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"Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed" W.Blake
Below are some of the historical and present day figures to blame for our nonsensical laws
There are more to come it all takes time
Henry J. Finger, a prominent member of the California Board of Pharmacy who had been appointed with Wright to the U.S. delegation to the first International Opium Conference at the Hague in 1911.
Wright, a brash and enthusiastic drug prohibitionist, had been pushing to have cannabis included in federal drug legislation. he wrote. "Hasheesh, of which we know very little in this country, will doubtless be adopted by many of the unfortunates if they can get it."
Finger, a forceful proponent of aggressive enforcement in California, had similar ideas.
source www.canorml.org
 William Randolf Hearst (1863-1951),
hated minorities, and he used his chain of newspapers to aggravate racial tensions at every opportunity. Hearst especially hated Mexicans. Hearst papers portrayed Mexicans as lazy, degenerate, and violent, and as marijuana smokers a nd job stealers. The real motive behind this prejudice may well have been that Hearst had lost 800,000 acres of prime timberland to the rebel Pancho Villa, suggesting that Hearst's racism was fueled by Mexican threat to his empire.
source: www.answers.com/
 If you sell it [drugs], we're going to kill you.
Newt Gingrich, 08May97
The Speaker of the House of Representatives is a dangerous man. Bear in mind that selling drugs is not an initiation of aggression. It is commerce -- even if what is being sold may not be particularly healthy for general use. Cigars, sugar-based breakfast cereals, deep-fried KFC chicken, fat-loaded Big Macs and caffeine may be unhealthy, but you don't hear congress-persons threatening the lives of those who sell them -- not yet, anyway. A death threat -- especially from someone at that level of power -- is the initiation of aggression and should be taken seriously. When government uses the term "war on drugs," they mean war in the literal sense. An anarchist might say that the most effective method of dealing with someone so dangerously hotheaded is to cool his fever down to room temperature, quickly, before they do any further damage.
source http://unquietmind.com/
 Harry J. Anslinger (1892-1975)
Prohibition and criminalization of cannabis in the U.S.
Until 1937, consumption and sale of cannabis was legal in most US states. In some areas it could be openly purchased in bulk from grocers or in cigarette form at newsstands, though an increasing number of states had begun to outlaw it. In that year, federal law made possession or transfer of cannabis without the purchase of a by-then-incriminating tax stamp illegal throughout the US. This was contrary to the advice of the American Medical Association at the time. Legal opinions of the time held that the federal government could not outlaw it entirely. The tax was $100 per pound of hemp, even for clothes or rope. The expense, extremely high for the time, was such that people stopped openly buying and making it. The decision of the US Congress was based in part on testimony derived from articles in newspapers owned by WR Hearst, who had significant financial interests in the timber industry, which manufactured his newsprint.
Some analysts theorize DuPont played a role in the criminalization of the cannabis. The company, suffering from declining post-war textile sales, wished to eliminate hemp fiber as competition. Many argue that this seems unlikely given DuPont's lack of concern with the legal status of cotton, wool, and linen; although it should be noted that hemp's textile potential had not yet been largely exploited, while textile factories already had made large investments in equipment to handle cotton, wool, and linen. Others argue that DuPont wanted to eliminate cannabis because its high natural cellulose content made it a viable alternative to the company's developing innovation: modern plastic. Still others could argue that hemp could never truly compete with the high strength and elasticity of synthetics, such as nylon. Furthermore, hemp would have been an easy target due to its intoxicating effect, while no rational justification could have been made for outlawing cotton, wool, or linen.
source: www.answers.com/
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