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My father was recently diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, and medical marijuana is one of the tools we are using in an attempt to decrease the cancer and recuperate his health. At this point it is just a matter of weaning him off of the pharmaceutical drugs and getting back to natural treatments (without the negative side effects of prescription drugs) as soon as possible. Medical marijuana is an important tool in making this process successful.

Check out Rick Simpson’s work at PhoenixTears.ca for more information about hemp/marijuana oil (also known as “Phoenix Tears”) and its ability to cure cancer.

“I am here to expose you to information about the most medicinal plant known to man — hemp. Medicinal miracles are a common occurrence when using oil derived from this specific medicinal plant.” – Rick Simpson

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From the International Association of Chiefs of Police and DEA’s 2010 report:

And from the 2011 paper I wrote on prohibition:

As we have explored, marijuana is proven to be a less dangerous substance than tobacco and alcohol. Not only is it less dangerous in terms of its addictive properties and physical harm to people, it has critical cannabinoid chemicals that may relieve pain and aid the recovery of certain illnesses. Given these scientific findings, it is clear that public policy is not weighing the individual and societal costs and benefits of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco. Alcohol and tobacco have a host of health dangers that are generally well accounted for in today’s society, but marijuana is stilled shunned by the government and many in society despite scientific evidence proving contrary to the conventional opinions held of marijuana.

Of course, prohibition of alcohol was official constitutional policy, as demanded by the Eighteenth Amendment, in the United States between 1919 and 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution declared it illegal to produce, transport, or distribute any intoxicating liquors in the United States. The Amendment was the result of many years of pushing from the nation-wide temperance movement for alcohol prohibition, not entirely unlike the anti-marijuana campaign that would seriously gain traction with Anslinger’s work in the early 1930s. However, the passage of national prohibition did not necessarily go as planned or hoped by those in the temperance movement. Yes, liquor prices shot up (the price of beer increased approximately 700% during the Prohibition era), but high prices due to Prohibition gave rise to stronger alcohol products offered to the public through the unregulated black market. The black market cartels (which came about exclusively because of the criminalization of alcohol) produced less diluted and more intoxicating liquor products, simply because it was more efficient for them to concentrate alcohol into stronger products (Thorton).

Per-capita consumption of alcohol had already been declining in the U.S. since 1910. After alcohol consumption in the U.S. hit an all-time low during the depression of 1921, it actually began to increase starting in 1922. This is curious, considering that after the Prohibition policy was enacted alcohol consumption reversed its downward slope and began to increase.  Especially alarming is economist Mark Thorton’s research finding that the “homicide rate increased from 6 per 100,000 population in the pre-Prohibition period to nearly 10 per 100,000 in 1933” (Thorton). Once Prohibition was repealed in 1933 with the Twenty-first Amendment, “the rate continued to decline throughout the 1930s and early 1940s” (Thorton). Homicides spiked in 1920 after Prohibition became official national policy, and homicide rates continued to increase until Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

First story from Say Anything Blog.

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“You wanna get ride of drug crime in this country? Fine, let’s just get rid of all the drug laws.” ~ Ron Paul

In a September 2008 report, the Marijuana Policy Project found that between 1995 and 2008 nearly 9.5 million individuals had been arrested due to connections with marijuana (whether it is cultivation, possession, or distribution). 872,720 marijuana-related arrests occurred in 2007, an all-time record totaling more arrests than those for all violent crimes combined.  This means, on average, that one person is arrested on marijuana charges every 36 seconds. Approximately 89% of all marijuana arrests are for possession of marijuana, suggesting that the majority of marijuana “crimes” are nonviolent. Cultivating as little as one marijuana plant is a federal felony. Several states have interjected and slightly decriminalized certain aspects of marijuana policy, but the majority of U.S. states continue to enforce federal marijuana laws. ~ The Clear Benefits of Decriminalizing Marijuana

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Upon seeing the “Ron Paul Revolution” T-shirt I was wearing, Galbraith said, “I wrote in Ron Paul for president.”

Treat yourself to twenty minutes of this independent thinker’s thoughts on drugs, education, debt, and a variety of issues plaguing Kentucky and America as a whole. We need more Gatewood Galbraith’s.

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Galbraith talking with Berea College students (Photo by Dylan Gorski)

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1. Ron Paul on Abortion 

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2. Is Ron Paul Racist, Anti-Equality, or Pro-Discrimination?

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3. Ron Paul and the Environment

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4. Ron Paul on Illegal Drugs and the Drug War

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5. Is Ron Paul an “Isolationist?” 

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6. Ron Paul on Immigration

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7. Ron Paul on the United Nations

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The UN increasingly wants to influence our domestic environmental, trade, labor, tax, and gun laws. Its global planners fully intend to expand the UN into a true world government, complete with taxes, courts, and a standing army. This is not an alarmist statement; these facts are readily promoted on the UN’s own website. UN planners do not care about national sovereignty; in fact they are actively hostile to it. They correctly view it as an obstacle to their plans. They simply aren’t interested in our Constitution and republican form of government.

The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submit to UN global governance. American national sovereignty cannot survive if we allow our domestic laws to be crafted by an international body. This needs to be stated publicly more often. If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist.

Noted constitutional scholar Herb Titus has thoroughly researched the United Nations and its purported “authority.” Titus explains that the UN Charter is not a treaty at all, but rather a blueprint for supranational government that directly violates the Constitution. As such, the Charter is neither politically nor legally binding upon the American people or government. The UN has no authority to make “laws” that bind American citizens, because it does not derive its powers from the consent of the American people. We need to stop speaking of UN resolutions and edicts as if they represented legitimate laws or treaties. They do not. – Ron Paul

8. If Ron Paul were to be elected, could he even change anything just as President? 

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“All of these measures will take a lot of work — a lot more than any one person, even the president of the United States, can accomplish by himself. In order to restore the country to the kind of government the Founders meant for us to have, a constitutionalist president would need the support of an active liberty movement. Freedom activists must be ready to pressure wavering legislators to stand up to the special interests and stay the course toward freedom. Thus, when the day comes when someone who shares our beliefs sits in the Oval Office, groups like Young Americans for Liberty and Campaign for Liberty will still have a vital role to play. No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of the liberty.” — Ron Paul, My Plan for a Freedom President

 9. Isn’t Ron Paul a libertarian who hates the government? 

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One of the popular misconceptions is that marijuana is a “gateway” drug. Kids get hooked on pot, get involved with the wrong crowd, and soon they are on an unavoidable spiral in the world of dangerous substances. I do not want to make light of drug use and smoking, but some common reasoning is necessary to understand why legalization is smart policy. Jack E. Henningfield, a PhD for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for sixteen years, researched many different substances and found that not only is marijuana less addictive than caffeine, but nicotine’s addictive levels are close to that of heroin and cocaine. As far as actual scientific research has shown, marijuana ranks among the safest and least addictive substances.

What is the primary group opposing the legalization of marijuana? Not surprisingly (and slightly humorously), it is the people who make the most profit from a criminalized product: the people who sell it on the black market.

“Pot growers are nervous because a measure that could make California the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use is set to appear on the ballot in November.” - The Union; March 26, 2010

Passing a law criminalizing a certain product is not going to get rid of that product; basic economic common sense assures us of this simple fact. Let’s say the government suddenly criminalized oranges: they’re acidic, maybe a little too rich in nutrients, and people might overindulge themselves with the sweet fruit. Would people suddenly stop eating oranges? Maybe in a child’s fantasy they would, but in reality the incentive and decision to buy, sell, and eat oranges comes not from government but from individual people. From an economic standpoint, marijuana is no different from oranges, toasters, or houses.

Criminalizing a product certainly will push up the price of that item, hardly removing the incentive of people to enter that market. With marijuana, those who can successfully grow pot and avoid the authorities often make hundreds of dollars per ounce sold. Is it any surprise, then, that these growers are some of the primary protesters to free trade and legalization of marijuana? Just as large corporations favor subsidies and regulations hindering the competitive ability of smaller businesses, pot growers are reaping the benefits of a forcefully decreased supply (and therefore higher price) of marijuana.

The simple fact is that the high crime rates surrounding marijuana arise not due to effects from the plant but because of its artificially astronomical price thanks to government criminalization. I have witnessed this impact firsthand in my surrounding area in the Sierra Nevada foothills in California. Violence comes from criminalization, not from marijuana.

“Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.” – Will Rogers

Prohibition in the 1920s is perhaps the greatest case against government criminalization of a product. As is well documented and known by now, Prohibition created a booming market for smugglers, bootleggers, and gangsters who took on the job of supplying alcohol to people who desired it. In the late 1920s, Al Capone was making $60 million per year in the alcohol business. Before Prohibition, alcohol was a nonviolent, peaceful, criminal-free market based on voluntary exchange. Prohibition depressed the supply and rocketed the price of alcohol to the point that suddenly it became a dangerous industry run largely by violent criminals.

Today, people can purchase alcohol whose quality they can be sure of (rather than the unsafe moonshine many people tried to compromise with during Prohibition), and alcohol is peacefully transported and consumed around the country. A free market without government criminalization is all you need for a nonviolent, peaceful industry. The lessons of Prohibition are desperately needed today with the government throwing away billions of dollars with the goal of suppressing the growth and exchange of a natural plant. All this policy does is mold criminals out of people who have committed the furthest thing from an aggressive crime.

One of the most puzzling statements I’ve heard amidst the discussion of the new California measure is from Grass Valley, CA police Capt. Rex Marks, who said, “Marijuana will be the subject of theft,” and, “Statistically, we can expect an increase in criminal activity.” How in the world will legalizing marijuana make it any more subject to theft than it already is? Will it be more “subject to theft” than cigarettes or alcohol? The idea that letting a product freely trade in the marketplace will lead to more crime is precisely the opposite of what will indeed happen: people will voluntarily buy, sell, and use marijuana without threat of government force, the price of marijuana will fall, and it will be taken out of the hands of organized crime. California spends well over $150 million per year enforcing laws put in place to deal with the consequences of intervention in the marijuana market. Continuing the flawed and failed policy of criminalization, restriction of free trade, and suppression of innocent individuals is what will guarantee a criminal black market, increased cases of theft and murder, a complete waste of police resources, and a continuation of the unwinnable “war on drugs.”

A common concern among parents is that legalization will lead to increased drug use among teenagers and therefore we will see an increase in crime and drug abuse. We can draw another comparison with Prohibition, when in 1926 Judge H. C. Spicer declared in an Akron, Ohio juvenile court that, “During the past two years there have been more intoxicated children brought into court than ever before.” What some began to recognize is Prohibition initiated a period when teenagers and women were more likely to drink than they had been prior to Prohibition. Matthew Woll testified to the U.S. Senate in April 1926, “Millions of homes, in the majority of which liquor was never seen, have been turned into breweries and distilleries. The youth of the land is being reared in the atmosphere of disregard for law and lack of confidence in government.” Has the criminalization of Cannabis been any different? Perhaps it has not touched as many individual families as Prohibition did, but the same factors are at work.

Even if we decided to ignore the facts of Prohibition and assume that people are correct that pot would flood the market and invade the young adult culture (as if it hasn’t made a major impact already), we must analyze the principles at stake. Is it really the job of government to do the job of parents? I can understand parents worried about their kids’ exposure to drugs and alcohol, but a more invasive and expansive government will not accomplish the paternal goal of compassion. Trying to make government socially compassionate is like trying to make a pillow softer by stuffing it with barbed wire. In the end, the only people who can parent the kids are the parents. Not the police, not some government bureaucrats creating laws in a fancy building, not a Governor or President, only the parents.

“Private morals and personal conduct can not be controlled, much less advanced, by fiat of law. Appeal for a higher morality and improved conduct must be directed to the mind and conscience of the people, not to the fear of government.” – Matthew Woll; April 1926

The legalization of marijuana would be a step forward for California and the country. Passing of the measure would not result in hippies taking over California and throwing pot at every person they see, it simply gets the train moving for a society built on the wonders of free trade and recognizes the follies of government criminalization and intervention. Legalization of marijuana would bring decreased crime, increased trade, and would maximize what is a struggling institution in the U.S. today: individual liberty. The basic principle and greatest challenge of liberty is to allow people to do what they please with their liberty, whether it be brilliant or boneheaded, so long as they don’t impact the liberty of another individual. The choice is clear: legalize or stick a dagger in the heart of liberty. Those who desire a less intrusive and more respectable government must support the new California proposal.

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Profit represents the reward for taking a risk. You wouldn’t start a business if you knew you weren’t going to make more than you would spend creating that business, would you? However, if you can increase your income more than your expenditures through that business, you’ll feel much more inclined to continue with the operation. Obviously, people cannot survive operating a business at a loss.

Profits do not come without work and risk. It is only possible to make a profit if you can offer a product or a service, that people want, in an efficient manner. No matter how greedy you may be, in a free market you cannot survive without efficiently producing a product that has market demand. You cannot force people to work for you, you cannot force people to invest in your business, and you cannot force people to purchase your product. Your greed is limited to free and voluntary exchange.

Profits have been especially dissed when it comes to health care. It is easy to blame the insurance corporations and many missteps that the current system carries, but people fail to realize that it has been government intervention into the market that has increased prices and decreased accessibility. The more that government regulates, controls, and manipulates health care, the less access individuals will have to health care because of the higher costs.

The Kefauver Harris Amendment of 1962 was added on to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, providing the FDA with greatly expanded regulatory powers, including the ability to deny approval of drugs that they felt weren’t fully effective. The FDA’s regulatory process to bring new drugs into the market is very costly in terms of money and time, making it exceedingly difficult for businesses other than large pharmaceutical corporations to survive in the drug market. Dr. Mary J. Ruwart estimates that no less than 50% of new drugs have been blocked from the market due to this process.

Because of the 1962 amendments, the FDA can determine and change the requirements to bring new drugs from the laboratory and into the marketplace. In 1962, the development phase of drugs took approximately 4.5 years. A good amount of time for a business to invest money in a product that might never get the chance to sell on the market, right? Today the development time is 15 years. With such brutal development and marketing procedures for drugs, it should be no surprise that drug prices are rising. These regulatory proceedings limit the supply of new drugs, raise the price of existing drugs, and limit patient access overall to drugs. In other words, the demand for these drugs does not disappear, but the supply is often heavily limited. Thus, prices go up.

With the drug market essentially limited to the few businesses who can afford to comply with the expensive FDA regulations, competition has taken a beating. Drugs often represent a more affordable method for prevention, treatment, and a general tool to lower medical costs. However, the FDA has so greatly limited potentially life-saving drugs that medical costs continue to rapidly expand.

If it was the patients, not central bureaucrats, who worked with their doctors to decide whether or not certain drugs were logical for their own situation, competition in the drug industry would flourish, prices would fall, and accessibility would increase. We need to understand that government intervention comes with a price by benefiting larger corporations and limiting the competitive ability of smaller businesses.

I am not discounting the effects of greed and the want/need for profits that is inherent in some individuals. But the answer to these problems is not more government intervention or centralization of the markets. The trouble that we face in health care and many other industries is precisely too little competition, a trend that government has consistently worsened. Just look at the drug market: it has become such a bureaucratized process that it ends up helping the larger corporations, hurting small businesses, and pinching the consumer in terms of choice and cost.

The power of the individual is the power of choice: the ability to choose your own insurance plan (without being forced into an employer or government option), and to choose which drugs and medical treatment make sense to you, not to federal bureaucrats. The more power that you transfer from the individual to the government, the more you will see lobbyist activity, corporatism, and inefficiency increase. We are constantly trying to force a one-size-fits-all system on the country (whether it be HMOs or “public options”), neglecting the fact that we are all very unique as individuals and might have better ideas for ourselves, even if politicians turn “bipartisan” to force legislation on the people.

The key point is that demonizing profits in support of a government plan completely misses the underlying problem: limited competition. You do not need government to encourage competition, you need freedom of the individual, freedom of choice, and freedom of competition to create a prosperous, healthy, and accessible market.

It is amusing that so many people are hopping on the bandwagon that government operating at a loss is somehow more noble than for-profit businesses. The whole reason that government can operate at a loss is because it borrows from foreign nations, prints and devalues the currency, and forcefully taxes private productivity. As much as people would like to believe it, government cannot defy the laws of economics and common sense over the long run. They may be able to operate Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other programs with trillion dollar deficits for a time, but it will come crashing down just as it would for any irresponsible business that chooses to spend more money on unprofitable activities.

We need not look any further than the drug industry to see how disastrous a powerful, unelected, and centralized bureaucracy can be. The FDA has powers intended to help the people, but its very policies to help people have likely caused far more deaths and suffering by preventing and limiting new drugs, raising the price of current drugs, and decreasing accessibility to drugs because of the higher prices.

True, revolutionary, and sustainable change can only come through the individual. Profits themselves are not the problem; discouraging competition for those profits is the problem. Government provides a de facto monopoly to large corporations when it gets as involved as the FDA in private affairs, laying the foundation for a system that can never fully serve the individual. For full individual service, the individual must be in full control.

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