Introduction

Cannabis: From Benediction to Condemnation

Half a century ago, the judge presiding over the Moscow Trials, Andrei Vishinsky, made the doctrine `the accused is guilty until proved innocent', the cornerstone of the judicial system of Communist totalitarianism. Today, Gabriel Nahas and the rest of the modem witch-hunters have made the same doctrine the cornerstone of the anti-drug hysteria, vociferously proclaiming that `marihuana should remain guilty until proven innocent'.(1)

For thousands of years cannabis played a vital part in human survival, both as a source of energy, food, and clothing, and also on account of its medicinal and euphoriant properties. Sixty years ago, however, it suddenly became a threat to human existence, and a persecution campaign was launched against it.

Until 1937, people used cannabis for many of their daily needs. After 1937, self-serving, self-proclaimed `protectors' of society turned it into the ultimate evil, banned its cultivation, and started to prosecute users.

In 1875, cannabis was of such crucial importance for the economy and the survival of the US population that in many states farmers who didn't grow it were punished with imprisonment or heavy fines. After 1937, people had to learn to live with the same sanctions hanging over their heads, but for precisely the opposite reason: the cultivation or harvesting of a single shrub had been transformed from a patriotic duty into an outrageous crime punishable by many years in prison.

Until 1937, the US government published special leaflets urging farmers to grow more cannabis. After 1937, it started producing propaganda to eradicate the plant and sending aeroplanes to spray cannabis plantations in the US and in neighbouring countries with weed-killer.

Until 1937, the authorities described cannabis as a `valuable plant'. In 1937, they christened it an `assassin of youth'. In 1942, the official slogan was `Hemp for Victory'. And in 1946 it became a `menace to society'.

Until 1937, the American government was exhorting farmers to grow it. In 1937 the same government was sending growers and users to jail. In 1942, a propaganda film was going the rounds, urging increased production and offering growers special subsidies and exemption from military service. But in 1946, the government turned the heavy artillery of the police and the law against them and by 1976, started spraying their land with Paraquat.

How was it possible that a plant, which, from 1000 BC to the mid-nineteenth century, had been one of the biggest crops farmed on the planet and an important factor for satisfying many of the daily needs of people all over the world, should suddenly be transformed from a benediction into a curse? Such a crucial question cries out for an answer, which cannot be eternally blocked by the combined political and financial interests that lie behind the prohibition of cannabis and the persecution of those who use it.

The authoritarian perversity of suddenly transforming cannabis from a benediction of nature into a curse to be exorcised by police and judicial `operations' became possible in the age of the dead-end industrial civilisation, when so-called technological `progress' made developmental folly so powerful that it could place the combined interests of the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, tobacco, and alcohol industries over and above the interests of humankind.

This is precisely the key to interpreting the cancer of selective prohibition which is tearing human society apart in our time, and helping to weaken the natural defences of its members, to blunt their moral resistance, and to undermine the ties that bind them.

In the past, the professional suppression maniacs offered no proof whatsoever of the perils of cannabis to justify prohibiting it and prosecuting users. Their rabid campaign was a matter of inarticulate shouting and intimidating slogans. And their success only goes to show that in this complacently dubbed `age of reason' the Middle Ages are still very much with us. Today the same people demand scientific proof that cannabis is safe whenever any demand is made to reduce or lift the penal sanctions attendant on its cultivation, possession, use, or distribution.

I intend to provide that scientific proof, not as a concession to the paranoia of the fanatical suppressionists, but as further evidence of the overwhelming folly of a society that allows itself to be treated like an irresponsible baby and prefers the dubious security of servitude to the risks and hazards of freedom.

1 G. Nahas, Keep off the Grass (1990), p.24.