Let’s Call Card the Governor
by Carl Hedberg - Spring 2010

Anti-cannabis warriors got blindsided last year by the surge in support for patient rights and reform. Suddenly, it seemed, people were listening, learning, speaking up, and talking back. But not so much in New Hampshire…

In this state we let our Governor veto cannabis law reform that a majority of us support. And if a hemp bill gets to his desk we’ll sit quiet and watch him kill that too—all for the sake of staying out of a monumental civil rights struggle that still looks and feels like a war.

Nearly a century of Prohibition has done a number on ‘proper’ New Englanders—folks raised to view cannabis as a naughty little substance of the lesser classes; fine for prep school, but if you’re still toking as a 50-something professional with teens in the house; not even the neighbors can know. This is as true for patients as it is for suburban tokers—and within couples and families, where don’t ask don’t tell is the default setting between episodes of ‘shocked’ discovery.

This cultural mythology is critical to Prohibition because it keeps many of our most influential citizens out of the fight. Besides; these laws don’t really affect professionals and the comfortably retired; they know a guy who knows a guy who can usually get some…and police don’t hassle residents in nice neighborhoods for using a little cannabis. So why make waves?

Because this war against cannabis use is unacceptable; it wastes our money, diverts attention and resources, denies us proven economic opportunities, and violates our American right to live free and pursue happiness.

Governor Lynch needs to hear from cannabis ‘criminals’ in hiding—particularly upstanding patients, boomers and seniors. Buy a calling card, dial his office [603.271.2121] from a public phone. Describe your life; age, profession, family, NH County of residence…and why you use cannabis in violation of the law. Be respectful, vague and brief, and if they ask for your name, remind them there’s a war on.

Truth and Money
by Carl Hedberg - Winter 2010

This month the NH House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee voted 16 to 2 not to kill a progressive tax and regulate cannabis measure.  Instead, they agreed to study HB 1652 and issue recommendations in November.  This is pretty remarkable in a state where our Governor and a certain former AG don’t even want cancer patients to have safe and legal access to cannabis.

The reason for the shift?  Truth and money, but certainly not in that order.  The current recession has gutted state coffers to the point where lawmakers have begun to listen more carefully.  Not everyone is happy about that.

Prohibition has always been about using our government and our money to build and maintain commercial barriers to cannabis competition.  Ending that war and embracing this ancient food, fiber and medicinal cultivar will deliver a long-overdue gut-punch to industries that have long supported the war; petroleum, pharmaceuticals, prisons, textiles, plastics, chemicals, agribusiness, alcohol, and tobacco. 

Legalization would also be a huge blow to government agencies and law enforcement groups who get paid our money to wage a 100-year battle that a vast majority of taxpayers now strongly oppose.  Prohibitionists used to be able to claim the 800,000+ citizens arrested each year for simple possession wasn’t a big deal because in most cases it was just a slap on the wrist.  Angry taxpayers don’t want to pay billions for court-clogging wrist-slaps, and lawmakers who do are going to start losing their jobs.

Repeal of alcohol Prohibition in 1933 helped spur the economy out of a deep recession by creating legal markets and new industries.  With well-respected professors like Jeffery Miron at Harvard and Brendan O’Flaherty at Columbia confirming that the same thing would happen if we legalized cannabis, it’s easy to see why lawmakers are finally hearing the truth.

Patients 451
by Carl Hedberg - December 2009

An increasing number of states are granting patients the right to choose cannabis as medicine, but in Prohibition states like New Hampshire, patients are still forced to fend for themselves underground.

Cannabis patients are very good at hiding.  Take for example Mary, a master grower and herbalist in her 50s who suffers from a chronic and painful muscle disorder.  Her body couldn’t deal with pharmaceuticals, so she turned to her ‘recreational drug’ for relief.  She has been cultivating high-grade cannabis and a seed bank for decades now.  She lives off the grid in Vermont and lovingly tends many more plants than her medical permission card allows.  She risks her farm and her freedom by selling to a small number of appreciative patients and connoisseurs.

Far from preventing the use of cannabis for spiritual, creative, and medicinal purposes, The Great Prohibition has driven the best and the brightest underground.  Like the clandestine community of book lovers in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this growing slice of our society has migrated into the shadows to learn and share until their basic rights are restored.  These people are passionate, informed, independent free-thinkers who, for their own good reasons, favor cannabis—often in place of alcohol and pharmaceuticals.  As parents they send a strong message to their kids; Dare to think for yourself, but don’t even think about trying it until you’re an adult.

As we head into the New Year, patients in hiding around New Hampshire can find some comfort in the notion that in 2009 cannabis became a healthcare issue instead of a drug war challenge.  That fundamental social and political shift will return cannabis sativa to our fields as hemp and to our gardens as medicine faster than most people imagine—and much faster than our last-century leaders and Corporate America would like.

Our Wall is Coming Down
by Carl Hedberg - November 2009

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The tipping point in that velvet revolution came when Gorbachev declined to support East German rulers.  He could see that the tide had turned, and tearing down that wall was a logical consequence of a process that began when he had come to power four years earlier.

The Obama Administration is handling the end of the Great Prohibition in much the same way; by backing off and letting the inevitable unfold at the state level.

In 1989 the world marveled at how sad and even silly entrenched Communists looked as their ability to control events evaporated virtually overnight.  Similarly, hard-line Prohibitionists like our Governor are standing firm.  They are so out of touch that they seem to believe patients are lying in a veiled attempt to free up a party weed, or that legalizing this cheap, safe and effective medicine would send the wrong message to children.

The Internet has obliterated the wall of lies our government has maintained for generations.  Marijuana, the scary so-called recreational drug, is actually cannabis sativa, an ancient medicinal cultivar.  Millions have suffered in this long war, and entrenched prohibitionists are still spending lots of tax dollars in a pitiful attempt to keep some walls up by restricting cannabis use to the chronically ill and dying.

Credible online testimony, ancient texts, archeological evidence, and accepted medical practices prior to 1937 tell us that cannabis can be used to treat a wide array ‘lesser’ ailments like PMS, headaches, asthma, alcohol abuse, stress, anxiety, insomnia…When mainstream Americans see cannabis for what it really is, they will rise up and force our leaders to restore what should be a fundamental right; the freedom to use cannabis as medicine in whatever responsible manner we see fit.

Cannabis Hemp
by Carl Hedberg - October 2009

Cannabis hemp (agricultural/industrial hemp) is a hardy, high-yield-per-acre rotation crop that produces famously nutritious seeds, valuable oils, and superior fiber for paper, building materials, cordage and cloth—without lots of water or heavy use of farm chemicals.

Hemp foods are the fastest growing segment of the natural foods market, probably because hemp seeds contain all essential amino acids (protein), and the oil contains the highest and most balanced levels of essential fatty acids (EFAs) omega-3 and omega-6 of any seed oil.  Hemp is also a rare plant source of the “super omega-6” EFA; gamma-linolenic acid (GLA).

Hemp is not marijuana!  Both are cannabis sativa, but hemp strains have onlytrace amounts of the psychoactive/medicinal ingredient THC.

The United States is the last industrialized nation to outlaw hemp cultivation!  Here we are in the middle of a long recession, and US farmers are being forced to sit on the sidelines of a major opportunity while China, Canada, Romania and others reap the benefits of the rising global demand for hemp food and fiber. Restoring our right to cultivate hemp plays to our traditional strengths as a nation; exploring new territory, ingenuity, and pushing back against authoritarian rulers—in this case, shockingly uninformed prohibitionists clinging to zero-tolerance cannabis policies that are SO last century.