OK! Now I'm going to be contentious and bore the crap out of the nay-sayers.....
In the UK we had a huge cotton industry back in the late 19th.century. While we were making our clothes from cotton fibre,
in the US work wear was being manufactured using hemp fibre (Levi jeans etc.). Now when the English cotton Barons discovered this,
having invested millions in cotton plantations in the US ( and some rather more scurrilous business investments...) they were terrified as
they knew full well that hemp could be grown easily in the English climate and that they were going to lose a very valuable corner of the
market. They knew that smoking the buds and leaves was an intoxicant that many found pleasurable so they approached government of
the day ( and quite a few were already part of government ) to see if their expected losses could be nipped in the bud. Sorry for the pun!
Queen Victoria was an early recreational drug user, by the way, and she experimented with both hemp, as it was known then and also arsenic ( :yikes: ) to get her jollies!
Anyway, a huge misinformation campaign was officially launched about the perils of hemp smoking and subsequently it was made illegal.
So the processing and manufacture of hemp products was pretty much limited to rope. The US had the same with the infamous 'Reefer Madness'
posters and campaign.
There have been arguments for and against for many years in the UK and much research has been carried out especially by those in power
who needed to prove that cannabis use was indeed very dangerous and also by those who found that it, in fact, was many times less dangerous than
both tobacco, which kills many thousands each year here, and of course 'The Demon Drink' which is also responsible for thousands of deaths annually.
Strangely, cannabis has never been found to have been solely responsible for any deaths except of course the idiots who get stoned and then decide
to drive a car or bike.
One government scientist was not only discredited but had his career totally ruined for coming out against the government's opinions and stating that
the evidence against the recreational use of cannabis was largely untrue and that much had been 'invented'.
My opinion? Tobacco and alcohol place a huge burden on our health service which is untenable whereas the occasional joint is relatively harmless when used
responsibly. Worse still...I still like an occasional cigarette and am well known for my love of real ale....I haven't smoked a joint for many years. But if I
was offered one I would not reel backwards in terror!
In the UK we had a huge cotton industry back in the late 19th.century. While we were making our clothes from cotton fibre,
in the US work wear was being manufactured using hemp fibre (Levi jeans etc.). Now when the English cotton Barons discovered this,
having invested millions in cotton plantations in the US ( and some rather more scurrilous business investments...) they were terrified as
they knew full well that hemp could be grown easily in the English climate and that they were going to lose a very valuable corner of the
market. They knew that smoking the buds and leaves was an intoxicant that many found pleasurable so they approached government of
the day ( and quite a few were already part of government ) to see if their expected losses could be nipped in the bud. Sorry for the pun!
Queen Victoria was an early recreational drug user, by the way, and she experimented with both hemp, as it was known then and also arsenic ( :yikes: ) to get her jollies!
Anyway, a huge misinformation campaign was officially launched about the perils of hemp smoking and subsequently it was made illegal.
So the processing and manufacture of hemp products was pretty much limited to rope. The US had the same with the infamous 'Reefer Madness'
posters and campaign.
There have been arguments for and against for many years in the UK and much research has been carried out especially by those in power
who needed to prove that cannabis use was indeed very dangerous and also by those who found that it, in fact, was many times less dangerous than
both tobacco, which kills many thousands each year here, and of course 'The Demon Drink' which is also responsible for thousands of deaths annually.
Strangely, cannabis has never been found to have been solely responsible for any deaths except of course the idiots who get stoned and then decide
to drive a car or bike.
One government scientist was not only discredited but had his career totally ruined for coming out against the government's opinions and stating that
the evidence against the recreational use of cannabis was largely untrue and that much had been 'invented'.
My opinion? Tobacco and alcohol place a huge burden on our health service which is untenable whereas the occasional joint is relatively harmless when used
responsibly. Worse still...I still like an occasional cigarette and am well known for my love of real ale....I haven't smoked a joint for many years. But if I
was offered one I would not reel backwards in terror!
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