LIGHTING UP FOR FREEDOM ON FOURTH

At first it looked incongruous -- a picture that ran Wednesday in some
editions of the Times showing two banners hanging over Sixth Avenue in
Zephyrhills.

One banner promoted Sparklebration, an annual Independence Day observance
in Dade City on Saturday, and the other invited people to the Hemp
Revolution, a rally in favor of marijuana legalization planned for Zephyr
Park the following day. I'm sure it got a lot of folks who still think
"roach" means an obnoxious Florida insect very exercised. How dare anyone
promote legalization of the demon devil weed on a day as sacred to
Americans as the day we told England to "go fly a kite, and we ain't
talking electricity experiments."

If you think about it, however, nothing could be more American than a group
of citizens publicly exercising their constitutional right to petition the
government to change laws they deem bad ones -- and making a party out of it.

If one of the vendors at the hemp event isn't selling packages of
"federalist papers," then he or she is missing a good deal.

Hemp, for the uninitiated and non-inhaling, is another name for the same
plant that provides the leaves and buds so enduringly popular for a
substantial portion of the American population.

For some reason many of us can't discern, people used to make rope and
fabric out of, and its seeds are still very popular with pet birds,
although they have to have been sterilized by radiation (the seeds, not the
birds) before they can be sold for that purpose.

Hemp farming was a popular livelihood in colonial times, and rope wasn't
always the object. George Washington, when he wasn't busy chopping down
cherry trees (a destructive behavior decidedly not in keeping with the
marijuana culture), was a hemp farmer, and excerpts from his diaries show
that he talked about keeping the male and female plants separate because
(as it was believed then) that enhanced the "medicinal" qualities of the
female plants.

Come on, why else would anyone think he had thrown a dollar across the
Potomac River? Trust me, folks, I tried doing it once when I was straight
as an arrow, and I couldn't throw it more than a few inches . . . the wind
kept blowing it back in my face.

A lot of people, especially the tens of thousands who are sitting in jail
cells because of them, think this nation's drug laws, especially as they
regard marijuana, are stupid.

A lot of other people think they are peachy keen. That includes people who
have received word directly from God that marijuana is evil and want to
make sure that nobody behaves in a way that might actually provide
pleasure. It also includes tens of thousands of people whose entire lives
are tied up in either providing or trying to stop the flow of drugs.

A whole bunch of law enforcement types, including one entire administration
in the federal government, would have to go out and start chasing serial
killers, psycho-militia types and other mean people who might be armed --
instead of screwing up some 21-year-old's life for having a roach in the
ashtray of his car.

If drugs were legalized, all of those private corporations that are slowly
but surely gobbling up the prison business, and for whom a full jail is a
good jail, might have to go invest their funds in building hospital beds
instead of prison beds and paying for needed medications for the elderly
rather than making sure wanted medications aren't available to anyone else.

A nation that has laws allowing, subsidizing and taxing tobacco -- a known
killer which, alas, has a very good lobby and its own U.S. senator --
should be willing to listen to citizens who are following the rules,
seeking the signatures and engaging in the long and probably futile search
for somebody in government with his or her head and fundament on opposite
ends of their torso.

Sparklebration is a fitting observance for east Pasco's citizens to honor
the men and women whose courage made this nation possible and whose
foresight provided the legal means to keep it livable.

The Hemp Revolution will be exactly the same thing.