446 lines
21 KiB
Plaintext
446 lines
21 KiB
Plaintext
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::::: oxic :::......:::: hock
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presents
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Ed Rosenthal
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Counterculture Hero of the Year 1989
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by Bloody Afterbirth
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Toxic File #61
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-from High Times, May 1990, by Jon Gettman-
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!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*
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Here's some other small things from the same mag...
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N.O.R.M.L.
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2001 "S" Street, NW, Suite 640
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Washington, DC 20009
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202.483.5500
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Membership is 25 bucks, but you can donate 'em money without belonging...
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They are a good organization and they can use your support. They have
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rallies and such all over the country, demonstrations, etc...
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(Picture a cigarette, a beer, and a joint)
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"Ask your doctor which of these is least harmful to your health.
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Now ask your Congressman why it's illegal.
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Nearly 490,000 Americans will die this year from accidents or illnesses
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related to alcohol or tobacco. But marijuana is no killer. In fact,
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medical evidence indicated many foods we commonly consume pose a greater
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danger to human health than marijuana. Stil it remains illegal ---
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consuming over $5 billion of our tax dollars for law enforcement each year.
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But if regulated, marijuana sales would generate $10 to $15 billion dollars
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in annual tax revenue.
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It Could Be You
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400,000 people are arrested each year on marijuana charges - 85% of them
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for simple possession. If you enjoy occasional recreational use, this fact
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should trouble you. Because while these laws remain on the books you're in
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jeopardy. You risk social and financial disaster. In manu states you can
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still be sent to prison for possessing even a small quantity of pot. Now
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consider that because of the escalating "War on Drugs," penalties for
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marijuana possession are being severely increased --- putting you at greater
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risk than ever before.
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Send A Buck.
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Whether you smoke marijuana often, occasionally, or NOT AT ALL, you
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should be angry about its prohibition. Why not join N.O.R.M.L. - the
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National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws? Membership is only
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$25.00. If you're skittish about sending us your name, just drop a buck in
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the mail to. . . . ."
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"Ever wonder why the two most dangerous drugs in America are legal, while
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the safest drug remains illegal?
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The most powerful corporations in the world spend millions of dollars
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every day to keep cannabis illegal. Why? The petrochemical industry
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doesn't want legal hemp to compete with synthetic fuel and fiber. The
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alcohol and tobacco industries don't want legal marijuana to compete with
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cigarettes and beer. (Tobacco and alcohol account for over 400,000 deaths
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per year. If you were provided with a non-lethal alternative, which would
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you choose?)
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But there's another important reason why corporations fear the cannabis
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plant. It grows wild in all 50 states and can be cultivated for free by
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virtually anyone! Once it's legal to grow, cannabis will be far cheaper
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than alcohol, tobacco, or petrochemicals!
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So, help legalize cannabis by joining Ed Hassle's Freedom Fighters. For
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a mere $15 you get an official membership card, a year's subscription to the
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Freedom Fighter's newsletter, and invitations to pro-pot rallies, HIGH TIMES
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parties and other special events. Each year, the most decorated member of
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the Freedom Fighters gets to be a judge at the annual Cannabis Cup Awards in
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Holland! Join Today!"
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Check/money order payable to Trans-High Corp.
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Send to:
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Ed Hassle's Freedom Fighters
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211 East 43rd St.
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New York, New York 10017
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They'll obviously need your name/address...They send the newsletter in a
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plain unmarked envelope without a return address...and they keep the mailing
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list confidential...
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That should do...for now.
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*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&#@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!
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Ed Rosenthal, at first glance, doesn't look like a hippie, let alone the
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1989 HIGH TIMES Counterculture Hero of the Year. He has short hair, for one
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thing. He's also a successful entrepreneur, self-employed as a writer,
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publisher, and owner of a mail order business. In addition to his work, he
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speaks around the country encouraging people to become more involved in
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local and federal government. Under any other circumstances this would be
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the description of a successful, small town, main street republican. If it
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weren't for pot, and the fact that Ed is the most well-known authority on
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the cultivation of marijuana, it would be easy to confuse Ed with a straight
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person. He's not, and marijuana's why.
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If you had walked into a head shop during thr 1970's, in addition to the
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bongs, pipes, and rolling papers, more often than not, you would have also
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found books about how to grow marijuana. I know, because I used to manage
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one of those stores, and I remember that most of the grow books I sold, and
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most of the grow books sold in the Washington, DC area had Ed Rosenthal's
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name on them.
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If you had gone to a NORML conference during the early 1980's, you would
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have also run into Ed, as a speaker, in a workshop, or, in one of his
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favorite haunts, "behind the scenes." Meanwhile, his books were still
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selling, and his readership expanded even more by the way of HIGH TIMES.
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And then by the late eighties, if you had gone to the Madison Harvest
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Festival or the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor or a NORML festival at the Washington
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Monument, once again, you'd find Ed, either rousing the crowd with his own,
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blunt assessments about our political situation or exhorting them to
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contribute funds to both the event organizers and NORML to keep our
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marijuana movement alive. And his books were still selling, and his
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articles were still being read, and he was still active in NORML on both a
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national and a local level.
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Throughout the last 15 years Ed Rosenthal has been an integral part of
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the marijuana law reform movement, both socially and politcally. The
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assimilation into our culture of sophisticated means to cultivate marijuana
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in these United States has permanently guaranteed its presence in our
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country. Ed's contributions in this area alone are of monumental influence.
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HIGH TIMES:First of all, Ed, what's your favorite slang term for marijuana?
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Ed Rosenthal:Pot.
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HT:When was the first time you smoked pot?
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ER:In '66
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HT: Tell me about it.
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ER:Actually, I got into it the second time I smoked it. I obtained some and
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turned on with my roommate. We were both virgins - we had smoked, but we
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were both really virgins. At that time those books by Carlos Castenada had
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first come out and they talked about his big smoke and his little smoke and
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they're being his allies, and immediately when I first got high, I very much
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felt that marijuana was an ally of mine.
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HT:When did you first get interested in growing pot?
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ER:When I was a child I had a great interest in botany, and had taken a
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number of classes at the New York Botanical Gardens. So it was very natural
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of me to take an interest in a green plant.
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HT:What was the state of growing marijuana in the United States during the
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late '60s?
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ER:Very few people were growing. It had a very bad reputation, so it sold
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for much less money than other products. There was very little being grown
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indoors, and it was been grown under fluorescents.
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HT:When did you start publishing about the topic of growing marijuana?
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ER:About 1974.
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HT:How would you characterize things in the late '70s, compared to the late
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'80s?
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ER:It was the golden age of outdoor cultivation. People were growing big
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plants and were beginning to do breeding. By the early 1980's indoors
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became the preferred way, and more and more people began growing indoors.
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HT:Do you have an estimate of the number of readers you have in the US?
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ER:Milions of readers and over a million books sold.
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HT:Do you think all those people are actually growers?
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ER:I think there are something like a million frowers in the country today.
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That includes everyone, commercial and personal use growers. Figure if
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there are 35 million smokers who smoke regularly, and one out of thirty
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three of those people are growing.
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HT:That's an awful lot of pot.
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ER:Oh, it's not that everybody's growing successfully, and not everybody is
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growing a lot. The smallest garden I heard about had a space of about one
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foot by one foot.
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HT:What esthetics do you like and look for in pot?
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ER:Marijuana is a very subtle drug. It can be a blockbuster, but it can
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also be subtle. I like a variety that brings out the nuances of thought and
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pleasure, rather than one that is deadening. I think there are some really
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fine varieties with a senseof humor about them, a wryness, and still allow
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you to break those synapses...
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HT:What about tolerances?
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ER:Somebody wrote that if marijana leads to other drugs it takes a long
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time. You build up a certain tolerance but it's not as if it loses its
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effect. I think part of that tolerance is a chemical tolerance, and part of
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it is your expectations, a familiarity.
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HT:LEt's talk a little about the Yippies, marijuana, and political action.
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ER:In 1967 I came back from college to New York and quite by accident I
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bumped into a demonstration protesting the arrest of Dana Beal and, having
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nothing to do that evening, I joined the demonstration, and got involved
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with the New York Provos, and then was in on ethe founding of the Yippies,
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and stayed with that. The Yippies have an anarchistic streak, they're
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entreprenuerial, they're not dealing in dogma in the same way the ism-groups
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do, and they'd like to see major changes in the United States so that it
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becomes a truly democratic country rather than an imperialistic republic.
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HT:Tell me a little about your relationship with Reagan Drug Advisor
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Carleton Turner.
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ER:After my first big book was published, my co-author Mel Frank and myself
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sent Carleton a letter and after a little bit of correspondence we were
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invited down to the University of Mississipi which is where he was doing
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research. Since then I've kept up my professional relationship with him.
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Even though we've had many many differences over the years, and can probably
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say we disagree on almost everything, we have been able to maintain an
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amiable relationship. I haven't spoken to him since he left the White
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House.
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HT:You also had quite a career the last couple of years as an expert witness
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in marijuana cultivation cases.
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ER:Yeah.
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HT:How does the government misstate marijuana cultivation when they bring
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charges against somebody?
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ER:Most of the state laws differentiate between cultivation for personal use
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and cultivation for sale, and most police have never seen a cultivation for
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personal use garden, because every garden they see is the most professional,
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the most sophisticated, and the biggest, and so on -- even if it's only a
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few square feet.
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HT:They always describe gardens they find in these terms?
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ER:Yes. They also have the presumption that every female plant is going to
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yield a pound, and that it is going to be grown to yield a pound, and to
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grow and survive, and so on.
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HT:Is this just to have the maximum charges to press or are they genuinely
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ignorant?
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ER:I think it is a combination.
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HT:Does your expertise regarding marijuana come in handy when talking to
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legislators about marijuana laws?
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ER:I often wonder about that because I think that of all the people in the
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United States, I come into the legislature with the most baggage, because to
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many of the people I'm a personification of evil.
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HT:Is that because of your activism or because you have helped to spread the
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word far and wide about growing marijuana?
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ER:Because of my relationship with HIGH TIMES as well as some of the books
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I have written. But especially my relationship with HIGH TIMES which, I
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mean, is the most notorious magazine in the United States. You'd think
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that a magazine like Soldier Of Fortune, or some of the racist magazines, or
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some of the magazines with a lot of violence--that should be notorious, but
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actually the magazine that is most condemned by the establishment is HIGH
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TIMES. I'm proud to be associated with it. That's on one hand, on the
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other I think that that has created a lot of baggage for me when I go to the
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legislature. And that in itself has proven to me that if I can do
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legislative work, then anybody can because I'm one of the most hated men in
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the California State legislature.
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HT:A lot of people think that because they smoke pot they're making
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themselves vulnerable by going out and lobbying. Do you think that smoking
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and/or growing pot and political activism are mutually exclusive?
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ER:No. Because you're concerned about a political issue doesn't necessarily
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mean you're directly associated with it. There is no reason for a person to
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say to their congressman "I smoke pot." What is really of concern to
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legislators is not your personal habits but where you stand on the issues.
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There is no reason to talk of a person's personal involvement in it.
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HT:Where do you think movement activity needs to go in the next ten years to
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make progress?
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ER:First of all I do think that marijuana is going to be legal and I
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wouldn't have believed twenty years ago that it wouldn't be legal by now.
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HT:Do you think it will be legal by the year 2000?
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ER:Yes, I do, by the outside, by 2004. The way the legalization movement is
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going now, I do think marijuana is going to be legal soon.
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HT:What do you think is going right in the movement now?
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ER:There is an organization out there now that has been able to attract the
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support of the intellectual community and to penetrate the opinion makers,
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and that's the Drug Policy Foundation. And what they have done is give an
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intellectual, as well as a theoretical, base to a lot of the practical
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things NORML has been saying, as well as what the activists have been
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saying. For instance, while a lot of politicians can not relate to Madison
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Harvest Festival organizer and last year's Counterculture Hero of the Year,
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Ben Masel, they can relate to [Princeton University Professor] Ethan
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Nadelman or [Drug Policy Foundation President] Arnold Trebach, so that puts
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the whole issue in a different light. That's one thing. Secondly is that
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there was a major tactical mistake on the part of the Administration, and
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that is up until a couple of years ago we only had drug skirmishes, and then
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the Reagan's adopted the idea of a War on Drugs. The difference between the
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skirmishes and the War is that skirmishes can go on for generations and
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generations, but we Americans like our wars short. There haven't been too
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many long wars in American history. And of course, this is a war that can't
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be won.
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HT:Do you think that the Reagans, by calling too much attention and raising
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the rhetorical pitch, in the end will have provoked a desire to find some
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resolution to these problems?
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ER:They definitely will, a year ago Bennett had this perception--he's the
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commander, he's going to win the war--and now, everybody's looking at the
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dissarray that his troops are in. They expected Operation Green Merchant to
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put an end to domestic cultivation. It really backfired on them--they got a
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lot of bad editorial publicity, and they got a lot of negative response from
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the community at large. People talk about the numbers of people who feel
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drugs are a big issue, the number of people who want to kill drug
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dealers--you hear all these terrible statistics, but these are basically
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manufactured statistics.
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HT:Do you think there is a real opportunity for people to make a difference
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by being more politically active?
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ER:Oh yes. I think that every letter you write represents a thousand
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people. I used to criticize NORML for saying 'write a letter,' but I
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realized how hard it is to get an individual to write a letter, and that's
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just a starting point. That's why I don't think it's enough. For instance,
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there are 35 million people who smoke marijuana. If three and a half
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million people actually lobbied their congresspeople and their legislators,
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repressive drug laws wouldn't pass.
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HT:Congress knows, though, that people don't usually write, so that the
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letters they do receive represent far more people who agree with the letter
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writer, but didn't get it on paper.
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ER:Right. And the only reason these laws get passed is because no one
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stands up on our side and opposes them. When the police get up and say we
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need more laws, more weapons, more assistance, there is nobody standing up
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on the other side saying this is crazy, or there hasn't been until recently.
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HT:Tell me about the California NORML conference you participated in in
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January.
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ER:The conference was different. There were about 70 people there, it was a
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little disorganized. There were no real workshops in the program, but I ran
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a workshop with Laird Funk [from the Oregon Marijuana Initiative] on media
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and organizing, and it was really the first workshop at a marijuana
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conference on how to approach people, how to lobby, how to write letters,
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and stuff like that.
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Nobody said that freedom is cheap or is easy or isn't risky and the
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reality is that anybody can cower in the corner, and it doesn't take a lot
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of effort to do that, you just, whatever they tell you to do, you just
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follow their orders. But it does take some self-respect and some confidence
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in yourself to go out and say this is not going to pass. This isn't going
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to go down, and to fight for it. And I'll tell you, one person can make a
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difference.
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HT:You certainly have.
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ER:Three years ago, [medical historian and doctor] Tod Mikuriya and I were
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at a conference where Senator Cranston (D. California) was starting his
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anti-drug thing. We stopped it when it got to Oakland, California, it
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didn't go any further. He was trying to get on the bandwagon.
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HT:What did you do?
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ER:All it takes is one individual to stop it. He had a metting at which he
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had the drug pimps all in a row saying we need more money and more help and
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everything and then he had a short time that was left for public comment.
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And the public comments weren't exactly what he wanted, like people talking
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about changing the laws, and jobs, and prioritizing resources and things.
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He didn't like the way it was going, so he said that "I have a list of
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seventeen problem areas that other communities have discussed, and I'm going
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to read them twice. The first time listen to all of them, and the second
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time we'll take a vote." After he finished the 17, I raised my hand and I
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said, "Senator, can we add one more," and I said,"Bad drug laws" and then I
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also said,"We need more jobs" and I started mentioning a few others and the
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third sentence the whole place was in disruption. THe drug pimps were
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trying to get out of the room, and Cranston was surrounded by bodyguards.
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The show was over, there was no vote taken, and he just stopped it right
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there, that was the end of it.
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HT:That's a great story.
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ER:Anybody can do that. They didn't know who I was, I was just another
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anonymous person there. The most important thing I want to say to readers
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is this--don't say it was them, you have to take responsibility for change.
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HT:Thanks, Ed, keep up the good work.
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Reverse The Greenhouse Effect!
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LEGALIZE HEMP!
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* While growing, hemp produces oxygen and removes carbon dioxide (the
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greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere.
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* 10,000 acres of hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of
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trees! Until 1883, 75%-90% of all the paper in the world was made
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from hemp.
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* Methanol and methane fuel, made from cellulose found in hemp,
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cornstalks, and waste paper, can be produced at 10% of the current
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cost of oil, coal, and nuclear fuel production.
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* The glucose produced by manufacturing methane would feed 100 percent
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of all domestic and farm animals.
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* The hemp seed (which contains no THC) is a fruit. As a protein source
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this seed is second only to the soybean.
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---Never take a drug you don't really understand.
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Consider the powerful effects of drugs. Why use your body as
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a testing ground for substances you may know nothing about? It
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makes no difference if a drug is legal or illegal, for medicinal
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use or for recreation - you owe it to yourself to learn everything
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you can before taking it. The facts could save your life. ---
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(c)June 1990 Bloody Afterbirth/Toxic Shock
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