Cannabis - God's gift to the world.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11)

God gave us cannabis; a herb yielding seed and he saw that it was good.

Some translations of the bible simply replace the word 'herb' with the word 'plant'. Either way, cannabis is a plant or a herb which yields seed.  It was created by God and for good.  Now if it was good enough for God to create this plant for us, then it is good enough for us to use it.  

Cannabis is arguably the most useful and beneficial plant in God's inventory, yet man saw fit during the 20th century to ban it.  Please explain how one bans nature?

For thousands of years, all civilizations relied on hemp (a product of the cannabis plant) for clothing, shipping, building and food.  Even the mighty American empire was founded on hemp and into the 20th century many American farmers grew the product for use in maritime and military applications.  During World War II, the US government encouraged and relied on farmer to produce hemp.  The US government was so proud of their reliance on hemp that they produced a short film called "Hemp for Victory".

Products made from cannabis have the ability to reduce our environmental footprint, improve our health and remove our reliance on expensive medicines.  Some of the products derived from cannabis include:

• biodiesel fuel
• medicinal use
• building products such as decking, fencing, roofing
• other products such as brake linings
• hemp was used for years by sailors for sails, ropes, rigging, nets, clothing, shoes, flags, shrouds and oakum. The word canvas is derived from the Greek word kannabis.
• it was used for years for linen, drapes, rugs, tents 
• food, eg oils, seeds, dietary fibre
• clothing
• paper

Cannabis does not have a negative impact on the environment, unlike cotton.  For example, cotton requires significant pesticides and fertilizers.  Cannabis has no natural weed or insect enemies and grows rapidly unlike forests, it requires a quarter of the land that cotton does and does not deplete the soil like cotton does yet produces clothing which is finer, softer, warmer and more durable than cotton.  To increase the fibre quality of hemp products, the plants are grown closer together.

The hallucinogenic properties of cannabis are caused by a compound called tetra-hydrocannabinol (THC). Governments of some countries, including Australia, have authorised the regulated production of low-THC cannabis for industrial purposes.  This type of cannabis does not have the hallucinatory effects that THC-containing cannabis does, nor does it have the medicinal properties THC-containing cannabis does. It is the THC which provides the healing and relieving properties of many illnesses including bronchitis, asthma, whooping cough, convulsions tuberculosis, nausea, epilepsy, stroke, wasting from cancer, AIDS or anorexia etc, attention deficit disorder, tourette's syndrome, migraine, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, bipolar, alzheimers, glaucoma and treats the side effects of chemotherapy.  Medical investigators in Spain have discovered that cannabis shrinks brain tumours (refer to http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/cancerstudy.htm).   For thousands of years, the inhalation of marijuana smoke has been used to treat the symptoms of asthma as it causes bronchial dilation for more than an hour which makes it more effective than a bronchiodilator.

Won't legalisation increase people's usage of it?  Cannabis is not a physically addictive drug. Police can test if someone is under the influence although this testing is flawed, because it does not show if the person merely was in the presence of someone smoking it nor does it show the level of THC in their system.  THC can remain detectable for up to 8 weeks but it does not affect the person for that period of time.  Driver testing needs to be improved to determine if the person's driving is impaired. Having said that, there is a big difference between someone driving under the influence of cannabis and someone driving under the influence of alcohol.  Under cannabis, most people can still judge distance, they aren't encouraged to speed and are generally aware of their limitations and modify their driving to account for it.  Under alcohol a driver's ability to judge speed and distance is greatly affected as is their ability to drive in a straight line or to negotiate corners.  Persons driving under the influence of cannabis do not have this problem.

Benefits from legalisation:

• tax for the government if grown commercially
• keeps normally law abiding citizens out of the prison system (which is merely a university for crime).
• it is not a 'gateway' drug in the sense that using it does not encourage a person to step up to other drugs. However, whilst it remains illegal and users are buying it from drug dealers there is the possibility of dealers offering other drugs such as LSD, cocaine, speed and so on which users may be enticed to buy. Legalising cannabis will remove this problem.

No-one has ever directly died from the ingestion of cannabis whereas many legal compounds have directly caused the deaths of thousands of people. The below table is reprinted from www.jackherer.com and similar statistics are provided at http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

In Section 8, pages 56-57 of Judge Young's ruling on the United States Department of Justice (Drug Enforcement Administration) Matter for the Petition for Rescheduling of Marijuana he stated:

• 4. 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.
• 9. In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.

Refer to: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/YOUNG/index.html

Marijuana has been consumed by millions of people over thousands of years with NO recorded fatalities.  During the 19th century many pharmaceutical medicines were prescribed by doctors to treat a range of ailments.  It was even prescribed to children at levels which far exceed that ingested by the average cannabis user today.  The worst effect documented was paranoia.

It is without doubt the most useful plant that God has given us, yet governments persist in maintaining the criminalisation of it. Perhaps governments and pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with the loss of revenue from people being able to self-medicate rather than being reliant on expensive and often times ineffective remedies. The world will not end with the re-legalisation of cannabis and in fact, will be greatly improved through the increased production of cannabis, resulting in reduced harmful effects on the environment and improved health and treatment of ailments.

Re-legalise cannabis.