Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs,talk.bizarre
From: [an 228935] at [anon.penet.fi]
Date: Tue,  4 Apr 1995 16:43:32 UTC
Subject: Hemp and Shit


I dropped out of college, and quite honestly, didn't pay close enough
attention in high school when they taught us what being a consumer was
all about.  I thought money was pretty boring as I never seemed to lack
so much of it where I went without the essentials or even numerous
additional nice things.  After dropping out of college, I moved to
California and found a job that paid me twenty dollars an hour.  Today,
almost three years later, I make twenty-five dollars an hour and have a
rather easily attained and impressive resume.

I smoke marijuana as frequently as I can without losing touch with my
everyday responsibilities.  Your average toker would deem me a
'lightweight;' it doesn't take much of this harmless, nature-given herb
to enlighten me.

Some of my more conservative peers ask me why I feel the need to escape
reality by using an illegal drug.  They feel I may have a problem as I
cannot reach such a state of bliss without it.  Fumbling through any
newspaper or spending five minutes in front of the television yields
enough ammunition to vanquish any argument against my seemingly
forbidden lifestyle -- the world is a very fucked-up place, and I have
found a substance of choice which yields the most positive effects
while running lean on the negative ones.

While I certainly would love to see marijuana legalized so I could hang
out with other irresponsible social misfits such as myself, it seems
bothersomely obvious to me that hemp needs to be employed immediately
as a source of paper, fuel and other materials currently derived from
our rain forests and other depleting natural resources.

It seems ironic to me that our society shuns such a valuable resource
for purely political reasons, that the answer to many of man's problems
lies in this plant.  While I generally laugh at hempsters who proclaim
'hemp will save the world,' I often wonder if they aren't completely
right.

The recent media attention devoted to viruses like Ebola (read Richard
Preston's novel, 'The Hot Zone' or if you're a typical American, go see
the movie 'Outbreak') which never before threatened humanity until we
disrupted the balance of the rain forests has led me to wonder if our
current greedy presence in these sacred natural habitats could lead to
the eventual downfall of mankind.  Perhaps utilizing resources like
hemp will slow the inevitable...  Perhaps it's too late.

Even more disturbing and current than this is the massive amounts of
money, billions of dollars per year, we spend on eradicating these
'drugs' we have assigned negative, almost human characteristics to. 
Perhaps drugs for some, as my case may often be, provide an escape from
the reality of a painful, often hopeless world, where even the greatest
of great deeds often are imperceptable in contrast to the terrible
problems which plague us, the majority of which are self-imposed. 
Perhaps investing this wasted money in ourselves in a more useful
manner would be more beneficial than striking fear into the hearts of
those of us looking to rid ourselves from the constant monotony of
society.  Maybe all of us could even have homes, food, health care, and
other modern conveniences.

They taught me in school that a good consumer shops around.  I'm not
very happy with my service provider, yet you often need to adapt to
other languages and lifestyles to break away from a service provider of
this nature, and after much careful research, I have found few places
I'd rather live than here.  I guess the idealism they taught me in
school rears its pretty head once you reach the limits of your
immediate options.  I'm glad I dropped out.

Sign me,

Disturbed yet somehow hopeful
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