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BobKat

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but there's been a heck of a lot in the news about marijuana... and I'd say lately, however the truth is, since the early 1970's marijuana has been news a lot, but lately it's been in the news even more. Maybe it's the fact that 18 states have legalized medical use of marijuana, and two have legalized recreational use. Many more have reduced penalties for possession to equal that of a traffic ticket. Still, with all that's in the news, somehow it all seems just as strange as it was hearing about it in the early 1970's.

Maybe it's the word - marijuana?

That word used to conjure up thoughts about demons and I heard once it was a term from Arabic meaning mad assassin. That Muslim warriors would use marijuana prior to battle - to promote a mad and insane thirst for killing. It's not true of course. Maybe it's true to the extent that after a battle troops would use marijuana to mellow out and unwind... supported ironically from the fact that marijuana is used today to treat PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), reference link from the Mayo Clinic.

The truth is, marijuana is not the sort of substance any military would recommend prior to battle. Too many sources reference it as a euphoric, and source of peace and empathy towards other people. Hardly the thing the military would prescribe prior to sending troops into battle. It is true that during the Viet Nam war marijuana was used extensively. One over-riding reason was it grew there naturally. Another was that the war was a first of it's kind; protested at home in the US, pushed by the federal government, fanned into flames by a national draft, young people fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft, stories straight out of Hades describing hellish battles, eradication of whole villages, brutal deaths by murder, napalm and bombings of civilians including many women and children. Not to forget the heinous deaths of soldiers by villagers carrying grenades as gifts, land-mines and spiked bamboo traps that sprang out of the jungles, the air saturated with Agent orange that was intended to destroy all vegetation and trees, that as a consequence now accounts for a myriad of health problems for both Vietnam veterans as well as Vietnamese citizens.

Is it any wonder that marijuana was used widely during that war, to calm the soldiers between battles, and in fact provided the slang-term, shot-gunning of the herb, literally from soldiers loading up a shotgun with marijuana and blowing through the receiver end to force out the smoke that a soldier(s) would then inhale.

Watch more on this YouTube video:

Today we know that PTSD can result from any number of extreme stress related events. Today it's pretty well accepted that marijuana has beneficial effects for those suffering from the syndrome. What's not made clear is that this is a plant, not a drug that provides the relief for the symptoms of PTSD.

Recent news indicates Big pharma, those infamous for making pills out of discoveries in nature have finally documented scientific proof of the ameliorative benefits of THC, found in marijuana. FOX News Link: THC and PTSD

Oregon recently added PTSD to it's medical marijuana laws, along with many other states. NH is currently close to passing a medical marijuana law, however the new governor, Maggie Hassan, convinced the Senate she would not sign the bill if it included treatment for PTSD. The bill is back in the House which has rejected many of the Senates exclusions to satisfy Gov. Maggie Hassan who, it should be noted, is in favor of medical marijuana, however, apparently, here in the Live Free or die state she has extreme views on just who should be eligible for use of cannabis as medicine and even if passage of a bill were to happen, she insists that those who would benefit from marijuana will have to wait at least three years until the state opens it's three clinics to patients.

Recipients would, under the current bill, be required to report to those facilities to use the marijuana plant. Given the fact she stripped out PTSD and depression as valid medical uses, she made it clear only critically ill cancer patients would be eligible, and those patients must drive to a clinic in one of three places, to use the drug - ludicrous, yes!. Further she has refused to allow home growing of the plant, nor provide legal exemption during the 3-4 years it will take the state to establish the three clinics.

For a country that encourages the use of impersonal drones to kill terrorists and civilians alike, this doesn't surprise me. For a country whose federal government still insists that marijuana is lacking of any medicinal uses, and regularly conducts raids on state licensed medical health centers this also doesn't surprise me.What does surprise me is at the heart of the war against marijuana is a President that used marijuana extensively, in Hawaii, and was known as a guru of weed. A President making himself famous brewing his own beer, who has yet to make a statement regarding recreational legality of it's use in WA and CO.

The DEA, it should be noted recently refused a law-suit aimed at reclassifying marijuana from it current Schedule One status. The grounds for this refusal is that there is zero research indicating that marijuana has any health benefits. It cites it's source as the NIH - National institute of Health, tax-payer funded. What it fails to admit is that the federal law prohibits research by a federal entity into the benefits of any drug listed as Schedule One. Only research into negative effects are approved. Of those negative effects somehow the NIH managed to secure patent # 6630507 - a link available HERE.

Quite a conflict of interest given tax-payers pay the federal government to only research the debilitating effects of marijuana. How the hell did they squeak through a patent that attests to medicinal value of marijuana and yet refuse to admit it has medicinal value?

Smoke and Mirrors...

Maybe the reason is all in a name?

Word Origin & History

Marijuana

1918, alt. by influence of Sp. proper name Maria Juana "Mary Jane" from mariguan (1894), from Mex.Sp. marihuana, of uncertain origin."Marijuana ... makes you sensitive. Courtesy has a great deal to do with being sensitive. Unfortunately marijuana makes you the kind of sensitive where you insist on everyone listening to the drum solo in Iron Butterfly's 'In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida' fifty or sixty times." [P.J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners," 1983]

World English Dictionary
marijuana or marihuana (ˌmærɪˈhwɑːnə) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
— n
1. See also cannabis the dried leaves and flowers of the hemp plant, used for its euphoric effects, esp in the form of cigarettes
2. another name for hemp [C19: from Mexican Spanish]

Marihuana or marihuana
— n
mariguan (1894) or marihuana or marihuana

***

The first truth about cannabis (marijuana) is that the common, modern day use of the term marijuana is that it is actually a politically incorrect term in the US to describe the cannabis plant, quite racially prejudiced. Prior to the 1930's most Americans called it hemp or ganja. The moniker, marijuana, it's actual origin is unknown, however it is best based upon a Mexican-Spanish term of endearment, referring to, Maria Juana, or better known to us as Mary Jane. Other spellings of this term are marihuana (used in legal proceedings since 1937) and mariguan (1894). In medicine until the 1940's physicians referred to it as cannabis, of which the two most common species are sativa and indica.

It was and is the same plant called hemp, a fiber used until the 1940's in sailing ships, fabrics, paper and in fact the original US Constitution is printed on hemp paper. The hemp used in paper generally contains very little of the popular psychotropic chemical called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) that people smoke or eat to get what's called high, or stoned, or with uses in medicine..Use of the term marijuana or what is used for formal legal purposes, marihuana, and to describe the Americanized use of the term for the cannabis plant can be traced back roughly to the 1930's; though not much further.

When so-called yellow-journalists used it in the media of the time to sow fear and terror into the minds of White Americans. Fear and terror? Historically the use of the term was first used in the 1930's to bring awareness in the form of journalistic terrorism towards illegal immigrants from Mexico and Black Americans, of the latter, especially Black jazz musicians.

However, of the latter, ever since President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation that freed Blacks, there had been a backlash by certain then modernistic White anti-abolitionists to demean Black Americans and sow seeds of mistrust and discrimination. With regards to Mexican immigrants, the country was deep into the Great Depression and jobs were scarce, so any competition from new immigrants, legal or otherwise was a threat, especially in the southern states. The US Congress passed the prohibition of cannabis in 1937 knowing so little about the truth; they morphed the spelling of the act, calling it the Marihuana tax Act.

To this day, legal decrees still use the term marihuana. The history behind this is simple. Prior to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, cannabis, which is it's scientific name, was called ganja here in America. But to distract the American public from the docile use of ganja into something far more terrible, ganja became marijuana. The destroyer of youth. And often you'll hear reference that marijuana cannot be legalized for adult use due to the danger inherit in youth. With such logic how can alcohol and tobacco be legal?

It's all in the name.

It appears obvious however that despite the link to yellow journalistic use of the term as harmful to youth and as the racial slur encompassed in the use of the term marijuana, that the term has now been Americanized. As much as I find the word offensive, NORML wouldn't be NORML if they had to change their name to NORCL. And the federal government would sound a lot less powerful if marijuana raids were called cannabis raids.

All in a name.

Yet the truth is... calling cannabis: marijuana, which the US doesn't have an original license for, being as it's of Spanish-Mexican origin, of which we don't accept, it is like enabling passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as long as Black people can still be referred to as Negros.

Considering that more than 75% of casual marijuana arrests involve Black citizens, maybe this is not so far fetched. Especially since Black Americans are equally likely to use cannabis as so called White Americans.

Words are everything in our society. Overtime, maybe I will get used to cannabis being called marijuana, but I rather doubt it. Cannabis is a medicinal herb, like camomile, St. John's wort, Ginseng. Marijuana is, and will always be slang for a dangerous, prejudicial drug originating in the 1930's. As long as we refer to cannabis as marijuana, we will be talking in riddles.

Time to Stop the Hurt!

Message to Congress and the White House - Legalize it already!!!

You might also find humor and laughter in this recent spinoff link from a YouTube video of Alice's restaurant - bear in mind that my conviction for having a pipe marijuana was smoked in, not necessarily by me, would put me in this same group of "father fuc*ers"!:

Arlo Guthrie

Or Here for the Original 1967 Song:

Then again, you might just find this sobering, "The ballad of Lucy Jordan", by Marianne Faithful... as many of us will never find peace, freedom or a good life, especially in the USA or in a state like NH - Live Free or Die. Speed Kills it's true, Marijuana Doesn't!: