AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

President George Washington: "Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed" (Library of USA Congress 1794 vol. 33 p.270)

President Abraham Lincoln: (December 1840)

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes...
A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded"

President Jimmy Carter: "Penalties for the possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

On Jury nulification: President Thomas Jefferson (1789): "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which government can be held to the principles of its constitution"

"I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Thomas Jefferson, 1816

John Adams (Second USA President): "It is not only his Right but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court"

FAMOUS AMERICANS

Albert Eistein:
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." (My First Impression of the U.S.A., 1921)

Jocelyn Elders, USA Surgeon General: "Marijuana is beneficial to many patients"

Benjamin Franklin "Any man willing to give up any part of his liberty for a false sense of safety deserves neither."

U.S. Representative Dan Quayle, March 1977: "Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana... We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace to society."

Chief Justice John Jay, USA: "The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy"

Samuel Chase, US Supreme Court Chief Justice 1796:
"The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts"

Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The Jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact"

Judge Harlan F.Stone,
Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: (1941-1946) "The law itself is on trial quite as much as the case which is to be decided" "If a juror feels that the statute [law] in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural God-given unalienable or Constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all - for no one is bound to obey an unjust law"

Volney Brown Jr.,
Federal Magistrate-Judge, (retired)., Los Angeles. At the DPF Conference, November 1996: "There is only one thing wrong with drug law enforcement, just one - it doesn't work. And when I tell you this I want you to believe me because I have done it"

Judge Pamela Alexander
at the DPF Conference, November 1996: "I am here because I am the first judge in this country to say, in 1990, that the war on drugs was racist. It still is and that hasn't changed"

Alexander Shulgin,
PhD, Chemist and author, at the DPF Conference, November 1996: "I, as a responsible adult human being, will never concede the power to anyone to regulate my choice of what I put into my body, or where I go with my mind. From the skin inwards is my jurisdiction, is it not? I choose what may or may not cross that border. Here I am the Customs Agent. I am the Coast guard. I am the sole legal and spiritual government of this territory, and only the laws I choose to enact within myself are applicable"

Ann Shulgin, PhD,
Therapist and Author, Lafayette, CA, at the DPF Conference, November 1996: "Several generations of high school students have grown up ignoring and disbelieving everything they've heard from government and police about drugs, including information that was factual and valid, because they discovered for themselves that most of what has been taught to them was simply not true."

"If you are some 40-year-old guy smoking pot in a hut in Oregon and writing a book, I don't care what you do." -Barry R. McCaffrey, USA Drug Czar

"If we are fighting a war, we're winning." -Barry R. McCaffrey, USA Drug Czar

CELEBRITY HYPOCRITES http://www.cannabis.com/hypocrites/

CRIME & PUNISHMENT

Jamaican Study: (1970) "This study indicates that there is little correlation between the use of ganga and crime, except in so far as the possession and cultivation of ganga are technically crimes"

The LaGuardia sub-committee of New York 1944: "Marijuana is not the determining factor in the commission of major crime....The publicity concerning the catastrophic effect of marijuana smoking in New York City, is unfounded"

LaGuardia Commission Report, 1944 "Cannabis smoking does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration... Those who have consumed marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug."

1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT:

"Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia)that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects" "the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable"

Testimony of Professor Lester Grinspoon, M.D. , Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, before the Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., October 1, 1997: "Cannabis is remarkably safe. Although not harmless, it is surely less toxic than most of the conventional medicines it could replace if it were legally available. Despite its use by millions of people over thousands of years, cannabis has never caused an overdose death."

The Report of the Australian Government 1996 says: "The ... major possible adverse effects of chronic, heavy cannabis use ... remain to be confirmed" "The major health and psychological effects of chronic cannabis use, especially daily use over many years, remain uncertain" "As has been stressed ... there is uncertainty. ......To varying degrees....inferences from animal research, laboratory studies, and clinical observations about probable ill effects. In some cases inferences depend upon arguments from what is known about the adverse effects of other drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol" "... "flashback experiences" ...have been rarely reported by cannabis users... have typically used other hallucinogenic drugs" "The probable and possible adverse health and psychological effects of cannabis need to be placed in comparative perspective to be fully appreciated".

Dr J. H. Jaffe, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. L.Goodman and A Gillman, 3rd edn. 1965. "There are no long lasting ill-effects from the acute use of marijuana and no fatalities have ever been recorded ... there seems to be growing agreement within the medical community, at least, that marijuana does not directly cause criminal behaviour, juvenile delinquency, sexual excitement, or addiction."

Panama Canal Zone Report, 1925: "There is no evidence... that any deleterious influence on the individual using [cannabis]" US Jamaican Study 1974 "... as a multipurpose plant, ganga is used medicinally, even by non-smokers. ....There were no indications of organic brain damage or chromosome damage among smokers and no significant clinical psychiatric, psychological or medical) differences between smokers and controls." "No impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style, and tests of memory" "[Cannabis smoking] does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration... Those who have consumed marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug."

The Kaiser Permanente study "Marijuana Use and Mortality" April 1997 American Journal of Public Health". "Relatively few adverse clinical effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans. However, the criminalization of marijuana use may itself be a health hazard, since it may expose the users to violence and criminal activity."

Researchers at the University of California (UCLA) School of Medicine have announced the results of an 8 - year study into the effects of long-term cannabis smoking on the lungs. In Volume 155 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Dr. D.P. Tashkin reported: as compared with those individuals who never smoked marijuana. Researchers added: "No differences were noted between even quite heavy marijuana smoking and non-smoking of marijuana."

Dr. Anthony Henman: "One of the best effects Marijuana can have in any terminal illness is to produce a degree of euphoria which boosts morale in a depressing situation"

The Economist March 28th 1992: "Medicines often produce side effects. Sometimes they are physically unpleasant. Cannabis too has discomforting side effects, but these are not physical they are political"

Professor Lester Grinspoon, Harvard Medical School, USA: "Marijuana is one of the least toxic substances in the whole pharmacopoeia"

CANNABIS DOES NOT CAUSE CANCER BOSTON

Jan. 30, 1997

(UPI) - The U.S. federal government has failed to make public its own 1994 study that undercuts its position that marijuana is carcinogenic - a $2 million study by the National Toxicology Program. The program's deputy director, John Bucher, says the study "found absolutely no evidence of cancer." In fact, animals that received THC had fewer cancers. Bucher denies his agency had been pressured to shelve the report, saying the delay in making it public was due to a personnel shortage. The Boston Globe reported Thursday (1-30-97) that the study indicates not only that the main ingredient in marijuana, THC, does not cause cancer, but also that it may even protect against malignancies, laboratory tests on animals show. The report comes on the heels of an editorial in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine that favors the controlled medical use of marijuana, and calls current federal policy "misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane." The Clinton administration has said that doctors prescribing marijuana could be prosecuted for a federal crime. Marijuana has been reported to ease the pain, nausea and vomiting in advanced stages of cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses, but the federal government claims other treatments have been deemed safer than what it calls "a psychoactive, burning carcinogen." However, The Boston Globe says the government's claim appears to be undercut by its own $2 million study.

The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy 1987 "Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied... The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation".