a representative of the American Medical Association, stated, “The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.”

The bill went to the Congressional floor on Aug. 20; it was there for less than two minutes. When asked what the bill concerned, the Speaker replied, “I don’t know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it’s a narcotic of some kind.”

When asked if the AMA supported the bill, one member of the committee replied, “They support this bill 100 percent.” This was a lie, but the bill passed anyway. It then cleared the Senate without debate, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law.

Afterward, Mr. Anslinger named Dr. Munch his expert witness; a position he held until 1962. During that time, Dr. Munch went on to repeatedly testify, “After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat,” and claimed that he flew around the room for fifteen minutes before finding himself at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot high ink well.

From that point on, when the public perceived an increase in drug use, the answer was new criminal law with harsher penalties in every offense category. When the federal government discovered that organized crime was funded through illegal narcotics, even harsher penalties were enacted. Through repetition of this pattern, drug penalties increased eightfold over 20 years. The war on drugs had begun.

Those who continue this madness are either incredibly foolish or profiting from it. As the Former UN Secretary General said in an op-ed this week, “The war on drugs is a war on people.”

The time to end the drug war is now. Please share this article with your friends and family so that they will know the lunacy and corruption that led to the suppression of this amazing plant.

 Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.

WARNING: The conspiratorial stupidity and mania surrounding the prohibition of cannabis are massively infuriating. 

Using the data compiled at DrugLibrary.org, Nick Panetta, the public relations director of UGA NORML sums up the history of drug war quite eloquently.

Historically, marijuana drug laws are the product of a lack of knowledge, and what must either be described as propaganda or complete lunacy. Prior to the federal Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, 27 states had passed laws against Marijuana. Those states could be categorized into three groups: Southwestern, Northeastern, and Utah.

Source:http://thefreethoughtproject.com

“All Cannabis Use is Medicinal” Whether You Know it Or Not

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In the past two years, we have witnessed a sea of change in the attitude of Americans toward cannabis. Colorado made history by becoming the first state to completely decriminalize possession and use of the plant, with Washington and other states soon following.

Medical cannabis use is now legal in 23 states, and others will soon be joining that list. Polls find that a solid majority of Americans support cannabis legalization, especially for medicinal use. The Free Thought Project has reported on many incredible ways that cannabis is being used to treat a variety of ailments. Its effectiveness at reducing or eliminating epileptic seizures is nothing short of amazing.

 People are also realizing that the war on cannabis—and all drugs for that matter—is a war on people carried out by law enforcement to restrict freedom and to extort millions of dollars for victimless behavior. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) gains a sizable amount of revenue through cannabis seizures. The dried plant also provides ample opportunity for local law enforcement to carry out its favorite, most insidious form of extortion known as Civil Asset Forfeiture.

The good news is that these abuses of human rights are being exposed, and law enforcement is sounding ever more desperate as justification for their actions withers under the advance of reason and logic. When cannabis is finally decriminalized everywhere, our evolution from the days of Reefer Madness will provide an entertaining yet tragic documentary.

The fight continues, and we must build on the momentum if we are to see it to completion. The arguments for legalization are many, and they are sound. But perhaps the entire narrative needs to be reconsidered as we make the final push.

source:http://thefreethoughtproject.com

They Can See a ‘Stick of Butter from Space’ — The Billion Dollar Spy Agency You’ve Never Heard Of

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While most Americans would consider the CIA, and perhaps the NSA, household names, one U.S. spy agency — whose headquarters surpasses the U.S. Capitol in size — has managed to keep to the shadows while possessing cutting edge tools of the surveillance trade.

Called the  National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), even former President Barack Obama didn’t know of its existence when he first took office — despite that the agency employs some 15,400 people.

“So, what do you [do]?” Obama asked a customer at a Washington, D.C., Five Guys hamburgers in May 2009.

“I work at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” he answered.

 “Outstanding,” then-president Obama asserted. “How long have you been doing that?”

“Six years.”

“So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial …” Obama asked, unable to recall the agency’s full name.

Timidly, the man replied, “Uh, we work with, uh, satellite imagery.”

“Obama appeared dumbfounded,” Foreign Policy’s James Bamford reports. “Eight years after that videotape aired, the NGA remains by far the most shadowy member of the Big Five spy agencies, which include the CIA and the National Security Agency.”

The NGA’s secretive identity belies the agency’s massive physical size and the scope of its surveillance activities, as Bamford continues,

“Completed in 2011 at a cost of $1.4 billion, the main building measures four football fields long and covers as much ground as two aircraft carriers. In 2016, the agency purchased 99 acres in St. Louis to construct additional buildings at a cost of $1.75 billion to accommodate the growing workforce, with 3,000 employees already in the city.

“The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe. But because it has largely kept its ultra-high-resolution cameras pointed away from the United States, according to a variety of studies, the agency has never been involved in domestic spy scandals like its two far more famous siblings, the CIA and the NSA. However, there’s reason to believe that this will change under President Donald Trump.”

Originally tasked primarily with cartography — before a mammoth expansion, the spy arm had been called the National Imagery and Mapping Agency — until a name and mission switch in 2003 gave the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency its name, with the hyphen allowing a three-letter acronym so enamored by the government.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose fondness for imagery intelligence became known when he served as a general during World War II, created the National Photographic Interpretation Center shortly before leaving office — an agency also later absorbed by the NGA.

Now, the NGA works in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force to analyze the staggering amount of data collected through aerial surveillance abroad — mostly by unmanned aerial systems, such as drones with high-powered cameras.

According to at least one source, as of 2013, the NGA was integral in the analysis of surveillance data pertaining to Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Revelations on the depth and breadth of the Central Intelligence Agency’s domestic capabilities, long believed out of its territory, was exposed by Wikileaks Vault 7 recently to be on par with National Security Agency programs — so much so, analysts say it constitutes a duplicate Big Brother.

Data provided to the NGA by military officials has assisted in various U.S. operations in the Middle East by tracking vehicles believed responsible for planting improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and for monitoring hot spots for insurgent breakouts.

But the NGA hardly only keeps to support operations, as David Brown — author of the book, “Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry” — explained,

“Before the trigger was pulled on NEPTUNE’S SPEAR, the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, SEAL Team Six had access to a perfect replica of the Abbottabad compound where the terrorist mastermind was hiding. The details for the replica were gathered by the NGA, which used laser radar and imagery to construct a 3D rendering of the compound. How precise were its measurements and analysis? The NGA figured out how many people lived at the compound, their gender, and even their heights. But the NGA didn’t stop there: Its calculations also helped the pilots of the stealth Black Hawks know precisely where to land.”

With a combined budget request for 2017 of $70.3 billion, the National and Military Intelligence Programs — NGA falls under the latter — have seen a quickening of support from the authoritarian-leaning, pro-military Trump administration. This and additional factors — such as the astonishingly sophisticated equipment at the agency’s disposal — have ignited fears the NGA could be granted authority to bring its expert microscope into focus against the American people.

“While most of the technological capacities are classified, an anonymous NGA analyst told media the agency can determine the structure of buildings and objects from a distance, has some of the most sophisticated facial recognition software on the planet and uses sensors on satellites and drones that can see through thick clouds for ‘all-weather’ imagery analysis,” reports news.com.au.

Efforts to bolster NGA’s innovate staff pool ratcheted up on Thursday, as Business Wire reported,

“From navigating a U.S. aircraft to making national policy decisions, to responding to natural disasters: today’s U.S. armed forces rely on Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) to meet mission requirements. As the nation’s primary source of GEOINT for the Department of Defense and the U.S. Intelligence Community, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) depends on the National Geospatial-Intelligence College (NGC) to produce top-tier talent to deliver intelligence with a decisive advantage. Today, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) announced that it has been awarded a five-year, $86 million contract by NGA-NGC to lead the Learning Management and Advancement Program (LMAP) that will provide high-quality learning solutions to equip a diverse workforce with the knowledge and skills necessary to meet current and future GEOINT mission requirements.”

Bamford points out for Foreign Policy the Trump administration intimated a significant expansion of spying on mosques and Islamic centers, while others admonish said surveillance could put Black Lives Matter and other protest groups in the NGA’s silent crosshairs.

Of distinct concern for privacy advocates are drones with uncanny zooming capabilities — features used against U.S. citizens before. Bamford continues,

“In 2016, unbeknownst to many city officials, police in Baltimore began conducting persistent aerial surveillance using a system developed for military use in Iraq. Few civilians have any idea how advanced these military eye-in-the-sky drones have become. Among them is ARGUS-IS, the world’s highest-resolution camera with 1.8 billion pixels. Invisible from the ground at nearly four miles in the air, it uses a technology known as ‘persistent stare’ — the equivalent of 100 Predator drones peering down at a medium-size city at once — to track everything that moves.

“With the capability to watch an area of 10 or even 15 square miles at a time, it would take just two drones hovering over Manhattan to continuously observe and follow all outdoor human activity, night and day. It can zoom in on an object as small as a stick of butter on a plate and store up to 1 million terabytes of data a day. That capacity would allow analysts to look back in time over days, weeks, or months. Technology is in the works to enable drones to remain aloft for years at a time.”

With cutting edge technology, a rapid enlargement underway, and billions in budgetary funds at the ready, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is the cloaked, mute sibling of the nefarious Intelligence Community — but it’s time to pull the protective shell off this potential ticking time bomb before reining it in becomes an impossibility.

Source:http://thefreethoughtproject.com