Warning : it is illegal to cultivate or attempt to cultivate cannabis in the UK without a license. Ridiculous, but true.
As a human food, a handful of roasted cannabis seed per day provides all the protein and amino acids you need. It's easy to digest and has a nutty flavour. It helps keep cholesterol and blood pressure down and boosts the immune system. The cannabis seed, called, in English, 'Hemp seed', has been used, as a food, by vast numbers of peoples of the world, for many thousands of years. It was often eaten by crushing and cooking the seed to produce gruel. Cannabis seed is also widely used in Britain in modern times, as bird food and as fishing bait.
Cannabis seed can also be used to produce an oil which can be used as an ingredient in paints, lacquers, varnishes, lubricants and fuel for lamps. It can produce fuel capable of running motor vehicles with no pollution and at low cost. Henry Ford used hemp seed oil fuel when he first built his Model T.
Henry Ford was one of many, many millions of people who have benefited, throughout the ages, from the many products of cultivated cannabis. These include cardboard, packing materials, chipboard, building materials, cloth, clothes, sails, shoes, rope and paper. Until last century cannabis was used to produce most of the Bibles, books and maps.
Cannabis could be used instead of felling so many trees. It grows quicker than trees and involves processes that are far more environmentally friendly. It is described as the most efficacious plant on earth.
Using calculations of the Cannabis Biomass Equation it can be seen that cannabis is a cheaper, safer, and more efficient fuel and source of energy than fossil fuels, uranium or wind power. This use of cannabis would also ease the Greenhouse Effect since the quick-growing cannabis would only release into the atmosphere the same quantify of carbon dioxide as it had absorbed whilst growing, instead of that absorbed millions of years ago and released now when oil or coal is burned.
Cannabis also has many medicinal uses, as has been known for at least 6000 years (the days of Ancient China). Many sufferers find it eases their condition, in particular as a treatment in Glaucoma, Multiple Sclerosis, Spasticity, pain and migraine, asthma, insomnia, loss of appetite, depression and nausea (particularly associated with chemotherapy), painful menstruation, drug and alcohol addiction and arthritis. Until the 1970's cannabis was available in the UK, on prescription. It was used by Queen Victoria for easing pain, during the last century..
Cannabis has also been used as a sacrament in many religions, such as by Copts, Jains, Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and Rastarfarians. This use has continued for thousands of years. It has been enjoyed for its relaxant properties, for thousands of years. It is still used throughout the world, by hundreds of millions of people.
Perhaps surprisingly for some, there has never been a single human death attributed to the ingestion or smoking of cannabis. Cannabis is not toxic or poisonous, in any amount. However, people are prohibited from all of these uses of this versatile and natural plant. Cannabis was made illegal in the UK and many other countries, in 1928. This was because of the misrepresentation of cannabis as a narcotic, at the International Opiates Convention. Cannabis has never had any narcotic properties.
As well as repressing medicine, religion, natural resources and freedom of choice, the prohibition of cannabis is itself one of the main contributors to today's social problems. Rather than doing any good, the ineffective and unworkable cannabis laws have enabled the supply of cannabis to be controlled by the underworld, with huge untaxed profits and lack of quality control. Its supply has become mixed in with that of hard drugs on the illegal market. It has also enabled huge profits at the expense of the environment, for the petrochemical and pharmaceutical companies who produce and market synthetic and dangerous alternatives.
Because the possession, use, cultivation (without a license) and trade in cannabis is unlawful and because so many people choose to ignore the law, over 100,000 UK citizens are prosecuted each year for cannabis offences, their punishments ranging from a caution to 14 years imprisonment and unlimited fine. At this time there are thousands of these 'criminals without victims' in British prisons, many more abroad. The cost of arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning people amounts to hundreds of millions of pounds
Who profits through this crazy law? Originally it was the big businesses that wished to market diesel, nylon, rayon, tranquillisers. The criminal organisations who took control of the prohibited goods (as always when a commercially viable and desired commodity is banned) made billions. That alone has amounted to incalculable sums. Today it is also those to are paid high wages to catch the innocent cannabis offenders and prosecute, defend, judge and imprison them, along with the associated industries. Papermills, breweries, pharmacies all profit from the sales of legal, dangerous, alternatives.
Who loses? Us, the people. The prohibition of cannabis is a serious crime and the repression of Human and Civil Rights which it entails, is nothing less than tyranny. For a person who has never used cannabis and is maybe not concerned, imagine being subjected to police raids, strip searches, humiliation, arrest and punishment for tea, if it was illegal, as it once was. Surely everybody would see that as nonsense and be outraged.. When we become aware of the truth that cannabis is actually less dangerous and toxic than tea (cannabis is not toxic at all) we maybe will see the cannabis laws for what they are, and become equally outraged.
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