The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

Wasting Time, Wasting Lives

More than 100 years have passed since the 1894 British Raj commission study of hashish smokers in India reported cannabis use was harmless and even helpful. Numerous studies since have all agreed: The most prominent being Siler, LaGuardia, Nixon’s Shafer Commission, Canada’s LeDain Commission, and the California Research Advisory Commission.

Concurrently, American presidents have praised hemp, the USDA amassed volumes of data showing its value as a natural resource, and in 1942 the Roosevelt administration even made Hemp for Victory, a film glorifying our patriotic hemp farmers. That same year, Germany produced The Humorous Hemp Primer, a comic book, written in rhyme, extolling hemp’s virtues. (See appendix I of the paper version of this book.)

Yet even the humane use of hemp for medicine is now denied. Asked in late 1989 about the DEA’s failure to implement his decision quoted above, Judge Young responded that administrator John Lawn was being given time to comply.

More than a year after that ruling, Lawn officially refused to reschedule cannabis, again classing it as a Schedule I “dangerous” drug that is not even allowed to be used as medicine.

Decrying this needless suffering of helpless Americans, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Family Council on Drug Awareness quickly demanded Lawn’s resignation. His successors, Bonner and now Constantine, retain the same policy.

What hypocrisy allows public officials to scoff at the facts and deny the truth? How do they rationalize their atrocities? How? They invent their own experts.