Voila! I found one of the articles with the references. Quite some startling information.
http://members.aol.com/louzerr0/marij.html
Legalization of Marijuana
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It's hard to imagine a plant being outlawed. This plant has been here as long as man and used for centuries for a wide variety of reasons by him. Medicine, fiber, rope, clothing, and paper are merely a few of its uses. The cannabis plant, also known as marijuana, has been illegal in America for some time now. While everyone knows about its illegality, the vast majority aren't sure exactly why. I hope to bring this subject to light and prove that marijuana deserves to be legalized in the United States.
In 1936, Popular Mechanics magazine ran a cover story hailing the invention of a new machine which could efficiently strip the fiber from any plant. The magazine predicted that, because of this invention, the marijuana plant would once again become the world's most important cash crop(Biafra). This idea was not embraced by everyone however, says Charles Overbeck. The possibility of cheaper, more durable hemp paper was hardly good news to Hearst Paper Manufacturing, or Kimberly Clark, among others in the timber and paper industry. It meant huge losses of income and possible bankruptcy. The plant also threatened Dupont, who had just patented processes to manufacture plastics and synthetic fibers from coal and oil, and a new process to produce paper from wood pulp("Reefer").
These industries knew they could not compete with the marijuana plant and stood to lose billions of dollars to it. A huge propaganda campaign against marijuana ensued, fronted by William Randolph Hearst, owner of Hearst Paper Manufacturing. Now nicknamed, "The King of Yellow Journalism," Hearst's newspapers featured some of the most anti-marijuana literature around. A story of a car wreck in which a marijuana cigarette was found, remained on the front page for weeks, while alcohol-related wrecks, which outnumbered marijuana-related wrecks one-thousand to one, were hidden in the back pages. Headlines such as, "Marijuana Makes Fiends of Boys in 30 days: Hashish Goads Users to Blood Lust," frightened readers to death of this plant. Concerned parents began calling on their local representatives to protect their families from this so-called "demon weed." And so, in December 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed, outlawing all uses of the cannabis plant in the US(Overbeck "Reefer" ).
From around 1,000 B.C. until after the American Civil War, the marijuana plant was the world's largest cash crop. Fabric, rope, lighting oil, paper, medicine, food oil, and a source of protein, were just a few of its uses(Overbeck, "Billion"). It was truly an incredible plant.
Hemp, also part of the cannabis family, is a cousin plant to marijuana. It is basically the same plant, just grown with a different technique. Hemp fiber is one of, if not the strongest natural fiber known to man. This fiber is stripped from the leaves, then processed. The processed hemp can be made into a number of products. Paper is just one of them. The advantage of hemp paper is remarkable compared to paper from wood-pulp.
A spoken word piece by the artist, Jello Biafra, tells of U.S.D.A. reports on hemp. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's studies show that one can get four times more paper from an acre of hemp than from an acre of trees. Hemp paper can be made at just one-quarter of the cost of paper from wood pulp, and it requires only one-fifth the chemicals. Where wood-pulp based paper can presently only be recycled three times, hemp paper can be recycled at least seven times.
Paper is not the only thing hemp is good for. Charles Overbeck attests that hemp fiber is softer than, warmer than, more water-resistant than, and three times as strong as cotton. Hemp was America's leading textile until it lost that throne in the 1820s when Eli Whitney's gin made cotton processing cheaper and more efficient. Hemp remained the 2nd leading textile in the U.S. until it was banned in the 1930s. Cotton then became America's chosen fabric("Billion").
The downside to cotton is that 50 percent of all agricultural chemicals in the U.S. are used on cotton plants. Hemp, on the other hand, is entirely environmental-friendly as it needs no chemicals or pesticides because it has no enemy insects (Overbeck "Hemp for Victory").
The 1930s showed promise for hemp. Henry Ford was growing the plant as part of a plan to build cars from hemp-based plastics, and running them on hemp fuel("Industrial"). Overbeck notes that one-hundred and sixteen million pounds of hemp seed were used to make paint and varnish. Conservative estimates by experts in the 1930s stated that hemp could have pumped as much as $500 billion into the American economy("Billion").
In today's world, that number of $500 billion could be far exceeded. An article on hemp in the pro-marijuana magazine, High Times, tells that relatively few countries today have legalized marijuana outright, but an ever-increasing number are allowing test plots of industrial hemp to be grown. There are around ten-thousand products that contain hemp out on the market today (Ferguson 27). America holds such an influence on the rest of the world, once we realize this plant's potential, it will be legitimized and universally accepted.
The oldest argument against marijuana is still one of the biggest? "the only reason people want marijuana legalized is so they can smoke it." Well, what of it? There's no doubt that many people want to legally smoke marijuana. While there are plenty of other reasons for legalization, there is still no good argument of why recreational usage is wrong.
In Bruce Goldstein's book, Psychology, among other places, it is said that three major studies were conducted on the effects of long-time marijuana usage. These studies, one in each of Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Greece, all failed to find evidence of physical or psychological damage in long-time users. But others find that there is evidence that lung damage could occur as a result of chronic use(207).
It is common belief that marijuana usage causes damage to the brain cells, which causes memory loss, impairment and difficulty learning. Lynn Zimmer and John Morgan's findings in "Exposing Marijuana Myths," prove otherwise. According to Zimmer and Morgan, this claim was based on a study that found damage in the brains of two lab monkeys. The damage was done in an area known as the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory functions. Other tests conducted on rodents found similar results. These rodents had to be given the equivalent of two-hundred times the psychoactive dose for humans ("Exposing").
Many agree that marijuana does affect the conversion of information from short-term to long-term memory, but this is only while under the influence of the drug. It has been shown that daily users who quit, regain normal short-term memory in as little as a week, with no evidence of long-term effects. This is far from brain-damage as many claim.
Another claim against marijuana is that it is a very dangerous and highly-addictive drug. The addiction part is a tricky subject. Some long-time users are found to have a psychological addiction to marijuana. However, there has been no evidence of physical dependence. If a long-term user were to stop or be cut off from their daily supply of pot, he might feel the urge to smoke but experience no harmful withdrawal symptoms.
As for being dangerous? completely untrue. Government studies conclude that marijuana potency has increased as much as 20 percent over the past twenty years, making it more dangerous to users. In fact, this is quite the opposite. The psychoactive effects occur much quicker in higher potency pot, meaning the person inhales much less of the smoke than normal (Zimmer and Morgan "Exposing").
Charles Overbeck states that both the Federal Bureau of Mortality and the Institute of Drug Abuse released information concerning deaths caused by certain drugs. Among these figures we see that tobacco kills 340,000 to 425,000, alcohol kills more than 150,000 Americans. Even over the counter drugs such as an aspirin kill between two-hundred and one-thousand people per year. According to these figures, marijuana kills not one person a year (Overbeck "Hemp World").
Marijuana is called a 'gateway' drug, because it allegedly encourages users to experiment with 'harder' drugs. It is true that most users of drugs like heroin, LSD, and cocaine, started out smoking pot. But it is also true that most marijuana users never try another illegal drug.
Casual users account for around 80 percent of the marijuana smoking population. Daniel Benjamin and Roger Miller's book, Undoing Drugs, reveals that 80 percent of all the alcohol in the United states is consumed by 20 percent of the people. The same is true for most other drugs. So, eliminating casual usage eliminates only 20 percent of all that drug. That hardly seems worth all the time, effort, and money put into the 'drug war'(55).
PART II Follows --->