Gatewood Galbreith on legalizing Marijuana and industrial hemp.

[alfredo]

http://www.kentucky.com/595/story/790879.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted&qwxq=54172#Comments_Container

State should be among first to legalize, tax marijuana, hemp

Let me beat this drum more loudly than ever before. Events have already taken place that can be utilized to Kentucky's everlasting benefit — including reducing poverty and physical suffering, crime, jail populations, taxation of wage earners, medical and health-care costs and hard-drug overdoses.

The answer is to immediately tax and regulate marijuana and hemp as cash crops.

President Barack Obama appeared with his attorney general and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and announced a new policy that no federal dollar will hereafter be spent "circumventing a state law." Period. He turned it over to the states.

Gatewood is a good guy, very Libertarian, but to the left of the Libertarian scale. He's friends with Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson. He was one of the first person's I met when I moved to Lexington Ky.

[kentuck]

1. I met Gatewood over 20 years ago...

when he was running for office. He's quite a character.

[alfredo]

7. I met him at a Halloween party at his house. That was when he was living

in the old YWCA building downtown. It was the fall of 75.

[Ikonoklast]

2. Those eastern hills of Kentucky already grow a fair amount of

certain types of...flora... that seem to be...ah, invisible, to the local gendarmerie.

Might as well derive some tax benefit from it.

[kentuck]

4. Sometimes you can go down to certain counties in the mountains...

and you can see helicopters of the Feds hauling marijuana off the mountains. Years ago, when some veterans returned from Vietnam, they were like Johnny Appleseed, except they were not planting apples. There were some high grade Cambodian Red and Colombian Gold seeds that were planted and never harvested. The FBI is now discovering much of that crop. I know this to be a fact.

[alfredo]

5. They killed off moonshine, then the people went to pot, they killed off

pot and now they are making and selling crank and oxycontin. They should have stopped at moonshine. Most of the shine was nasty crap.

[MagickMuffin]

3. Mr. Gatewood IS correct

As they say "God doesn't make mistakes!"

:kick: & RRRRRRRRR

[alfredo]

6. Cheney rush and Beck are either mistakes or jokes.

[MagickMuffin]

9. They are Jokes

Everyone makes a conscious effort to use their "Free Will" to be a good person or an evil person. They CHOOSE the latter.

Of course I'm not a "believer" in the God theory. But I do believe that we have the ability to choose how we want to behave as human beings.

[alfredo]

11. We are all jazz musicians. Free will is where we can improvise on the

basic themes. Those three just bleep, toot, and then criticize everyone else's efforts.

[IDemo]

8. He is, of course, correct

But he does neither issue any good by linking them together. Marijuana decriminalization/legalization and the legalization of industrial hemp are two entirely separate issues.

[alfredo]

18. True, but the public doesn't know any difference. Do we spend the time

educating them, or do we just go at them straight on by talking legalization of pot, and also allow farmers to produce a related fiber and oil producing plant.

When we talk industrial hemp, everyone thinks legalizing pot. Might as well say yes, and then remind them that the government won't allow hemp because it looks so much like the pot people smoke. We can open two revenue streams for the state. If we decriminalize pot, it would be silly not to let our farmers grow and sell industrial hemp.

[FraDon]

10. He's the real deal. • I met him 29 years ago in a Lamaze class.

Our first born kids arrived a few week apart. He's been focused on these sensible legalization efforts for decades.

[alfredo]

12. He's a damn good lawyer too.

[Ghost in the Machine]

13. Off to the greatest, and back to the top you go.....

Although imdustrial hemp and marijuana are two different plants, grouping them together for legalization is a smart move. Industrial hemp would be a whole different industry from which to draw revenue/taxes.

Thanks for posting, alfredo...


Peace,

Ghost

[alfredo]

14. thanks for the K&R

[Prophet 451]

15. Couldn't agree more

Cannabis should be treated the exact same way as alcohol: Age-restricted, taxed and licensed for sale (although if you want to grow your own, go ahead) and a ban on driving under the influence but otherwise legal. Just one more adult pleasure. I actually don't smoke pot, my pleasure of choice is real ale but if my neighbour chooses to smoke a joint while I choose to enjoy a pint, does it do me any harm?

Industrial hemp has so many uses, you could virtually run an economy off the stuff (and nations have in the past). Cannabis has a record as a highly effective painkiller with minimal side-effects that stretches back over six thousand years to the dawn of human civilisation. As more research is done on the effects of cannabis, it starts to look like a panacea. Effective on numerous conditions as major as MS or cancer and as minor as insomnia. Granted, people with mental problems or a predisposition to them shouldn't take mood-altering substances of any kind but that could be said of any number of legally prescribed drugs as well (I take one of them on prescription). Pot is more effective and safer than a large proportion of legal drugs yet I am legally obliged to choose the less effective, riskier, addictive substance that (if I lived in the US) would cost me a fortune.

[alfredo]

16. I just turned my relatives onto Bells Two Hearted Ale. They loved it.

Michael Pollan on you tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeCra-sn0dI

I can't afford the stuff now that I'm on SSI.

[Mnemosyne]

17. KnR. n/t

[JohnnyLib2]

19. One of a kind--

Would that he lives to see legalization happen! K & R

[kentuck]

20. The Gatewood Movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028IFkGulT4

:-)__~~

[alfredo]

21. That's the Gatewood I know