4/27/2004 06:33:00 AM|W|P|projectpeace|W|P|I just realized that there's a Blogger ad banner at the top of the page, with a link to "Reasons not to smoke pot" and other such info. While I will agree that smoking Cannabis is not for everyone, in the interest of balance, fairness and reason, I would like people to know that first of all, the link does not seem to work, and secondly I certainly don't have anything to do with it. For some people there are some excellent reasons to use Cannabis and after breaking my neck in a hang-glider crash, I happen to one. The best I can say about the decision to use or not use Cannabis is that it is an individual choice. Making generalized statements about other people's use of 'marijuana' is always a bad idea, but in discussing anything, it helps to have a full range of truthful perspectives and credible information. Unfortunately, much of the information put out by people who talk against the plant is limited and flawed. Everyone makes their own choices in life. In my opinion, individual responsibility is one of the most real and therefore important features of human existence. Taking responsibility for your own life means making decisions based on the willingness to accept the result of your actions, while honoring the implied agreement that says we all have a responisibility not to harm anyone else. Otherwise, there is no "civilization." This is what makes the Bush administration so dangerous. To a very large degree, the character of the American White House sets the standard for civility in the rest of the world. This is a function of economic influence more than anything else, and is supported by the industries which have risen to positions of dominance in the global structure. Unfortunately, this hierarchy of economic influence is the foundation of an unsustainable paradigm. By basing our economic system on toxic, anti-Natural commodities and practices, mankind has evolved into radical imbalance with the primarily significant Natural Order. This could not be more dangerous, especially since we don't know how the Natural Order works well enough to fix, or even accurately monitor the condition of, what we are breaking. By inducing scarcity of a critical agricultural resource for three generations, and investing our collective energy into anti-Natural systems, it is inevitable that our species will eventually cause a synergistic breakdown of the primary systems of the planet. This has finally been officially acknowledged by the Pentagon, in a report that delineated one scenario for accelerated synergistic collapse, leading to another ice age within the next two decades. Certainly, even the possibility of such a slide to extinct ought to make people wonder about every conceiveable means of avoiding such a dismal scenario. Because of the arrogance and short-sighted attitude in the White House, however, the failure of our species to address realistic solutions to environmental problems is as obvious as the failure to foresee the situation in Iraq, and the increasing threat of terrorism in every corner of the world. What is essentially needed now is respect for Nature. Respecting the ability of Nature to provide answers to the problems we have created is analogous to fixing a machine using tools designed to do the job properly. The solutions that are the least likely to be proposed are the limitations and problems which are currently in place. Specifically, prohibition of the world's most useful, nutritious, unique and essential agricultural resource is the primary stumbling block which is fundamental to so many other problems. Cannabis is unquestionably the world's most useful plant. Instead of actively cultivating and developing ways in which to use this resource, the U.S. government is spending taxpayer's money to infest the North American continent with insects from Eurasia, which attack the Cannabis plant. The insanity of this is of such a magnitude as to be incomprehensible to anyone who understands how the Nature works. It is obvious from past species redistributions, that transporting invasive species across geographical barriers is not a good idea. The likelihood of such a move is that the species will arrive in its new habitat without the balancing influence of Natural predators who recognize it as a prey species. This has typically led to population explosion of the introduced species. The second predictable result of introducing an agricultural pest is that once the target plant has been eaten, the insects will adapt their feeding habits to prey on other species of plants to satisfy their appetites. The impact of this is unpredictable at best, and tragic at worst. That the research being done at U.C. Davis is meant to introduce biological weapons in the "war on some drugs" is consistent with the mind-set of prohibtionist forces pushing chemical pharmaceuticals over herbal therapeutics, toxic chemical and radioactive energy over sustainable agricultural biomass energy, and punishment of Cannabis smokers over tolerance, compassion and justice for people who recognize that in fact, for some people, there are some very good reasons to use Cannabis, "the safest, therapeutically active substance known to man." (DEA Administrative law judge, Francis Young, 1988) |W|P|108307584527571316|W|P||W|P|projectpeace@gmail.com