Click here for version of this chapter with pictures.
Click here for version of this chapter with pictures.
 |
| Electric Emperor |
These pages are huge! Please let your browser load the entire web page before you try to use links that may not be loaded yet.
Explanations or docum entations marked with an asterisk (*) are listed at the end of the related paragraph(s). Other sources for facts, anecdotes, histories, studies, etc., are cited for brevity in the body of the text. Numbered footnotes are at the end of each chapter. Reprod uctions of selected critical source materials are incorporated into the body of the text or included in the appendices.
The facts cited herein are generally verifiable in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was printed primarily on pa per produced with cannabis hemp for over 150 years. However, any encyclopedia (no matter how old) or good dictionary will do for general verification purposes.
Also known as: Hemp, cannabis hemp, Indian (India) hemp, true hemp, muggles, pot marijuana, reefer, grass, ganja, bhang, “the kind,” dagga, herb, etc., all refer to exactly the same plant.
(U.S. Geography)
HEMPstead, Long Island; HEMPstead County, Arkansas; HEMPstead, Texas; HEMPhill, North Carolina, HEMPfield, Pennsylvania, among others were named after cannabis growing regions, or after family names derived from hemp growing.
In 1619, America’s first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, “ordering” all farmers to “mak e tryal of” (grow) Indian hemp seed. More mandatory (must-grow) hemp cultivation laws were enacted in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut in 1632 and in the Chesapeake Colonies into the mid-1700s.
Even in England, the much-soug ht-after prize of full British citizenship was bestowed by a decree of the crown on foreigners who would grow cannabis, and fines were often levied against those who refused.
Cannabis hemp was legal tender (money) in most of the Ameri cas from 1631 until the early 1800s. Why? To encourage American farmers to grow more.
1. Clark, V.S., History of Manufacture in the United States, McGraw Hill, NY 1929, Pg. 34.
You could pay your taxes with cannab is hemp throughout America for over 200 years.
2. Ibid.
You could even be jailed in America for not growing cannabis during several periods of shortage, e.g., in Virginia between 1763 and 1767.
(Herndon, G.M., Hemp in Colonial Virginia, 1963; The Chesapeake Colonies, 1954; L.A. Times, August 12, 1981; et al.)
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis on their plantations. Jefferson,3 while envoy to France, went to great expense—and even considerable risk to himself and his secret agents—to procure particularly good hemp seeds smuggled illegally into Turkey from China. The Chinese Mandarins (political rulers) so valued their hemp seeds that they made th eir exportation a capital offense.
Benjamin Franklin started one of America’s first paper mills with cannabis. This allowed America to have a free colonial press without having to beg or justify paper and books from England.
< p ALIGN=LEFT> The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp “plantations”* (minimum 2,000 acre farms) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas, and even the cordage used for baling cotton. Most of these plantations were located in the Sou th or in the border states, primarily because of the cheap slave-labor available prior to 1865 for the labor-intensive hemp industry.(U.S. Census, 1850; Allen, James Lane, The Reign of Law, A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields, MacMill an Co., NY, 1900; Roffman, Roger, Ph.D., Marijuana as Medicine, Mendrone Books, WA, 1982.)
* This figure does not include the tens of thousands of smaller farms growing cannabis, nor the hundreds of thousands—if not millions— ;of family hemp patches in America; nor does it take into account that 80% of America’s hemp consumption for 200 years still had to be imported from Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland well into this century.
Benjamin Fra nklin started one of America’s first paper mills with cannabis. This allowed America to have a free colonial press without having to beg or justify paper and books from England.
In addition, varying marijuana and hashish extracts were the first, second or third most prescribed medicines in the United States from 1842 until the 1890s. Its legal medicinal use continued through the 1930s for humans and figured even more prominently in veterinary medicines during this time.
Cannabis extract medicines were produced by Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Tildens, Brothers Smith (Smith Brothers), Squibb and many other American and European companies and apothecaries. During all this time there was not one reported death from ca nnabis extract medicines, and virtually no abuse or mental disorders reported, except for first-time or novice-users occasionally becoming disoriented or overly introverted.
(Mikuriya, Tod, M.D., Marijuana Medical Papers, Medi-Comp Pr ess, CA 1973; Cohen, Sidney & Stillman, Richard, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana, Plenum Press, NY, 1976.)
“The earliest known woven fabric was apparentl y of hemp, which began to be worked in the eighth millennium (8,000-7,000 B.C.E.).” (The Columbia History of the World, 1981, page 54.)
The body of literature (archaeologists, anthropologists, philologists, economists, historians , etc.) is in general agreement that, at the very least:
From more than 1,000 years before the time of Christ until 1883 C.E., cannabis hemp—indeed, marijuana—was our planet’s largest agricultural crop and most importan t industry for thousands of products and enterprises; producing the overall majority of earth’s fiber, fabric, lighting oil, paper, incense, and medicines, as well as a primary source of essential food oil and protein for humans and animals.
And according to virtually every anthropologist and university in the world, marijuana was also used in most of our religions and cults as one of the seven, or so, most widely used mood-, mind- or pain-altering drugs taken as psychotropic psy chedelic (mind-manifesting or -expanding) sacraments.
These sacred (drug) experiences inspired our superstitions, amulets, talismans, religions, prayers, and language codes, almost without exception. (See chapter 10 on “Religions and Magic.”)
(Wasson, R. Gordon, Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality; Allegro, J.M., Sacred Mushroom & the Cross, Doubleday, NY 1969; Pliny; Josephus; Herodotus; Dead Sea Scrolls; Gnostic Gospels; the Bible; Ginsberg Legend s Kaballah, c. 1860; Paracelsus; British Museum;Budge; Ency. Brittanica, “Pharmacological Cults;” Schultes & Wasson, Plants of the Gods; Research of: R.E. Schultes, Harvard Botanical Dept.; W. EmBoden, Cal State U., Northridge; et al.)
For example, one of the primary reasons for the War of 1812 (that Americans fought with Great Britain) was access to Russian cannabis he mp. Russian hemp was also the principal reason that Napoleon (our 1812 ally) and his “Continental Systems” allies invaded Russia in 1812. (See chapter 12, “War of 1812 and Napoleon Invades Russia.”)
In 1942, after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines cut off the supply of Manila (Abaca) hemp, the U.S. government distributed 400,000 pounds of cannabis seeds to American farmers from Wisconsin to Kentucky, who produced 42,000 tons of hemp fiber annually for the wa r effort until 1946.
Because cannabis hemp is, overall, the strongest, most-durable, longest-lasting natural soft-fiber on the pl anet. Its leaves and flower tops (marijuana) were—depending on the culture—the first, second or third most important and most-used medicines for two-thirds of the world’s people for at least 3,000 years, until the turn of this century.
< p ALIGN=LEFT> Botanically, hemp is a member of the most advanced plant family on Earth. It is a dioecious (i.e., having male, female, and sometimes hermaphroditic [male and female on the same plant]) woody, herbaceous annual that uses the sun more effic iently than virtually any other plant on our planet, reaching a robust 12 to 20 feet or more in one short growing season.It can be grown in virtually any climate or soil condition on Earth, even marginal ones.
He mp is by far, Earth’s premier, renewable natural resource. This is why hemp is so important.
Footnotes:
1. Clark, V.S., History of Manufacture in the United States, McGraw Hill, NY 1929, Pg. 34.
2. Ibid.
3. Diaries of George Washington; Writings of George Washington, Letter to Dr. James Anderson, May 26, 1794, vol 33, p. 433, (U.S. govt. pub., 191); Letters to his caretaker, William Pearce, 1795 & 1796; Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson’s Farm Books; Abel, Ernest, Marijuana: The First 12,000 Years, Plenum Press, NY, 1980; M. Aldrich, et al.
Peasants harvesting hemp at the beginning of the 20t h century.
Whole families came out together to harvest the hemp fields at the height of the flowering season, all over the world for thousands upon thousands of years, never dreaming that it would one day be banned from the face of th e earth, in favor of fossil fuels, timber, and petrochemicals.
For the past half-century the United States has not only discouraged the use of hemp, but adopted a policy of forced extinction upon this species of plant.
The impact of accidentally destroying any single life form has never been fully considered, let alone the effect of this concerted attack upon what is arguably the Earth’s primary renewable resource; one that has literally thousands of critical uses—especially in replacing the majority of uses of fossil fuels, timber, and petrochemicals.
This CD-ROM created on Macintosh computers by Milo and Stephen.
|
 |
| Electric Emperor | Bast |