…On the subject of “whether or not to grow more corn for Ethanol production and it’s global impact.

The debate has recently surfaced about whether or not grow more corn for the production of ethanol for fuel to replace petroleum.

I have four points to make on this.

1)  It is ridiculously short-sighted to grow more of anythin we are already growing on what would be called a “mass” scale, especially when it comes to corn. Why? Well, there are 144,000 edible fruits and vegetables on the planet of which FOURTY FOUR are cultivated and distributed on any kind of “grand” scale. WHY ARE WE BEING SO BORING ABOUT THE FOOD WE CHOOSE TO CULTIVATE TO GROW!!?.

2) The two agricultural products produced in the greatest quantity on planet Earth currently, are:

CORN

and

BANANNAS.

It really ought to be RICE

and

Banannas.

Why is It CORN?

Because most of the corn that is grown for food is made into HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.

Sugar.

This product is jammed into MOST PROCESSED FOODS.

In the quantities that it exists in our food, it is UNHEALTHY for us and we don’t want it in our food, and a large percentage of us are victimized because do not even know we do not wish to have it in our foods!! It is unhealthy and even toxic.

Eliminate this from the food production chain and divert the corn production to ethanol production.

3) We do not have to use corn for fuel production to make fuel, WHY?

BECAUSE- if you make CELLULOSIC ethanol from the HEMP plant, also known as MARIJUANA, (the kind that does not get you high, though. More like the “leafy NO HIGH” version of pot) the fuel to feed ratio is 95% as compared to anything else you could use (ie. petroleum,corn,sugar,switchgrass, whatever…) which are all at about 45-64%. in the range of less than half.

WTF people!!!

TIME TO STEP UP TIME TO STEP UP!!!!

CARPE’ DIEM CARPE’ DIEM CARPE’ DIEM

Marijuana May Be Protective Against Injury, Study Says

Lausanne, Switzerland: The use of cannabis is not a contributing causal factor in injuries requiring hospitalization, and may even protect users against the likelihood of sustaining such injuries, according to the results of case-control study published online in the journal BMC Public Health.

Investigators at the Luasanne University Hospital in Switzerland assessed the association between the use of cannabis and/or alcohol and the risk of injury among 486 patients aged 16 and older.

Investigators reported: “Alcohol use in the six hours prior to injury was associated with [an elevated] relative risk compared with no alcohol use. Cannabis use was inversely related to risk of injury.”

Researchers also analyzed subjects’ drug use for the time period exactly one week prior to the patients’ hospitalization. They reported, “More patients reported alcohol use in the six-hour period prior to injury (case period) than in the corresponding six-hour period the previous week (control period). … For cannabis, fewer people reported use prior to injury (case period) than in the control period.”

Despite the study’s relatively small sample size, investigators concluded: “The results for cannabis use were quite surprising. … The present study in fact indicated a ‘protective effect’ of cannabis use in a dose-response relationship.”

Commenting on the study’s results, authors speculated that “cannabis is consumed in relatively safer, low risk environments” (e.g., at home) compared to alcohol, which is often consumed at bars or prior to going out in public.

A prior case-control study conducted by the University of Missouri also reported an inverse relationship between marijuana use and injury risk, finding, “Self-reported marijuana use in the previous seven days was associated … with a substantially decreased risk of injury.”

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, “Alcohol and cannabis use as risk factors for injury – a case-crossover analysis in a Swiss hospital emergency department,” is available online from BMC Public Health at: www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/40.

Who Was George Washington?

WASHINGTON – February 16 –

HARVEY WASSERMAN
Author of “Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States,” Wasserman said today: “Washington inherited substantial riches from his wife Martha, the widow of Daniel Custis, a wealthy plantation owner who died when she was 26. She married George soon thereafter. He was (and is) often referred to as “the richest man in America,” but this title is in dispute. He was an aggressive land speculator who, as a British and then an American officer, did not hesitate to personally profit from the conquests of Indian land. Tax records show he owned more than a hundred slaves in his most prosperous years. Though he began to reject the ‘peculiar institution,’ and stopped buying more in his later years, he was also capable of selling off slaves he didn’t like or trust. At least two personal servants, Hercules and Oney Judge, ran away from his household. He freed a number of slaves when he died in 1799, pending Martha’s death. She died in 1802 after burning the personal letters in her possession (though some survived, including one complaining that their marriage lacked ‘fire between the sheets’).”

Wasserman recently wrote the piece “Was George Washington a gay pot smoker?” He added: “The evidence is also clear that Washington, like many other American farmers, grew significant quantities of hemp. It was (and is) a profitable and reliable cash crop, easy to grow, with no extraordinary demands for cultivation, watering or fertilizing. As a hardy perennial, it needs no year-after-year replanting, pesticides or herbicides. In one of his meticulous agricultural journals, dated 1765, Washington notes his being late in separating the male hemp plants from the female. There is little reason to do that except to make the females ripe for smoking. As a hard-working farmer, Washington would certainly be stunned to hear that hemp is today illegal in the nation he helped found.

“As an exceedingly complex and contradictory character, the Father of Our Country remains a topic of endless controversy and fascination. The last word on his attitudes toward slavery, his farming techniques and the details of his marriage will certainly be debated for centuries to come.”
More Information

FANS BACK PHELPS

Washington Times – There’s a “Phelps backlash” out there. Fans and sympathizers have issued a cheeky call to boycott Kellogg’s, the cereal and snack mega-manufacturer that dropped the Olympic swimmer’s lucrative endorsement contract after his experience with marijuana became public a week ago.

“Kellogg’s has profited for decades on the food tastes of marijuana-using Americans with the munchies. In fact, we believe that most people over the age of 12 would not eat Kellogg’s products were they not wicked high,” reads a multipart petition written by Lee Stranahan, a Los Angeles writer and filmmaker.

Pop-Tarts, Cheez-Its and other junk-food favorites of marijuana users figure prominently in the drive, along with mentions of the “freaky” lifestyle of John Harvey Kellogg, who founded the company in 1906. Mr. Stranahan’s petition was featured Friday at the online Huffington Post and elsewhere.

Kellogg’s said it would not renew a lucrative endorsement contract, which will expire at the end of this month, with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps after a photo was published of the athlete smoking marijuana. . .

Among the sponsors, Kellogg’s stands alone in its harsh judgment so far.

Others commercial backers — including Speedo, Omega and Visa — appear satisfied with Mr. Phelps’ public apology for “regrettable behavior” and “bad judgment,” which was made after a British tabloid published a photo of the record-breaking Olympic athlete smoking marijuana at a college house party in November.

None have canceled their reported million-dollar sponsorships.

DEA continues pot raids Obama opposes. President vowed to end policy.

Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery THE WASHINGTON TIMES Thursday, February 5, 2009

Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical
marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama’s campaign
promises to stop the raids.

DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart

The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr.
Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush
administration holdovers.

“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to
circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to
fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review
their policies with that in mind,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Medical use of marijuana is legal under the law in California and a dozen
other states, but the federal government under President Bush, bolstered by
a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, argued that federal interests trumped state
law.

Dogged by marijuana advocates throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly
said he was opposed to using the federal government to raid medical
marijuana shops, particularly because it was an infringement on states’
decisions.

“I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent
state laws on this issue,” Mr. Obama told the Mail Tribune newspaper in
Oregon in March, during the Democratic primary campaign.

He told the newspaper the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the
same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by
doctors, I think that’s entirely appropriate.”

Mr. Obama is still filling key law enforcement posts. For now, DEA is run by
acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee.

Special Agent Sarah Pullen of the DEA’s Los Angeles office said agents
raided four marijuana dispensaries about noon Tuesday. Two were in Venice
and one each was in Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Ray — all in the Los
Angeles area.

A man who answered the phone at Marina Caregivers in Marina Del Rey said his
shop was the target of a raid but declined to elaborate, saying the shop was
just trying to get back to operating.

Agent Pullen said the four raids seized $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of
marijuana and marijuana-laced food, such as cookies. No one was arrested,
she said, but the raid is part of an ongoing investigation seeking to trace
the marijuana back to its suppliers or source.

She said agents have conducted 30 or 40 similar raids in the past several
years, many of which resulted in prosecutions.

“It’s clear that the DEA is showing no respect for President Obama’s
campaign promises,” said Dan Bernath, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy
Project in Washington, which advocates for medical marijuana and for
decriminalizing the drug.

California allows patients whose doctors prescribe marijuana to use the
drug. The state has set up a registry to allow patients to obtain cards
allowing them to possess, grow, transport and use marijuana.

Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group
in California, called the raids an attempt to undermine state law and said
they were apparently conducted without the knowledge of Los Angeles city or
police officials.

He said the DEA has raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in the state
since Mr. Obama was inaugurated and that the first took place on Jan. 22 in
South Lake Tahoe.

“President Obama needs to keep a promise he made, not just in one campaign
stop, but in multiple speeches that he would not be spending Justice
Department funds on these kinds of raids,” Mr. Hermes said. “We do want to
give him a little bit of leeway, but at the same time we’re expecting him to
stop this egregious enforcement policy that is continuing into his
presidency.”

He said he is aware that Mr. Obama has not installed his own DEA chief but
that new Attorney General “Eric Holder can still suspend these types of
operations.”

The Justice Department referred questions to the White House.

NORML Responds To Phelp’s Pot-Smoking Controversy

Washington, DC: Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps and tens of millions of other successful Americans have smoked marijuana; America’s laws should reflect this fact not deny it, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano wrote on The Hill.com’s influential Congress blog this week.

The Hill is a popular Washington, DC publication that is widely read by members of Congress and their staff.

Armentano writes: Sure, there will be some who will say that this latest chapter in Phelp’s life is deserving of criticism because the 14-time gold medalist is sending a poor message to young children. And what message would that be? That you can occasionally smoke marijuana and still be successful in life. Well sorry if the truth hurts.”

Earlier this week, Phelps acknowledged that he used marijuana while attending a college party in November. A photograph of Phelps smoking cannabis at the party appeared in a British tabloid on Sunday.

To date, more than 200 readers have posted feedback to NORML’s commentary, making it one of the most commented on essays in Hill.com history.

Full text of Armentano’s editorial, Why condemn Phelps when we ought to condemn the laws that brand him a criminal,” is available online at: http://tinyurl.com/b2aqg3

Voter Power makes the News! Initiative 28 MMJ

Voter Power’s recent events have garnered good media attention for both Initiative 28, the Regulated Medical Marijuana Supply System Initiative and medical marijuana in general.  Voter Power’s efforts to help all patients have access to medicine and generate additional revenue for the state were featured in both the Oregonian and local Fox affiliates.

To see the Fox coverage of the symposium at Southern Oregon University regarding the conflict between state medical marijuana laws and the federal government, go to: http://kdrv.com/page/86075

The Oregonian covered the Ed Rosenthal Seminar in Portland and the entire story is reproduced below.  For more info, please visit www.votepower.org

‘YOU’RE ALIVE; YOU’RE NOT LIVING’