The Price of Cannabis Prohibition I$$$ to High

 Would you pay $40,000 for 9 grams of bud and a bong?
The New Zealand Government recently did and they did it with their taxpayers monies!

After a trial lasting nearly a year and which cost taxpayers about $40,000, marijuana charges against four New Zealand men were dismissed last week in Auckland District Court.

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The Prohibition of cannabis is not just a problem in the United States but is a world wide problem. Most of us know the U.S. had a prohibition against alcohol and that it was a failure, but did you know that:

The United States (1920–1933), Finland (1919–1932), Norway (1916–1927), Canada, Iceland (1915–1922) and USSR (1914–1925) had alcohol prohibition  WIKI LINK

Now we see that these alcohol prohibitions were over turned in just over a decade after their being enacted. The Governments saw that there was money and power in the prohibition of alcohol, though with such a high percentage of the population being alcohol drinkers it was not feasible to enforce these laws.

How has the prohibition of cannabis lasted so long and how did it really start?

Religious intolerance was a motivation for drug prohibition in Christian Europe. In a move interpreted as support for the efforts of the Spanish Inquisition against the Arabs, in a 1484 fiat Pope Innocent VIII banned the use of cannabis. The persecution of heretics in the form of witch hunts also gathered momentum around this time, and frequently targeted users of medicinal and hallucinogenic herbs. The Inquisition proceeded apace in Meso-America and South America, where peyote (péyotl), ololiúqui, toloáche, teonanácatl and other sacred plants of the Mexican culture were prohibited as works of the devil.
WIKI LINK

In my opinion; the prohibition of certain aforementioned Herbs/Drugs was an attempt to divide people from their God and to make all communion with God through the church. If you have to follow the church to get to Heaven, you have to pay the price they set. In other words I believe early prohibition was about money and control, strange the same is true of cannabis prohibition today!

We often hear of cannabis compared to coffee and too the question of why one drug is legal and the other is not. Well actually coffee was illegal at one point in history. One difference is coffee was not part of any known religious ceremony nor was it used in worshiping the Gods.

Coffee almost followed the same fate as cannabis as its use spread from Ethiopia through the Middle East to Europe. Coffee, regarded as a Muslim drink, was prohibited to Orthodox Christians in its native Ethiopia until as late as 1889; it is now considered a national drink of Ethiopia for people of all faiths. In the Ottoman Empire, Murad IV attempted to prohibit coffee drinking to Muslims as haraam, arguing that it was an intoxicant, but this ruling was soon overturned after his death.^[2] The introduction of coffee in Europe from Muslim Turkey prompted calls for it to be banned as the devil's work, though Pope Clement VIII sanctioned its use in 1600, declaring that it was "so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." Its early association in Europe with rebellious political activities led to its banning in England, among other places.
WIKI LINK 

Cannabis prohibition has become a world wide trend, even though its use is part of several religions which includes early Christianity.
(KANEH BOSM: THE HIDDEN STORY OF CANNABIS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT)

I hope you enjoyed that brief look at the early history of cannabis prohibition. I am truly glad that coffee made it through those crazy times and is legal for us to enjoy today.

 Cannabis could be a free medicine, rather than an expensive drug!

So what’s the real difference between legal drugs and illegal drugs? Some people think that only illegal drugs are habit-forming. Yet legal drugs can be just as addictive as illegal drugs. Just ask anyone who has tried to quit smoking, go off caffeine, or kick to Oxycontin habit.


So is there some other difference between illegal drugs and legal drugs? People argue that legal drugs are safe. They’re FDA-approved! And yet they fail to recognize that prescription drugs kill more Americans each year than all the crack, meth, and heroin deaths combined.

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Why is cannabis prohibition world wide?

INTERNATIONAL AGREEMERNTS ON CANNABIS AND DRUGS

The treaty which concern us, as far as cannabis is concerned, and the treaty upon which the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is based, is the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961. The principle of this treaty is that the possession, use, trade in, distribution, import, export, manufacture and production of drugs is exclusively limited to medical and scientific purposes.
The spirit of the treaty was to completely eradicate the cultivation and use of cannabis within thirty years; many consider it fortunate that this aim was not achieved.
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Now we see that the U.S. and Harry J. Anslinger were not the first to enact law against cannabis, though theirs was one of the most deceitful. It is easy to see that the prohibition of cannabis has caused much undue suffering to not only to U.S. citizens, but to all the peoples of the Earth! 

I really hope that you realize the absurdity of cannabis prohibition and that the seldom talked about roots of prohibition will be helpful in arguing against modern prohibition!

Free Cannabis,

End Prohibition Now!