CKOAP group

I was at a meeting of our local post carbon institute group Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning group.
There is a big push for re-localization of resources, namely food and water, being the top priorities. Other things the group talked about was something called Transition Towns, where the goal is to make our cities more user friendly, walkable,bikeable and trainable. (don't think those last two words are real words but you get the point I hope). We need to be able to walk to what we need bike to where we work and use the train or bus for long distance travel. For those people who have to commute everyday to work, there has to be a way of cutting down on the amount of travel and pooling of resources.

We also got to the topic of a Hemp based industrial plant opening up to the east of us in our province. Hemp was ready to make a comeback in this area a few years ago, but the border guards held up our shipments to the US and a bunch of farmers lost money on the whole deal, now they are soured to the entire idea. That is very sad for us locally, but the good news is that can change and if more of these plants start up, they will need local hemp to provide feedstock and a local economy in hemp is just the ticket we need. If we have the infrastructure to handle the hemp locally , those farmers in the past would have had alternative markets to sell to.

Part of the problem is political. We still have a government that is on a witch hunt for pot growers and users. The medical use of cannabis is in a quagmire of red tape and outdated morality. Our current government is doing the exact opposite to what is needed by wanting to put a bill through that punished a pot grower with 6 months in jail PER PLANT. I don't know about you, but I don't want my taxes used to build larger prisons and to police and jail a bunch of people who are growing their own medicine. They want to look like they are doing something about it meanwhile their very actions are going to push the cost of this plant up , which means more people are going to break the law to grow it and make a larger profit off of it. The government is taking steps that are counter-productive to their own aims. If they want to keep drugs away from children, the best thing they could do is legalize it, tax it and regulate it like alcohol and tobacco. I shake my head sometimes...

If medical Cannabis is legal then all the red tape around industrial hemp would disappear. We NEED the products the hemp plant can give us in abundance. The sooner we stop this farce the faster we can get on with creating a new economy based on hemp production.

Money and Hemp

Hi folks.
This is a site a ran across by accident
( I love when that happens!).
The site's name is http://www.websiteoutlook.com .

My site is worth $18023.7.
How much is yours worth?

The site it is talking about is my Home Income Portal.
http://homeincomeportal.com/mibmy137 .

Being a Hemp advocate is challenging in many ways. One of the challenges is how do I pay my bills and still do the things I love to do? With site like mine that is working for my 24/7/365, I can afford the time and energy it takes to be a Hemp advocate. We all need to eat and clothe ourselves. I would love to do it all with hemp products, but the prices for hemp is very high (no pun intended). Did you know organic hemp oil is going for $180.00 a gallon! I know it is good stuff, but that price is out of my league. That is one of the main reasons why I am pushing for more hemp to be grown EVERYWHERE. More hemp means lower prices which is good all around. For the growers, they will never be able to grow more than what is needed and they will always get a good price for their crop.

Michael J. Kaer, Author of "What Money Can't Buy" part 1 & 2

Change.Org

I just came from a site called Change.Org. I am going to give you a link to the page called Ideas for Change in America from this site. http://www.change.org/ideas . On that page up in the right hand corner is a video panel that has Marijuana History 101 in it. I beg, I plead, I ______ (fill in the blank) to watch this film. You will end up shaking your head after, asking yourself why hemp is not manditory to be farmed by everyone.

Once enough people see this and pass it on to more people, large enough group will cry "Enough Is Enough!- We demand the end to prohibition". I am a hemp advocate in Country that where it is legal to grow Hemp, but only after you jump through endless amounts of red tape. If Marijuana prohibition is ended, then there would be no reason for the silly red tape. The more Hemp is grown, used and seen to be a great benefit, people will get used to the idea of pot being free to grow anywhere. This is the time to throw your support to the senators and congress people, looking for ideas on how to get America back on the road to prosperity. NOW is the time.

Businesses are just sitting , waiting to go into (pardon the pun) High Gear with all the small and large businesses that allowing the free use of this plant would bring. Deficit? What Deficit?- We would be happy to pay taxes and get rid of our national debt if we had a free hand to grow hemp anywhere and grow marijuana for medicine and recreation. The governments would be awash in cash. The first country that actively promotes the growing of both forms of Cannabis legally will be the world leader of tomorrow. I am Canadian so I strongly urge the US to keep building prisons and keep the pressure up on those criminal pot smokers, growers and dealers. I want the head start (again pardon the pun) to go to Canada. We would see every hotel and motel booked up for years in advance for people wanting to come up for some R & R. We would not be able to keep the people ( and their cash) out, even if we tried. Oh Cannabis!

Michael J. Kaer Author of "What Money Can't Buy" and now working on part 2 for that book.

$150.00 a gallon

I was looking at some stores online that are selling Hemp products. They are getting $150.00 a gallon for the low grade stuff and close to $180.00 for the organic oil. W O W ! ! ! When it comes time to choose between oil for food and oil for your diesel truck, at that price it will have to be food only. Thoses prices will be forced to come WAY WAY down If/When Obama lets the farmers grow hemp legally. I do not see how he has a choice if he wants his farmers to continue farming and make some sort of profit. I bought a gallon of veggie oil on sale at the grocery store for $5.00 , that is a 3000% difference, more if it was organic. I do know that Hemp oil is one of the best oils in the world for just about everything. You don't want to deep fry with it. It is ok for a little Saute'. It is a wonderful massage oil and great for soap making and lotions and such.

Wow- I am still shaking my head at those prices

Slippery Slope - To What?

Slippery Slope - To What?

The farmers in the US are sueing the government (or are thinking about sueing,I am not certain where that stands) for the right to grow Hemp. They are strongly urging The US to legalize hemp since it is such a great crop. The only reason why it is illegal is because the Police can not tell the difference between an industrial crop that grows around 18 feet tall that is grown very close together versus a plant that is made to grow short and squat and wide. At every open (and I am sure closed) meetings of concerned citizens with their elected officials, the police and the DEA have sat at the meetings and they dole out the same message over and over. They say legalizing Hemp is a Slippery Slope. "A Slippery Slope to what ?" I would ask. They say it would send the wrong message to our children. Again I ask "What message?". The message I would get if you legalized this wonderful plant is A) The farmers should be free to choose any crops they feel are good for their soil and B)We can grow enough of this plant to use the oil for fuel and never have to fight a war over oil again since everything we make out of fossil oil can be made from Hemp oil or maybe the wrong message they are talking about is the other plant they are refering to is marijuana. Maybe that is it. They do not want our children to know about Pot. They ( in their twisted mind) think that pot is some evil drug that will force the children to lives of crime and lead them to "Harder" drugs.

Ok, let's look this square in the face. Marijuana is the safest drug known to man. It has no level of overdose. It is physically imposible to smoke the amount needed to get that high a dose in your body to overdose on it. I do not have to compare it to other drugs to show that, but just for the record it is safer than coffee, aspirin (and other forms of over-the-counter medicines) and it is certainly safer and less addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. Studies from Europe have not shown any pharmacalogical reason for addiction or that it is a gateway drug. The only way it could be considered a gateway drug is because of prohibition you have to go to a criminal dealer to get it. Since the dealer wants bigger profits they will push the stronger stuff on you. So prohibition is the true gateway device. Studies done in areas where there is limited freedom to smoke, they have found that the use has actually gone down. If they truely want to get people to use less, they would end prohibition.
Lets get back to Hemp - there are very good reasons to want this crop kept illegal. It keeps the police busy fighting a "War on drugs" that they can never win and they have no intention of even trying to win. It would get their budgets slashed if it was. That is why the DEA and the local Cops are always at the table when farmers ask to legalize hemp. They say it would make their jobs impossible to perform as far as the "War on drugs" is concerned. Hemp oil is a direct threat to the big fossil oil business and the military-industrial complex. They would not be able to go anywhere they want to, to fight wars and make tons of money over areas of the world that still have oil. The Chemical, Agra, Pharma complex is also directly threatend by this plant. Big Agrabusiness can not control small farmers who can be self-supporting by growing this crop since it has very little need for the chemicals most other crops need to grow. Marijuana is a safe yet effective drug that works very well to control pain and it has properties that many claim cures cancer.
The Big Pharma complex sees this as a direct threat to it's monopoly on cancer drugs. If you can cure cancer with a plant you can grow in your back yard, why would you mortgage your house to take toxic drugs killing cancer and yourself at the same time? All the over-the-counter pain medicines would suffer huge losses of income to all the pharmacies that push those products.

Ok - now comes the direct benefits to legalizing hemp. Farmers would be able to grow a crop that can help them get by instead of the possibility of folding, mainly due to the fact that you do not have to use hardly any chemicals on this plants, so you do not have to pay for those direct inputs. The wonderful food qualities of hempseed would make people healthier if it was cheaper and everyone had access to it. That would put huge amounts of doctors and nurses out of work as well as the pharmacies getting much less profits. The government also loses control of a population that is healthy and happy. That is a plus in my books!
If/when hemp is made legal to grow in the US, the cops will basically throw up their hands when it comes to marijuana. It would only be a short time till pot would be defacto legal. My question still stands; what bad message is in this? The feeble excuse is it will harm children. I think kids are smarter than the cops give them credit for. Giving kids Ritalin is better for them? Who in their right minds really believes that crap? There have been studies done on young children that have been given small doses of THC from the natural form, eaten or in the form of a subligual spray that has had much better results and of course the fact that it is not toxic and natural is a bonus. Old grannies use pot to be able to get around. Some have said it has helped them stay alive. I have friends who use medical marijuana and they say it has changed their lives like night and day. The people who oppose legalization say it will harm children. The people who oppose prohibition have tons of proof it has harmed thousands of children in broken homes and we are not even counting the kids shot by driveby shootings from rival gangs arguing turf (who gets to sell their drugs where). If you want to score drugs, just ask a kid, they all know where it is and who has it. In the book "Hemp Foods & Oils for Health" it describes the debate around hemp in the US as "irrational" and it goes on to say the concern that hemp crops would aid the production and use of marijuana is unsubstantiated. The good reason is the 2 crops should stay away from each other at all costs. The tall plants will be intermixed with the short ones making it less useful and the short ones would lose their value as a medicine because it will be weaker.That is one of the most stupid excuses put forth. I do agree that hemp made legal would make policing marijuana more difficult,but for much different reasons. Like Marc Emery says Overgrow the Government.