(NaturalNews) The grocery aisles have displayed foods for decades that are nutritionally deficient. Poor soil conditions combined with seed engineering and processing have left people with poor choices. Consider these eight superfoods to get the required nutrients for optimal body function.
Aloe vera
Aloe vera has 20 minerals, 12 vitamins, 18 amino acids, 200 active plant compounds (phytonutrients), and strong antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties.
Aloe vera benefits include:
• Eases inflammation and arthritic pain
• Heals ulcers and a wide variety of digestive disorders and complications
• Treats candida and parasites
• Reduces heart attacks and strokes
• Helps halt growth of cancer tumors
Bee pollen
Bee pollen is a rich source of carotenoids, 22 amino acids, and enzymes. It is a also good source of B-vitamins, vitamin C and E, and over 68 minerals.
Bee pollen benefits include:
• Combats cancer, diabetes, arthritis and depression
• Promotes increased strength, stamina, endurance and energy levels
• Increases concentration and memory
• Improves fertility and enhances sexual activity
• Increases resistance to infections
Maca
Maca is a very nutrient-dense superfood and a complete source of amino acids. It also is rich in B-vitamins, vitamins C and E, and is a good source of copper, iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and zinc.
Maca benefits include:
• Improves anaemia
• Reduces chronic fatigue
• Relieves stress and depression
• Improves libido and fertility
• Improves adrenal function
• Strengthens memory
Reishi
Reishi is a rich source of antioxidants. It is also a good source of B-vitamins, as well as potassium, niacin, magnesium, selenium, copper and phosphorus.
• Combats immune-related disorders like allergies, arthritis and cancer
• Reduces physical and mental stress
• Reduces inflammation
• Protects the liver
• Helps correct digestive disorders
Goji berries
Goji berries contain 18 amino acids, 21 trace minerals, vitamin A, B-complex, C and E, and is a superior form of antioxidants.
Goji berries benefits include:
• Significantly improves immune function
• Protects DNA
• Protects the eyes and liver
• Reduces inflammation
• Protects the heart
• Improves mood and libido
Chlorella
Chlorella is a rich source of complete protein, a potent source of chlorophyll, and rich in the entire vitamin complex. It is also an exceptional source of iron and zinc, as well as magnesium, phosphorus, calcium and potassium.
Chlorella benefits include:
• Helps detoxify biotoxins, xenobiotics and heavy metals
• Helps kill candida and yeast overgrowth
• Known cancer fighter
• Prevents and improves diabetes and insulin resistance
• Reduces pain associated with arthritis and fibromyalgia
• Helps heal and repair tissue growth
• Reduces and eliminates digestive issues
Hemp
Hemp contains 20 amino acids and is a complete source of plant protein. It is also nature’s most abundant source of essential fatty acids and has a perfect 3 to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3.
Hemp benefits include:
• Fortifies immune system
• Reduces inflammation
• Improves memory and prevents brain-related diseases
• Clears up skin disorders
• Helps keep digestive tract healthy and clean
• Helps prevent cancer
• Helps reduce risk of diabetes
Coconut
Coconut is an excellent source of fatty acids, including lauric and caprylic acid, which destroy bacteria, viruses and fungi. It’s also a good source of B-vitamins and a great source of copper, calcium, iron, manganese, magnesium and zinc.
Coconut benefits include:
• Improves immune system function
• Helps protect against brain-related disorders
• Lowers risk of diabetes
• Reduces joint and muscle inflammation
• Strengthens liver
• Kills bacteria and parasites
• Protects against cancer and other immune-related diseases
• Eases acid reflux and promotes proper digestive function
(NaturalNews) How did a plant that is so easily cultivated with so many uses since it was first grown in China around 6,000 BC become illegal? Even the original Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
Hemp fiber was used for sails and ropes for sea-going vessels during the 17th and 18th Centuries. Up until the early 20th Century, removing hemp fiber by hand was too tedious and slow for hemp to compete with other industries propelled by the burgeoning machine age.
But as WWI broke out, a German immigrant in California, George Schlichten, invented and successfully tested the first hemp decorticator, which could mechanically strip hemp of its fiber rapidly and efficiently.
Associates of the USA’s newspaper magnate of that time, EW Scripps, showed some interest in using the decorticator on a 100-acre plot of hemp near San Diego for Scripps’ paper sources. Economic circumstances and the war discouraged their plans. [1]
During the late 1930s, editions of Popular Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering exclaimed hemp could now become a billion dollar industry because of the hemp decorticator, making it seem it was a new invention even though it had been around since 1917.
But those re-emerging headlines may have have motivated industrial and banking giants with connections in Roosevelt’s administration to rid the hemp threat to their interests. This led to the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the first step in squashing the hemp industry.
Even the AMA was thrown off by this legislation because hemp tinctures and oils had been prescribed for several ailments.
Here’s a summarized story that names the vested interests behind that legislation:http://www.princeton.edu.
Amazing hemp benefits
(1) Medicinal: Medical marijuana or cannabis edibles and THC hemp oils have been studied internationally by reputable labs and clinics for their healing properties, especially regarding cancer, for decades.
According to GreenMedInfo founder Sayer Ji, “Indeed, the GreenMedInfo.com project has uncovered 129 distinct disease categories that may benefit from this remarkable plant thus far, and new studies are being added on a weekly basis.” [2]
Classifying marijuana as a drug without medical merit is a lie perpetuated by the Justice Department’s DEA to keep it illegal for their business of arresting and prosecuting peaceful marijuana users.
(2) Foods: Hemp seeds and oils are an abundant source of perfectly balanced omega-6, omega-3, and omega-9 fatty acids. The high level of essential protein amino acids hemp offers provides a more bio-available complete protein than most all other protein sources, plant or animal. [3]
(3) Clothing: Cloth from hemp is tougher and allows for better ventilation than even cotton. You can buy hemp clothing today. Legalizing hemp would lower the costs of the imports of hemp fibers.
(4) Plastics: Around 1940, Henry Ford built a “vegetable car” with mostly hemp fibers, not including the drive train of course. The body was so strong two men with sledgehammers and axes couldn’t harm it. [4]
Properly produced hemp plastics are 100 percent biodegradable and can replace all current petroleum based chemically infested plastics. [5]
(5) Building materials: Several types of building materials, stronger and lighter than wood and concrete with better insulation properties have actually been used recently for housing. [2 – video] [5]
(6) Paper: Instead of deforesting for wood to mill paper with harsh chemicals, a process that manifests countless ecological problems, hemp fibers could be used for paper. It had been used for paper before wood pulp processing. And the paper’s quality is considered superior by many.
(7) Agriculture: Hemp is a hardy plant requiring little water and no synthetic fertilizers or herbicides. It’s a perfect rotation crop because it boosts soil health. In a relatively warm temperate climates, it can be planted and harvested twice a year.
Because it’s easy to grow and harvest with less overhead, it’s also a perfect cash crop for struggling small farms. Kentucky senator Rand Paul is pushing for a bill to legalize industrial hemp growth. It’s already happening in Colorado (http://www.naturalnews.com).
People wail, cry, and question why him /her, how could this happen to a child? Immeasurable grief.
Yet the answers are quite clear: humans are unknowingly exposed to far too many chemicals on their food, in their water, their clothes – even when buying a new car. That new car smell? Major cancer causing chemicals that have been used to treat the new leather and the rugs in that new car. And people get in and snort it like they smelled a bouquet of flowers.
Food sprayed with chemicals to make them last? Preservatives. At one time, you could not patent food. Yet we now have a patented soybean. Just so Monsanto can profit. This fooling around and injecting chemicals in food has got to stop!
This is why you must demand that food be labeled GMO! Go California!
Even new clothing has been treated with chemicals that can seep into the body and wreak havoc especially in young children. Not to mention the pesticides that are used on your food. What is very interesting is how many people from Monsanto wind up working for the FDA. The FDA is supposed to protect US citizens from poisons, right? Do enough of your own research and the more you learn the more outraged you will become. This is what is meant by the wolf guarding the henhouse. They eat healthy, sure. And you can bet the ranch they don’t eat the food they sell.
Dr Max Gerson, who in 1938 made a startling discovery that his safe natural treatment for cancer patients held enormous promise. He was getting people well by using something that could not be patented – vegetables. At this time in history, a bill was appropriated for 100 million dollars to anyone who could show promise and results in treating cancer. Dr Gerson in 1946 presented 5 terminal cases and 5 additional patients’ records showing his effective treatment and cure of all of these cases. Well, guess what? The Pepper-Neely bill was defeated by four senators who were medical doctors.
Also of note, radio announcer Raymond Gram Swing who was in the room, was as astonished as any of the others and made a broadcast that night detailing these events and Gerson’s effective treatment. Two 2 weeks later, Swing was fired from his job.
The following video is life changing. The angel Charlotte Gerson is still alive and living in San Diego.
Gerson died in 1959, eulogized by long-time friend, Albert Schweitzer M.D.:
I see in him one of the most eminent geniuses in the history of medicine. Many of his basic ideas have been adopted without having his name connected with them. Yet, he has achieved more than seemed possible under adverse conditions. He leaves a legacy which commands attention and which will assure him his due place. Those whom he has cured will now attest to the truth of his ideas.
Dozens of treatments have come and gone and have just as quickly been termed “not effective”. When an individual encounters a pathogen (virus, bacteria, fungus) their immunomodulators in their brain kick in to use and many different self-preservation events occur. One of the first is a fever. Almost all pathogens function best at 98.6, or normal body temperature.
The aspirin companies have convinced the public that a fever is bad. “We’ve got to break the fever” “if it gets too high we could cause brain damage”. And so this is drilled into caring parents’ minds and they immediately freak and start giving aspirin.
The body knows what it is doing and we interfere. Because we have a degree from a prestigious school and a stethoscope around our neck-we know better. But the fever is designed to make a poor quality environment for the germ, and eventually kill it off.
Instead, the aspirin, or Tylenol, does lower the temperature in some cases and the pathogen can now flourish.
The following was written by a medical doctor and comes from The Cancer Prevention Coalition: The verdict is unassailable. The American Cancer Society bears a major responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer. Reforming the ACS is, in principle, relatively easy and directly achievable. Boycott the ACS. Instead, give your charitable contributions to public interest and environmental groups involved in cancer prevention. Such a boycott is well overdue and will send the only message this “charity” can no longer ignore. The Cancer Prevention Coalition (chaired by the author) in April 1999 formally announced a nationwide campaign for an economic boycott of the ACS .
Mammography
The American Cancer Society has close connections to the mammography industry. Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents, and in its every move, the ACS reflects the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker. In fact, if every woman were to follow ACS and NCI mammography guidelines, the annual revenue to health care facilities would be a staggering $5 billion, including at least $2.5 billion for premenopausal women. Promotions of the ACS continue to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results in a cure “nearly 100 percent of the time.” An ACS communications director, questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey, responded in an article published by the Massachusetts Women’s Community’s journal Cancer:
The ad isn’t based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point. . . . Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business.
The way women are treated when they have a mammography is deplorable. The tender, sensitive breast is jostled around, roughly handled and placed in the device to obtain the x-ray. The already angry area (angry with cancer cells) is now irritated further, enhancing the probability and possibility of cells spreading to other parts of the body.
Not only that, the tumor has a capsule around it. All the rough movement of the breast only helps to disrupt this capsule and enhance spreading or metastasis. Want a little more irritation? Let’s biopsy the area. A needle is stuck into the balloon and cells removed. Don’t you know there will be some leakage of the cells contained in that capsule?
Lung cancer and esophageal cancers too, are extraordinarily lucrative. It is one of the more difficult cancers to treat. There are miraculous stories about using Hydrogen Peroxide in the proper form to treat the body with oxygen.
Madison Cavanaugh has written a book called The One Minute Cure detailing the effectiveness of Hydrogen Peroxide on various health problems. Get the book.
To be clear, Hydrogen Peroxide must be Food Grade, meaning NOT WHAT YOU BUY IN THE SUPERMARKET. You must find food grade at 35% and then dilute it to 3%. What they sell in the brown bottle has preservatives in it and is not meant for internal use.
Cancer despises oxygen. It also loves 98.6. And it loves fatty tissue. It’s nirvana for the cancer cells. Cancer also has a unique capability to do what is called angiogenesis – it makes it’s own blood vessels to bring more blood and more food to feed it’s crazy appetite. It has this appetite because it is making cells at such a rapid pace.
Sugar is perfect fuel for cancer. High fructose corn syrup is a form of sugar that is ideal, as the high mitotic rate (cell division and tumor growth) calls for energy.
So here we have the “perfect storm”- you take a body, make it overweight – eat low quality food with all kinds of chemicals in the food and expose that person to fluoride in water, or vaccinations (additional cancer causing chemicals), air pollution, barbecued food (additional carcinogens) nitrates and nitrites, second hand smoke, etc and voila! You have a good potential to develop cancer.
Not everyone takes the cheese of standard treatment however, because there are alternatives to treating even difficult esophageal cancer as evidenced by this next video:
Tumors – Let’s pretend you were away and when you came home your home was extremely hot. You go to the thermostat an turn on the air conditioner. Nothing happens.
Would you then rip the thermostat out of the wall, thinking, “Well that should fix it”?
Of course not. This is what we do when we cut out a tumor. The tumors purpose just may be a “thermostat” a way to measure the presence of sickness. What if the tumor was only an indicator and not a sign of imminent death?
In so many cases, when treated successfully, there are reports of tumors shrinking and disappearing.
So what we do in America, we cut the tumor out. And the wonderful surgeon tells the family “I think we got it all”. Since cells are so vastly small, how could anyone, even with a microscope know for sure that they “got it all?” There is not a physician on the planet that could know for 100% sure they were able to “get it all”.
As a matter of fact, what if the tumors actually served a purpose and acted as indicators to tell us whether improvement is taking place? After all, unless the tumor is pressing on an airway or blood vessel, why take a chance and cut a person open who is already in a challenged state? And leave them susceptible to infection. Many people die from secondary infections due to the immunosuppresion of their bodies brought on by the side effects of chemotherapy. The radiation kills healthy cells. Cancer does not make hair fall out; radiation does that. And poor appetite causing poor nourishment? Caused by the drugs. So how can a body stay healthy if they are not getting proper nourishment?
This does not have to be. This is exactly where Dr Gerson was going. Take away the irritants (bad food, poor quality fluoridated water, fats, and sugars) and introduce ingredients the body can use to fight with-clean water-a healthy liver-vegetables-nutrients, and proper health can be restored.
This is a small sampling of incredible alternatives to fight cancer. The reason hemp is outlawed? Henry Ford many years ago said we should be using hemp for almost anything you can imagine – more and better use than cutting down all the trees and insulting the earth with mining. Greed is why hemp is outlawed. It is a very powerful solution to a number of health problems.
Rick Simpson in his video Run From the Cure discusses his very effective treatment for cancer-hemp oil.
The suppression of this information is criminal.
Please read Death By Medicine. Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD
This is not about bad mouthing anyone. There are better things to do with time. It is about exposing the truth. There are many fine, caring physicians. When a person experiences a trauma from an accident, a severe laceration, by all means, of course you require medical treatment. Let’s not mix compassion with profit. Medicine started out based on compassion. First, do no harm, right? We should prevent what we treat? Where are we now? Big Pharma sends their beautiful reps to doctors’ offices to convince them of how they should be getting more people on this drug or that one, despite side effects. It’s for profit and it is deplorable and sad.
Be aware of your rights; don’t be badgered or scared into doing what “everyone else is doing” only to wind up a statistic. Do your research now while you’re healthy. Don’t wait until you are in a crisis mode. Stay healthy. Grow your own vegetables. Drink purified water. Take nutrients. Question authority. And by all means Wake Up World!
America’s industrial ban on hemp is “a poster child for dumb regulation,” argues lazy ass pothead! Wait, sorry, scratch that. Make that Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, introducing an amendment last week to the densely contested 2012 Farm Bill, which is either a subsidies and sustainability savior or callous food austerity, depending on who you ask. But if you ask Wyden, “the best possible Farm Bill” is one that repeals a ban on industrial hemp the United States is already quite busy, and expensively, importing from the few feet it takes to cross the Canadian border.
“I will be urging my colleagues to support this amendment,” Wyden announced last week on the Senate floor, reminding the assembled elected that his plan won’t cost American taxpayers a dime. “I want [them] to know I will be back at this again until there are smarter regulations in place.”
“America needs to get real about hemp, and fast, even if the country continues to fight about ending cannabis prohibition,” National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) executive director Allen St. Pierre told AlterNet. “There is virtually no one on earth who intellectually opposes farmers cultivating industrial hemp, other than anti-cannabis bureaucracies, politicians, drug testing companies and the U.S. law enforcement community.”
That’s some stacked opposition. But the list below provides more than enough firepower for encouraging an overdue repeal of the ban on industrial hemp, cannabis sativa’s low-THC strain.
1. America buys hemp from Canada anyway.
Maybe we should just burn money, too? “We’re already importing a crop that the U.S. farmer could be profitably growing right here at home, if not for government rules prohibiting it,” Wyden argued, reminding listeners that in 2010, Canada subsidized its hemp industry with over $700,000 more in funding, increased crop sizes and “fortified the inroads the Canadians are making in U.S. markets at the expense of our farmers.” All while our hemp imports have grown 300 percent in the last decade, and 35 percent since 2009. Meanwhile, Canada’s cropland devoted to industrial hemp doubled from 2011 to 2012, Wyden added, remarking that his local Portlanders who manufacture hemp products are doing brisk business, thanks very much.
2. Everyone is growing hemp and laughing at us.
Besides Canada, Australia is enjoying an agricultural rebound because of hemp production. Over 30 countries permit its production, and as usual, resourceful China is the world’s largest producer with nearly 80 percent of global tonnage. Instructively, China has been around for thousands of years, so who on Earth is going to tell them shit about the future? Not the United States, which remains the only industrialized nation to forbid its farmers from growing industrial hemp. Cue the giggle track.
“Canada, France, China, Russia and the United Kingdom all have cannabis prohibition laws in place,” St. Pierre told AlterNet. “And yet, they still allow their farmers to cultivate and prosper from industrial hemp.” Speaking of…
3. We’re not talking about cannabis here. But who cares if we were?
Both should be legalized anyway, and everyone knows it. But even cannabis paranoiacs need to chill: THC levels of hemp are under .03 percent, which couldn’t get a tobacco lobbyist high. Under Wyden’s amendment, hemp production would be regulated, but by the individual states’ permitting processes rather than the federal government that has made a Kafkaesque mess of medical cannabis. Nine states have already put similar legislation in place.
“Why can’t the US government and its law enforcement community be as pragmatic and practical as other countries regarding making the logical ecological and economical distinction between ‘hemp’ and ‘cannabis’?” St. Pierre asked. “Is it that American narcs are less intelligent, or is it that they can’t be as educated about hemp as police in the UK, China or Canada?”
4. Hemp is green.
As any naturalist or historian will tell you, the uses for hemp — from paper, textiles and clothing to health products, biodegradable plastics and biofuels — are diverse and widely documented. But it’s a much more sustainable crop than most: It needs less fertilizer than King Corn, can be grown in several consecutive years in the same fields (monocultural!), rarely needs pesticides (if at all), and, irony of ironies, it’s a weed killer. Thanks to its fibrous density, it’s a construction material just begging for an increased American market. Wyden claimed that North Carolina builders are using hemp to make their structures stronger and greener, while Minnesota’s Original Green Distribution promotes it as the “perfect building material” — non-toxic, non-flammable, mold and mildew resistant, and cash-positive. The argument against local hemp production? A house of cards.
5. Hemp is patriotic.
Our lionized Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew it, and they helped create the nation. Hemp has been cultivated and consumed across the planet for millennia, from China’s Neolithic Age to New England’s Puritans and Virginian farmers — who were instructed by a House of Burgesses’ Act to sow it on their plantations. Americans even created a World War II propaganda film called Hemp For Victory, despite the destructive, embarrassing Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which criminalized commercial use of hemp or cannabis. Whether that legislation, supported by progressive hero and president Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a back-door favor to the competing and eventually triumphant industries of his friends and sponsors Mellon, Hearst and DuPont, or just post-Mexican Revolution immigrant xenophobia, is ancient history now. This is a new century. We’re past it.
6. Hemp has carbon-negative promise.
Those remaining hemp naysayers will eventually change their minds when global warming starts downsizing the planet’s arable land. Because it has significant climate change upside, whether you’re talking renewable energy, carbon sequestration or just food. (Yes, you can eat hemp.) According to the Hemp Industries Association, the U.S. Department of Energy considers hemp a biomass fuel alternative that could ameliorate our addiction to fossil fuels, as well as an alternative to toxic petrochemicals involved in plastic production. In fact, there are over two millions cars on the road right now — from Ford, GM and Chrysler to Mercedes, BMW and beyond — housing hemp in their interiors. And it’s a naturally occurring carbon sink too. Unlike more traditional concrete, Hempcrete is carbon-negative, storing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. The HIA also claims that hemp proper produces more pulp per acreage than wood pulp, which is great because we really need to stop cutting down forests so they can continue to suck all the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the air before the world as we know it ends before we know it.
7. Nuclear apocalypse? Hemp has an app for that.
Even if we jump back onto hemp’s historical bandwagon and dodge catastrophic climate change with the help of other green alternatives, we still might nuke ourselves like idiots. But hemp can even give us a hand with that irradiated lunacy. Thanks to its sprawling canopy, it’s already a powerhouse weed suppressor, as well an impressive mop crop capable of sopping up contaminants and even radiation. The Princeton-based company Phytotech and others even planted hemp in Chernobyl alongside sunflowers and other impressively extractive plants. It’s logical that planting more phytoremediation-friendly crops will help us clean up proliferating chemical and nuclear dumps. Hemp is a phytoremediator just waiting for the innovation that repealing a lame ban on industrial cultivation can bring.
8. Hemp can help the sick.
The medicinal and rehabilitative value of cannabis is already well-known, despite certain compromised parties still claiming the science isn’t in. But once the ban on industrial hemp is inevitably repealed, expect stories about the healing properties of hemp oil to percolate above the subculture that presently contains them. American integrative medicine physician Andrew Weil has found that “some cancer patients have found it to be a superior remedy for the nausea caused by chemotherapy, and some people with multiple sclerosis are grateful for its relaxant effects on spastic muscles.” But repealing the ban on industrial hemp will put these contentions to the test for true believers and skeptics alike, once hurdles to cultivation and innovation are removed. It’s not an accident that more seniors are signing on with cannabis and hemp to deal with the ravages of age. It’s also no accident that my late, great father-in-law, who passed last year no thanks to Parkinson’s, extended and improved his deteriorating state with cannabis, or that his children who suggested it to him are mostly doctors.
9. Hemp means jobs.
As you may have heard, we’re mired in an ongoing recession with unemployment hovering near 10 percent and going nowhere. So why would we trash an economically logical, environmentally friendly crop whose industrial production could increase jobs and revenue? (Hey wait, is this why the Pentagon is built atop Uncle Sam’s hemp farm?) In 2010, U.S. retail sales of hemp-based products passed $400 million, and there’s likely a good reason that how much America pays annually to import hemp isn’t just a click away. But It doesn’t take 300 economists, including some Nobel laureates, arguing that decriminalizing cannabis and hemp could save us $7 billion a year to realize that domesticating hemp production will bring jobs back across the borders to unemployed Americans. Who then might just turn around and buy more hemp products with their hard-earned pay. No-brainer, bean counters.
10. Hemp can be a peacemaker.
Bipartisanship haters, take notes. Senator Wyden’s reasonable amendment has been cosigned by the sometimes unreasonable Tea Party favorite, Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, whose controversial father Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced a similar measure earlier this year. Whether or not it immediately works should not overshadow the fact that it is Wyden and Paul who have brought legislation favoring hemp to the congressional floor for the first time since the ’50s. Not should it be forgotten than industrial hemp was once the second largest crop, after tobacco, of Kentucky’s antebellum economy, which grew more than any other state before its criminalization. Plus, legal hemp will stop pointless enforcements, like that of David Bronner, the fair-trade, sustainability entrepreneur and activist, who was recently arrested in front of the White House protesting the industrial hemp ban while locked in a metal cage alongside his plants.
Optimists with faith in humanity cannot help but look into the future and see more cannabis and hemp cultivation and consumption, as lab-rat mutations like soda, cigarettes and antidepressants finish off what’s left of the evolutionary skeptics. We can’t believe, for a second, that last century’s superpower could stoutly march right off a cliff, armed with pharmaceutical marketing and a very unhealthy disrespect for earthly reality.
About the Author
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
