Free Means Free

Pills, butts and booze. For nearly eighty years those have pretty much been our only legal options in this country, and indeed around the world. Americans have been lied to frightened bullied marginalized brutalized locked up and even gunned down. Socially economically politically culturally and spiritually manipulated and coerced into giving up their right to choose anything outside of an industrial-age trio of mostly toxic and addictive manufactured products.

Had enough? Have you finally had enough of elected, appointed and self-appointed leaders like Patrick Kennedy (?!) telling you what you can and can’t use for medicine for fun for solace for courage reflection inspiration motivation connection for communion or to just chill out?

Wake up Americans! It’s time to use that thing in your hand to discover the convenient truth about a certain forbidden flower that must not be named-CANNABIS! Listen. Do yourself your family your friends your community this nation and the planet a favor.

Open your eyes for god sakes! In Colorado it’s looking like a miracle medicine that just happens to come with its own enterprise frontier of green jobs and opportunities. Meanwhile, back in Prohibitionland…

Marijuana legalization is a bad idea. It sends the wrong message to children and besides the US Antipot Research Institute in Washington DC says that stuff can snare you like a rabbit and make you crazy…and without more research do we really want to risk legalizing a drug with euphoric effects when—

STOP, JUST  STOP  LOOK  LEARN  EVOLVE!

Just Google a name or two: Rick Simpson Shona Banda Donna Lambert Brave Mykayla Comstock tragically departed Cash Hyde Charlotte’s Web Run from the Cure… By all means put the kids on it because of course they need to learn the truth too. And the truth is that cannabis is an all-natural medicine for adults, and for sick kids pets and livestock in the care of adults.

And don’t even bring up the smoking! That’s Mary Jane, she’s the party girl in the cannabis family. Sure she’s fun and creative bright and inspirational, and while she may not be the best choice for all your healing needs, a toke or a vape can work as medicine. Why? That’s what cannabis is; medicine.

Want proof? Green dragon cannabis tincture. Ancient medicine. Queen Victoria, loved it. Her private physician JR Reynolds swore by it. Here in America Sir William Osler, founder of John Hopkins University—our father of modern medicine—he hailed cannabis tincture as the most satisfactory remedy for migraines.

These days patients treating themselves in the privacy of their own lives (imagine that) report it works for insomnia depression anxiety stress chronic pain restless legs fibromyalgia hangovers... And possibly the most remarkable news to emerge from the shadows is that green dragon can help patients battling ruinous and deadly addictions to alcohol, pills and powders.

It’s beautiful medicine. And get this. Green dragon is nothing more than (search word alert) decarboxilated (heated) cannabis soaked in pure grain alcohol, strained then (carefully because it’s flammable) simmered down to about eight drops strong.

Liquid weed. Exotic potent fiery emerald green drops in a stealthy little tinted vial. A Dionysian remedy from a time before the Great Prohibition. Safe, effective and not the least bit physically addictive. Available now, but only through the cannabis underground because our government forbids the use of grain alcohol for anything other than getting really really drunk.

In cannabis country we don’t buy into that crap anymore. Prohibition-era laws are going away because they’re wrong. And we ALL have a right to choose cannabis because it’s a plant. Christians! Genesis 1:29, right? 

Weed’s ours! God said! -cannabis 1:29

Mr. President members of Congress Federal State and Local prohibitionists industrialists drug war loyalists moralists nannies, naysayers hand-wringers and pot-bashers throughout this free country. Here this! Cannabis prohibition is finished in America and so goes the world. The war is over. Your side lost. Stand down, come clean and let the healing begin.

As for NORML and all the other legalization organizations: Thanks but we don’t need donor-supported lawyers on the beltway negotiating the terms of our freedom because there are no terms to freedom. Free means free. And that goes double for hemp. 

Prohibition has no place in a free country, Mr. President. End it, sir.

Cannabis prohibition, like alcohol prohibition before it, is being dismantled state by state, by the will of the people. Americans who think that’s a bad thing either have a vested interest in the way things are, or they haven’t done the research. Because behind the smoked party drug image so brilliantly propagandized for nearly a century lays a most convenient truth, an amazing secret hidden for generations.

Cannabis is a non-toxic, not physically addictive ancient medicinal flower that is (when used properly, of course) totally safe, even for children and pets. As tincture and oil, cannabis is proving effective for some of the most common ailments of these frenzied times; alcohol and pill abuse, insomnia, stress, migraines, depression, fibromyalgia, MS, ADHD, PMS, PTSD, late-night barking…

Naysayers search US patent 6,630,507; Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants, filed back in 2003 by none other than Health and Human Services, the same agency that continues to insist that marijuana is bad, all bad. And these are the people We the People are taking orders from? Wake up Americans! Read the declaration the founding fathers risked their lives to compose. It says we have the right as free people to decide what’s best for our bodies, our families and our lives.

The inevitability of re-legalization has many fearing the worst; that reefer madness will rip through neighborhoods, claim the sanity of our children and spike healthcare costs. Hand-wringers need only look to capacity-crowd cannafests for proof of weed’s safety in numbers across a wide demographic.

Since their rise in the sixties marijuana freedom gatherings have always attracted families and people of all ages, all races, and all political and religious persuasions. They mass together—sometimes in the rain—to learn, share, and get stoned a lot, because that’s the point.  As a long-term population study, cannabis-only festivals provide clear evidence that the norm really is a positive vibe of peace, love and understanding.

The exciting news for Middle Americans struggling to make ends meet is that cannabis freedom comes with its own enterprise frontier—one that provides jobs and opportunities at every step in the delivery chain. Demand for secure, safe and legal indoor grow ops, for example, is creating a lucrative new specialty field for plumbers, electricians, carpenters, air control experts and security system technicians. As the frontier expands there’ll be good jobs for professionals in finance, accounting, administration, marketing, production, and education.

Washington, of course, denies such a frontier even exists, while at the same time using every agency in the fold to disrupt, discredit and hold back the cannabis trades; medical, recreational and hemp, that farm-country marvel with a bright future in plastics, building materials, food products, paper, textiles, energy and fine lubricants. Despite economic sanctions such as harsh tax rules and a banking embargo, the budding cannabis industry is doing well, and generating solid revenues in states that restore those liberties.

When the Epilepsy Foundation declared last year that access to cannabis should not be determined by one’s zip code they spoke for all patients and families caring for patients. The right to choose and responsibly use the full bounty of nature’s gifts is, in Christian terms, a God-given, human right (Genesis 1:29). Americans gave up that right in service to the industrial revolution, and very soon they’re going to wake up and want it back.

Prohibition has no place in a free country, Mr. President. End it, sir. If you don’t, your successor will surely have to.

Cash Hyde's story should be enough to end the war

Cash Hyde. Pioneering cannabis patient who steeled the resolve of medicinal rights advocates, and gave hope to patients online all over the world.  Dead at 4.

It was brain cancer.  Radiation worked against the tumor, but it might have killed him if his father hadn’t been able to sneak cannabis oil into his two-year-old’s feeding tube. Cannabis helped Cash pulled through once, but the cancer returned.  He died this week in the arms of his brave, heartbroken parents.  

A crowning example of the power of anti-pot propaganda is that his doctors were okay with treatments that are deadly by design, like chemo, but wouldn’t even discuss the use of cannabis, a nontoxic medicinal flower that has never killed anyone.  Ever.

The Feds treated the Hydes like criminals, and the state of Montana shut down the dispensaries. Cash was forced to go without his healing medicine while his parents scrambled to find other ways to get it for him.    

The cruelty!  The insanity!  The healing power of cannabis. All revealed in the very brief life of this little boy.  

Wake up America!  Cancer research groups have been sitting on the good news since the seventies, and in 2003 your own government filed a patent on the medicinal effectiveness of the flower (#6,630,507, entitled Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants).  

 Look it up.  It’s true.  Ask Obama; he knows.

Cannabis is not rising in the polls and being legalized outright because we’ve finally given into the demands of stoners.  It’s not dope.  It's medicine.  For Cashy Hyde it was life-giving, and his story is all the President should need to make history and end the war.

Baking with Mom

In the 80s mom's line of cheesecakes were voted Best in Tucson.

In the summer of 79 I got my mom royally baked.  At the time I was a sophomore at UMASS, Amherst, and as a newly minted cannabis fan, I was taking full advantage of the fine herb available in the Pioneer Valley.  Sensimilla was little known and rarely available, and almost everyone figured prohibition was here to stay.  The times they are a changing, but not fast enough to save some of our closest friends and family. 

My mom was a painter, photographer, a crewel embroidery artist, green thumb gardener, a great cook, and a functioning alcoholic.  She had a nice little condo down on the Gulf coast of Florida where I stayed with her between semesters.

Her core issue was depression, which she tried to overwhelm with alcohol and prescription medicines, the only legal choices she had.  Her generation was raised on coffee, tobacco and spirits.  Pot was very illegal and assumed to be worse than it appeared.  Pills were the modern solution people took for everything—including addiction to pills.  My mom believed in the system, and followed the advice of her doctors.

I was an enthusiastic novice stoner with no clue about the many ways cannabis might have been used to help my mom kick her destructive habits; recreationally, medicinally, and as an exotic, nurturing garden flower she would have eagerly added to her second floor balcony jungle of hanging and potted plants.  Whenever I suggested she try weed as a buzz substitute for hard spirits, her response was always the same; 

Marijuana is illegal.  We don’t break laws; we vote to change laws we don’t agree with.  When it’s legal maybe then we’ll talk about it…nuff said.

We got along great, and she fed me well, but her drinking was a painful source of friction.  The drama and deceptions were taxing, and after yet another incident, I drove down to The Oyster Shucker (Jimmy’s long-gone hangout), scored some decent weed and grabbed a little metal bong at the local headshop.  

The following day, my mom reluctantly agreed to give cannabis a try.  To make sure she felt enough to know whether it was for her, I had her blaze to cinders an entire party bowl (with my help to show her how…).  She spent the morning on her dock, drinking ice tea, fishing, and smiling.  

While she admittedly enjoyed the experience, using marijuana as a regular therapy (or ever again) was out of the question.  She was the ex-wife of conservative Boston surgeon, a law-abiding citizen from a respectable Yankee family with deep eastern roots; end of story.

I have since learned that cannabis—especially stealthy, non-smoked medicinal preparations—could have safely tempered her use of alcohol—a drug she typically reached for when she was feeling good rather than bad (then couldn’t stop).  Cannabis would have provided a safe new means for her to create, release, party and relax.  As a cook it would have been easy for her to treat herself with cannabis in the privacy of her own life; bake at 420, skip the cocktails at seven.

These days my mom might have found relief in a legal state, which is a sign of the great progress we’re making in the battle to restore the right to treat ourselves with cannabis.  As evidence mounts that patients are having success using it to safely overcome toxic addictions[1], a new approach to substance abuse therapy is in order.

Clean, not sober

Cannabis patients ought to be free to grow their own, and be supplied well enough to be able to explore the full range of therapeutic options; smoked, vaporized, edibles, wax, shatter, tincture, oil-filled gel caps, salves, and fresh juice, which by the way, is highly medicinal but not psychoactive[2]. Such is not nearly the case, and yet even in the face of relentless government aggression, cannabis is rising fast as a safe and therapeutic substitute for pills and alcohol.

Cannabis is not physically addictive and is famously non-toxic, meaning Western sobriety edicts can be unnecessary and counterproductive for patients with a fondness for weed.  Getting clean and staying sober is a formula that doesn’t work for them; so why do they have to stay sober like NONE of their friends and family? 

As cannabis is adopted as a therapeutic choice, addiction sufferers will learn how to make medicinal use of cannabis in the privacy of their own lives. They won't be sober, maybe never again, but they'll be getting back into their creative lives with a drug choice that won't ever kill them. 

With the truth online and in the streets, it’s only a matter of time before cannabis prohibition is little more than a sobering history lesson for all time to come.  The surgeon general recently drove a stake in the heart of Schedule One by declaring cannabis can be used as medicine. Has cannabis been taken off Schedule One; of course not. The US Government will drag this on for as long as they can; patients and healing be damned.


It might take a decade more, but in time cannabis healing strategies will be known to most and practiced by many, and psychedelics immersion spas will be all the rage. 

 

Imagine a cannabis retreat combining the nurturing, free-will ambiance of a luxury health spa with the cannabis supply and life-skills workshops of a top dispensary.  Since successful, driven types who respond well to cannabis are often very creative and like to learn, cannabis spas would feature hands-on amenities like a cannabis kitchen with lessons on the bench, a tincture lab, a greenhouse, music/recording studio, painting/sculpture studio, video editing suite, screening room, and time alone to ponder, imagine, create, and chill... a MacDowell Colony environment featuring the finest green, and no alcohol.

There’s certainly a need for such places, as evidenced all too often by high-profile substance-related deaths of skilled artists like Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse, and by the mercilessly exploited struggles of talented stars like Charlie and Lindsay.  Just like with my mom, when industrial age therapies and meds fail these people, they are the ones who always seem to take the blame.

Since cannabis spas would presumably need to be located on private islands and on secluded estates, well, if you have to ask the price… Still, it’d be money well spent if high-powered[3] patients left with the skills to substitute various preparations of cannabis for the stuff that’s hurting their careers and in some cases doing them in.  And if some of those recoveries happen to occur in the media spotlight, maybe then the truth will finally reach the masses: it’s not pot, it’s medicine.

Mainstreamers do most of the living and dying in this world; many are suffering from ills cannabis cures.  So just you watch.  Any day now North Americans are going to wake up and see what cannabis really is and what it can do for them.  Then they’ll rise up and end the cannabis wars for their own good reasons.  Any day now... 

The Toss    photo by Elizabeth Wells (Hedberg) 1979

Carl Hedberg is a writer, speaker and cannabis use explorer with a note to film makers; help end this entrenched war of words and images by quietly delivering medicinal cannabis truth to the big screen.  Send me some material, I’ll show you what I mean.  Twitter questions and comments @cannabisrising or visit Carl on Facebook (thefinestgreen).

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[1] Research paper by Amanda Reiman at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley.  http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/6/1/35

[2] Here’s an informative article by Dr. Edward Group; http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/juicing-raw-cannabis-eating-raw-cannabis/

[3] I don’t do pot puns, but this one works on so many levels.

RxC Patient Campaign: It works for me, Mr. President

Objective: Force the President to come clean about the therapeutic nature of cannabis.

Means:  Cannabis patients; call the White House Comment Line (202 456 1111) Briefly and respectfully inform this man of hope and change that the DEA must be wrong about cannabis since "I use cannabis for [illness] and it works for me, Mr. President."

Action request:  Remove this ancient and provably non-toxic medicinal herb from Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Self-Protection: Patients wishing to remain anonymous can use a prepaid cell or calling card.  If they insist on a name, you can respectfully decline by reminding them there's a war on.