Hemp Grows on World, Not National, Territory

Anyone who has studied for ten minutes the 1937 United States' laws re the growing of hemp learns surprisingly that this miracle crop is not illegal if it is identified as "industrial." The DEA, however, which has been given the legal authority by the executive branch to issue the permits, has arbitrarily and unjustly lumped hemp with marijuana, a substance dubbed "illegal" only since that same year.

That hemp's history dates back to ancient times, is cited in all the holy writings from the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist, Sufi, and the Bible, was obligatory for farmers to grow in American Revolutionary days-both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were parttime hemp farmers-has over 5000 practical uses, protects the soil and is a satisfactory substitute for wood and paper being 75% cellulose and 25% fiber, does not deter the US Government from falsely linking it to marijuana and thus forbid its growing.

But, viewed globally or holistically, is the United States itself "legal?" Or is it an antiquated 18th century political fiction which has outlived its usefulness? Its present-day nuclear policy clearly suggests the latter.

Hemp, after all, grows on planetary turf, world territory, not on a fictional "national territory." The fundamental issue. therefore, is not whether the US government claims the growing of industrial hemp "legal" or "illegal," but whether any national government has the legal right to deny a product proven eminently useful to humankind, its right to life and global service.

Here we have another clear-cut argument for world environmental law.

Moreover, article 11(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that "No one shall be held guilty of any penal offense on account of any act or omission which did not consitute a penal offense, under national or international law, at the time which it was committed." (Emphasis added). There is no international law prohibiting the growing of industrial hemp. The proof is that over 50 countries are presently growing it. (Imports of hemp products to the United States, ironically, are growing exponentially.)

That the so-called US "Drug War" is an artifice and a fraud perpetrated by official ignorance and greed is apparent to all who study its origins as well as its results. The true facts are open for all to see. Indeed US prisons are warehoused with citizens with horror stories rooted in so-called drug abuse. Aided and abetted by the police, courts and even the army, the DEA has become an overt collaborator with injustice and oppression sanctioned by governmental fiat.

Apparently, present-day US officials have learned nothing from the last major governmental prohibition which led to the 21st Amendment...after the rise of the Mafia.