Made in the U.S.A.

By David Bearman, Santa Barbara

 
We all agree that we need to generate tax dollars and pump money into the economy. Here is an idea as old as America itself. It should strongly appeal to local agricultural interests, those who wish to promote economic growth, and people who support made-in-America products. It follows the logic of a recent News-Press editorial urging increased local oil production. The very conservative writer felt that we should look to the resources available right here in Santa Barbara County for increased tax and private-profit dollars. My suggestion is much less controversial and more environmentally friendly than increasing oil production — grow hemp.
If hemp were grown here we would join the roughly 35 countries in the world where it is legal to grow hemp. Sixteen of these United States have legalized the growing of hemp. A North Dakota rancher, who is also a Republican state legislator there, has sued the federal government to allow him to grow hemp pursuant to North Dakota’s hemp law. He has been quoted as saying that it makes no sense to him that Canadian ranchers less than 50 miles from his ranch, just over the Canadian/U.S. border, are growing hemp and profiting from it, while he can’t.

Dr. David Bearman

Click to enlarge photo
Paul Wellman
Dr. David Bearman

There are compelling economic reasons for legalizing it. Hemp can be one of the pillars for lifting us out of our current economic doldrums. That hemp is commercially viable is no secret. In the late 1930s, Henry Ford built nearly an entire car from hemp. In WWII, hemp was so vital to the war effort that if you were a farmer who grew hemp, neither you nor your sons could be drafted. Over 25,000 products can be made from hemp. For those who care, you can’t get high from hemp because it contains very low levels of the euphoriant THC and high levels of the antieuphoriant CBD.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.independent.com/news/2011/dec/17/made-us/

Legalizing marijuana: Police officers speak out

PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie Editor’s Corner
with PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie
 
We conduct a fair number of member surveys and polls here on PoliceOne — some of which produce relatively-predictable results. There are occasions, however, where we’re thoroughly and completely surprised by the vote tally. This, as you may have already figured out, is one of those occasions. We asked, “Should pot be legal?” and of the roughly 1,700 respondents (at the time this column posts to PoliceOne), a full 44 percent said either ‘Yes, that’s where we’re headed.’ or ‘Maybe, depending on specifics.’ The other 56 percent came down on the side of either ‘No, legalization is a bad idea.’ or ‘Are you high? Of course not!’
That 12 percent margin may seem to be a wide chasm, but compared to a somewhat similar poll conducted here on PoliceOne about two-and-a-half years ago, the split was far smaller — there was a margin somewhere along the lines of a 64-36 in that poll back in 2009.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.policeone.com/drug-interdiction-narcotics/articles/4835061-Legalizing-marijuana-Police-officers-speak-out/
 

Get a Medical Marijuana Card, Lose Your Second Amendment Rights



 
If you are a medical marijuana patient in one of the 16 states (plus the District of Columbia) that allow for it, you’ve got reason to believe lately that the government has it in for you.
You’ve got federal raids on the places where you can conveniently buy your medicine, the governor of Arizona trying to overturn in court her citizens’ choice to institute a medical marijuana system, and Michigan’s attorney general trying to make life as hard as he can for those using the system his state’s voters approved by 63 percent in 2008. And while it isn’t directly the government’s fault, doctors are taking people off liver transplant waiting lists for using medical pot.
It isn’t just that the government on both the federal and state level doesn’t want you to be able to legally and conveniently obtain your medicine, if that medicine is pot. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) insists you inherently lose a key constitutional right merely by letting your state know you might want to take pot medicinally.
Merely having a state medical marijuana card, BATFE insists, means that you fall afoul of Sect. 922(g) of the federal criminal code (from the 1968 federal Gun Control Act), which says that anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” is basically barred from possessing or receiving guns or ammo (with the bogus assertion that such possession implicates interstate commerce, which courts will pretty much always claim it does).
 
Read complete article here:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/16/get-a-medical-marijuana-card-lose-your-s

Wired for sound


 
A lightweight audio system integrated into a car’s interior roof could soon render loudspeaker units in door modules or instrument panels obsolete, while the headliner itself is likely to be of hemp, flax, kenaf and sisal nonwovens and soy foam as a replacement for fibreglass fabrics.
The new audio concept has been introduced at 2011 car shows by Johnson Controls, which is now the leading supplier of automotive fabrics worldwide.
In its ie:3 demonstrator car,  the headliners and trim become loudspeakers, and a digital signal processor (DSP) maximizes the audio performance, while LED lighting in tune with the acoustics creates a relaxing interior ambience.
http://www.sustainablenonwovens.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11223%3Ajohnson&catid=26%3Aindustrial-products&Itemid=2
 
 

Wake Up and Smell the Hemp

Tony Jones, GoLocalProv Guest MINDSETTER™

 
“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” -Thomas Jefferson.
It’s ironic that the country founded on the principals of and liberty and freedom still prohibits it’s citizens from growing a plant. I’m talking, of course, about industrial hemp. A plant that has more than 30,000 uses and is considered to be a “superfood”. This absurdity continues by the fact that hemp allowed to be imported from other country’s but is forbidden to be grown in America.

Did you know that The US Constitution was written on hemp paper? The first American flag was made out of hemp. In the past army uniforms were made of hemp. In 1937 Popular Science Magazine called hemp “The New Billion Dollar Crop.”
And then it was banned…
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.golocalprov.com/news/guest-mindsetter-tony-jones-wake-up-and-smell-the-hemp/
 

A better way to make paper

Why do we cling to the notion that paper products must come from trees? At least two sustainable alternatives exist: Hemp and bamboo.
Industrial hemp, the blue-collar cousin to marijuana that has no psychoactive properties, has been grown for at least 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food. (Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper, according to the North American Industrial Hemp Council.) It was grown commercially in the U.S. until the 1950s.
States are increasingly authorizing the cultivation of hemp, USA Today reported. From 1999 through last year, 17 states have enacted measures that would either permit controlled cultivation or authorize research. Hemp, as fiber or oilseed, is used to make thousands of products, including clothing and auto parts. Proponents say American farmers and industry are being shut out of a lucrative market as more than 30 countries, including Canada, grow hemp as an agricultural commodity.
(One of those countries is France, where Kimberly-Clark has a mill that produces hemp paper preferred for bibles because it lasts a very long time and doesn’t yellow, according to the hemp council.)
Importantly, hemp can be pulped using fewer chemicals than with wood. It doesn’t require chlorine bleach, which means no extremely toxic dioxin being dumped into streams.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111214/OPINION01/712149976

Newt Gingrich A Hypocrite For Supporting Death Penalty For Marijuana Smugglers, Gary Johnson Says

WASHINGTON — Longshot GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson attacked frontrunner Newt Gingrich for supporting the death penalty for marijuana smugglers even though he has admitted to smoking the drug himself during graduate school.
Gingrich “proposed the death penalty for marijuana — for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana — and yet he is among 100 million Americans who smoke marijuana,” Johnson told MSNBC’s Alex Witt over the weekend.
An outspoken critic of federal drug control policy, Johnson added he “would love to have a discussion with [Gingrich] on the fact that he smoked pot, and under the wrong set of circumstances, he proposed the death penalty for something, potentially, that he had committed?”
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/gary-johnson-newt-gingrich-marijuana-hyprocrisy_n_1146739.html

Could Medical Marijuana Reduce Patients’ Need for Opioid Painkillers?

By Maia Szalavitz

A small, new study backs a long-standing claim of advocates of medical marijuana: pain patients can safely use cannabis while taking opioid painkillers, and may actually need fewer pills because of it.
The research included 21 chronic pain patients, who were taking either long-acting morphine or Oxycontin twice a day. Adding marijuana to these opioid drugs reduced patients’ pain by an average of 27% and did not significantly affect blood levels of the prescription drugs. If marijuana had raised those blood levels, it could have increased overdose risk.
“The combination may allow for opioid treatment at lower doses with fewer side effects,” the authors concluded.

Poll: Should Police Enforce the Marijuana-Possession Law?

By Elissa Bass

 
On Tuesday, the City of New London’s new mayor, Daryl Finizio, signed an executive order telling city police officers they should no longer issue an infraction or violation to anyone who possesses marijuana or associated paraphernalia on private property.
On Wednesday, the New London State’s Attorney said Finizio did not have the authority to do that.
In June, Connecticut became the 14th state to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana after the General Assembly approved changes to the laws. Under the new law, “possession of less than one-half ounce of marijuana as an infraction with a $150 fine, rather than as a criminal misdemeanor. The fine would increase to $200 to $500 for subsequent offenses, with referral to a drug education program after the third violation. Offenders under age 21 would also lose their driver’s license for 60 days and juveniles 16 years of age and under will be referred to juvenile court.”
Gov. Dannel Malloy signed the law.
What do you think about this issue? Take our poll and add your thoughts in the comments.
 
See poll here:
http://meriden.patch.com/articles/poll-should-police-enforce-the-marijuana-possession-law
 
 

Drug war’s mission creep hurts farmer

By: A. Barton Hinkle
 

 
Every war produces collateral damage, including America’s war on drugs — whose manifold victims include any number of farmers in Virginia. Jim Politis has a plan to help them. But first, he will have to get it past Congress.
Politis is a retired businessman who now sits on the Board of Supervisors in Montgomery County, home to Virginia Tech. He wants Washington to let farmers grow industrial hemp. That should be an easy sell. Once upon a time, hemp cultivation was not only permitted but required: An act of Virginia’s General Assembly in 1623 mandated hemp-growing.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. It remained a popular source of fiber for rope, clothing and many other products until the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which pretty much killed off domestic hemp production.
The industry enjoyed a revival during WWII, when Japanese forces cut off the hemp supply from the Philippines. Washington even produced a “Hemp for Victory” propaganda film. Then the war ended, and the lid slammed shut again.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/dec/09/tdopin02-drug-wars-mission-creep-hurts-farmer-ar-1530956/