All
that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander
are lost - JRR Tolkien.
AND SO BEGINS MY STORY;
I had my first joint at the age of 15, in the late 70's at University, I know I was young, but what can I say my mother lied when she put me into school, probably to get rid of me! The situation at the time was that the police were not allowed on campus, so our cafeteria was off limits for the usual searches, when you would go up there, you could quite freely roll and smoke, there were bowls on the tables, papers and scissors, even the odd bud left in the bowl ( which, by the way, you replace it if you were able, if not that was cool too! ) for the next person who wished to use them, it was a really friendly situation, easy-going and everybody shared, nice!
I only had a couple of encounters with cannabis later that year, most of my friends were drinking or taking acid (LSD), which I didnt like, I found myself quickly becoming bored with the usual drinking, vomiting creatures as you can well imagine, the next year I started smoking a little more, ahhhh those were the days when you could get a bag of primo home grown without killing your bank account, without travelling to seedy little places or meeting dirty greedy little people! I continuted to smoke on and off pretty much into the early 80's.
Heres a little of our herbs' history..........back to my personal history later!!
The first evidence for medicinal use of cannabis is a herbal directory published during the reign of the Chinese emperor Chen Nung over five thousand years ago. Cannabis was recommended for malaria, constipation, rheumatic pains, "absentmindedness," and female disorders. Another Chinese herbal recommended a mixture of hemp, resin, and wine as an analgesic during surgery. In India cannabis has been recommended to quicken the mind, lower fevers, induce sleep, cure dysentry, stimulate appetite, improve digestion, relieve headaches, and cure venereal disease. In Africa it was used for dysentry, malaria, and other fevers. Today certain tribes treat snake bites with hemp or smoke it before childbirth. Hemp was also noted as a remedy by Galen and other physicians of the classical and Hellenistic eras, and it was highly valued in medieval Europe. The English clergyman Robert Burton, in his famous work The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621, suggested the use of cannabis in the treatment of depression. The New English Dispensatory of 1764 recommended applying hemp roots to the skin for inflammation, a remedy that was already popular in eastern Europe. The Edinburgh New Dispensary of 1794 included a long description of the effects of hemp and stated that the oil was useful in the treatment of coughs, venereal disease, and urinary incontinence. A few years later Nicholas Culpeper summarized all the conditions for which cannabis was supposed to be medically useful.
Cannabis has become one of the most widespread and diversified of plants. It grows as a weed and is also a cultivated plant all over the world in a variety of climates and soils. The fibre has been used for cloth (the first American flag was made of hemp) and paper for centuries and was the most important source of rope until the development of synthetic fibers (nylon). The seeds (or, strictly speaking, akenes - small hard fruits) have been used as bird feed and sometimes as human food. The oil contained in the seeds has been used for lighting and soap and is now sometimes employed in the manufacture of varnish, linoleum, and artists' paints.
A native of central Asia, cannabis may have been cultivated as long as ten thousand years ago. It was certainly cultivated in China by 5000 B.C.E and in Turkestan by 4000 B.C.E. It has long been used as a medicine in India, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and South America.
The potency of cannabis preparations was too variable, and individual responses to orally ingested cannabis seemed erratic and unpredictable. Another reason for the neglect of research on the analgesic properties of cannabis was the greatly increased use of opiates. The invention of the hypodermic syringe in the 1850's allowed soluble drugs to be injected for fast pain relief; hemp products are insoluble in water and so cannot easily be administered by injection. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the development of such synthetic drugs as aspirin, chloral hydrate, and barbituates, which are chemically more stable than Cannabis Indica and therefore more reliable, hastened the decline of cannabis as a medicine. But the new drugs had striking disadvantages. Ten to Fifteen thousand people die from aspirin-induced bleeding each year world-wide, and barbiturates are, of course, far more dangerous yet, one might have expected physicians looking for better analgesics and hypnotics to have turned to cannabinoid substances, especially after 1940, when it became possible to study congeners (chemical relatives) of THC that might have more stable and specific effects.
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The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 undermined any such experimentation. This law was the culmination of a campaign organized by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics under Harry Anslinger in which the public was led to believe that marihuana was addictive and caused violent crimes, psychosis, and mental deterioration. The film Reefer Madness, made as part of Anslinger's campaign, may be a joke to the sophisticated today, but it was once regarded as a serious attempt to address a social problem, and the atmosphere and attitudes it exemplified and promoted continue to influence world culture today.
Under the Marihuana Tax Act, anyone using the hemp plant for certain defined
industrial or medical purposes was required to register and pay a tax of a dollar
an ounce. A person using marihuana for any other purpose had to pay a tax of
$100 an ounce on unregistered transactions. Those failing to comply were subject
to large fines or prison terms for tax evasion. The law was not aimed at medical
use of marihuana - its purpose was to discourage recreational marihuana smoking.
It was put in the form of a revenue measure to evade the effect of Supreme Court
decisions that reserved to the states the right to regulate most commercial
transactions. By forcing some marihuana transactions to be registered and others
to be taxed heavily, the government could make it prohibitively expensive to
obtain the drug legally for any other than medical purposes. Almost incidentally,
the law made medical use of cannabis difficult because of the extensive paperwork
required of doctors who wished to use it. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics followed
up with "anti-diversion" regulations that contributed to physicians'
disenchantment. Cannabis was removed from the United States Pharmacopoeia and
National Formulary in 1941. And surprise, surprise most Western countries including
Australia followed suit soon after. And so that's pretty much where it stands
today, although some unlucky people STILL go to jail for the simple crime (their
word NOT mine) of inhaling a tobacco like substance. GO FIGURE !
Now back to me ;
By the mid eighties, I had pretty much stopped smoking due mainly to the fact I had been pregnant twice by then, and just could not smoke either cannabis or tobacco, did'nt like the smell, and my mind would'nt let me smoke, thinking of my unborn children! Who by the way are both happy, healthy and well adjusted teenagers now. At the time we lived in a leafy (excuse the pun) suburb of Melbourne, becoming tired with the weather and SOME of the people, we decided to go north and ended up on the Gold Coast of Queensland, so very condusive to growing. The children were 5and 3 years old at the time, my then fiance and I split up and I had start work to support myself and my children (no money from him, but THATS another story) I started my own business in Surfers Paradise and has the name implies it WAS! And here come the 90's.
I slowly started to socialise and well to put it bluntly 'party' I soon discovered nothing had changed, in fact things had gottten worse, with the introduction of Esctasy which I had NEVER heard of before, it seemed to me that the people in the 'know' where not just partaking of LSD or smoking 'pot', they were snorting speed & cocaine, some were even shooting up heroin, scary, ( you have to keep in mind that most of these people were totally functioning, as in working people of high standing in the community in which I was living and working) I found a few people who did'nt take anything at all, well thats not quite true they drank like the perverbial fish, and popped valiums! Oh yes still it goes on, I thought to myself but on a totally different level. Well finally after not fitting in anywhere at least not feeling comfortable, I met some people who were 'pot-heads' and 'stoners'. And a took my first 'toke' for a very long time, I found my niche, if you like, although I hesitate to put it that way. Why you might say did I feel the need to take anything at all, well to be honest I wanted to 'fit in' to start with, simple as that, then I began to realise that 'fitting in' was'nt that important, by the same token I was searchin for 'me' again and I had found what I was looking for. Due to the fact that the flowers were so expensive, I decided to put a seed in the ground and see what would happen, and voila, something grew. Now don't you hold that against me, nor change the way you think of me, I am sensible and totally dedicated to my family, I also don't think any less of YOU no matter what you do OR what you believe in!!
LINKS
Parents ending Prohibition
http://www.parentsendingprohibition.homestead.com/index.html
Is Cannabis a gateway drug?
http://www.health.org/reality/publications/others/questions/q7.asp
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~verdant/Marijuana_FAQ/X0047_8_Isnt_marijuana_a_g.html
Facts about hemp