Thursday, April 2nd, 2009...2:09 pm
Strange Bedfellows Department
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Ron Paul has re-introduced one of his perennial bills: The Industrial Hemp Farming Act. While a bit unusual for a Republican, not that unusual for a Republican that was the 1988 nominee of the Libertarian Party. Oh, and this is for it’s use as a fiber and food…what were you thinking of?
Among Paul’s co-sponsors, Raúl Grijalva.
Paul and Grijalva together? There is no snark that can properly be expressed here.
2 Comments
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:22 am
Go Grijalva and Paul!
April 7th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Just to make a point here,
Let’s remember that:
1. Hemp was legal until the 1940’s when banning it became the last success of the dying prohibitionist movement (though their final breath was drawn on the internet– the last bleached bones of the Prohibition Party).
2. As one of my college instructors (who incidentally is a drug addiction researcher and has the patent on nicoderm) was fond of saying, “A lethal dose of marijuana is a 500 pound bale dropped from 10 feet over your head);
3. By keeping it illegal, combined with the RICOH statutes we have completely unbalanced the priorities of law enforcement, especially now that they are depending more heavily than ever on drug-related seizures for a big part of their budgets);
4. Advocating the legalization of hemp is no longer the kiss of death for a politician– all of the 20 or so cosponsors that Barney Frank et al get for this every year don’t suffer politically for it, Heck even President Obama recently referred to people who advocate legalizing marijuana, although he said he’s against it.;
Therefore the Frank-Paul hemp bill deserves a fair hearing. We should have an open debate in this country about marijuana and what the criminal, health and economic effects would be of legalization.
I for one am not afraid to say (even though I’m a practicing LDS church member who would never use it myself) that there is no good reason that I can see for keeping it illegal, therefore we should make it legal.