"HEADS" VS. "FEDS"

THE DEBATE OVER MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION "HEADS"

Steve Hager is perhaps best known as the editor of High Times
magazine. He has been a leading figure in what has come to be known as
the counterculture revolution. As an advocate for marijuana
legalization, Hager has rallied and politicized many people, filmed
several documentaries, and even started the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.

Marijuana is good medicine. Good for cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, multiple
sclerosis, strokes, head injuries, epilepsy, Alzheimer's, eating
disorders, insomnia, nausea, stuttering, asthma, migraines,
depression, and pain.

Hemp is good for the environment. Besides medicine, marijuana plants
also produce hemp, the seeds of which are a nutritious form of protein.

Hemp is the easiest plant to grow and the easiest to turn into fabric.
You can build your house out of hemp, and you can run your car on
hempseed oil.

There are more than 50,000 products that could be made from hemp
currently produced from petrochemicals, a leading cause of pollution
and cancer.

Marijuana legalization is good for our overloaded criminal justice
system; we arrest more than 800,000 people per year for marijuana and
continue to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, with
more than 2.4 million people behind bars.

Prisons are being privatized and judges are being bribed to jail
youthful offenders to keep this revenue stream flowing.

Drug prohibition creates criminal cartels because the profits are much
higher than can be attained through legal enterprises. This money
corrupts our system and always will. The only way to end drug gangs is
by legalization.

Finally, it's a central part of my culture, which I describe as
American Hippie, a hybrid culture of Native American and Eastern
spiritual concepts.

Members of my community view cannabis as a sacrament: for its immense
healing properties as well as the psychoactive ones.