If the experience of legalizing marijuana is any guide, even if the war on hemp is ended, it will ironically continue in the form of regulations, licenses and fees imposed by government officials who disagree with legalization.

The mini-series, Murder Mountain, now airing on Netflix provides some powerful anecdotal evidence that bears this out. For decades, growers in Humbolt county grew and sold illegal marijuana. Then, when marijuana was legalized in California, these same growers were saddled with zoning and health regulations that imposed an array of new taxes, regulation, requirements about pesticides, certifications, licensing fees and just more and bigger taxes. These were enforced by local zoning authorities who used high-resolution satellite images to identify marijuana farms and imposed $10,000/day fines if the marijuana crops were not in the county database and licensure system. This followed with raids by local law enforcement to enforce zoning and building and licensing laws in full body armor and caravans that included chipper/shreders to destroy non-compliant crops that looked all looked a lot like the law enforcement raids of pre-legalization times. One raid included service of a warrant on the wrong farm and handcuffing a compliant grower and searching his property, which looks a lot like raids in the pre-legalization era. Of course, many growers just continued to remain underground, 'cause the war on marijuana did not end with legalization, but simply morphed from "criminalization" into "regulation."

Again, its not a war on hemp...it is a war on the Individuals Liberty and Property Rights.

Government 'Regulation' is not regulation at all, but RESTRICTION. Govs only tool is the initiation of force/violence.

Property rights as in I have a natural right to buy and consume whatever I care to, as long as I violate no one else's rights to do the same in the process..

Yes, property rights.

IF someone has the power/authority to tell you what you can NOT grow on your property...then they also have the power/authority to tell you what you MUST grow on your property.

"Before governments arrested people for growing hemp, they used to fine farmers for not growing it."

Both are a violation of the individuals liberty and this/her property rights.

'Just Powers' are derived from consent.
'Unjust Powers' are derived from the initiation of force/violence.

Government never allows freedom. To be fair however, many of these growers were violating the private property rights, water rights, etc. of others because of the manner in which their crops were grown. Simply allowing them into the "sunlight" as it were without all of the expensive regulatory apparatus, likely would have addressed most if not all of those issues. Government needs the continuation of the black market to justify their keystone cop squads. True freedom would upset that.

Recent article (Reason?) points out that the high costs of state regulation of recreational pot in some areas has kept black markets alive...

//high costs of state regulation//

One has to wonder why the "costs" of regulating an industry are more than the "costs" of law enforcement associated with an illegal industry. I think has more to do with local governments seeking economic rents in the form of taxes. When they do so, marijuana producers will avoid the tax by selling their product on the black market.

In my state, Colorado, for example, Colorado Springs prohibits the sale of recreational marijuana, but has been in a spat with nearby Manitou Springs and Pueblo (which allow recreational marijuana sales). Colorado Springs asserts that it is entitled to a share in the tax revenues from recreational sales of Pueblo and Manitou because Colorado Springs' "costs" of regulating marijuana are somehow higher. Sounds like pure BS to me.

In Washington, tax revenue from cannabis sales went from $1.8 million in 2014 to $321 million in 2017, far exceeding even the revenue from heavily taxed liquor sales ($208 million) An extra $319 million buys a whole lot of "regulation"

Colorado experienced similar dramatic increases in marijuana tax revenues. But, in spite of multiple votes by the electorate to decriminalize/legalize marijuana, many state and local government officials believe they know what's in the best interests of the people they claim to serve and labor to continue the war on marijuana.

Dude, overhead costs are high for your typical criminal protection racket!

"Before governments arrested people for growing hemp, they used to fine farmers for not growing it."

Ah government! How did man ever exist without its benevolent guidance?

The way I heard the story, Anslinger's initial publicity campaign against the "weed from hell" -- between the time he was fired as the Federal Alcohol Prohibitor and when he became the Federal Marijuana Prohibitor -- was funded by grants from a Dupont related foundation. Outlawing industrial hemp was on the crony corporate agenda from the start. It wasn't stupidity on Anslinger's part, it was culpability.

Its not a war on a non-drug...its a war on the Individuals Liberty and Property Rights.

Pretty backwards move on behalf of government...I'm sure its the only backwards things governments have done...right?

Why do we keep funding these thugs in suits and their pious moralization?

Why do free-market commentators constantly resort to that inane rhetorical question, when it clearly has a concrete answer?
Why do they resort to rhetorical questions at all???
When will they realize that rhetorical questions are the lowest form of argumentation????

According to Harry Reid, taxes are voluntary, not forced.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Harry Reid has no clothes on.

....and his brains have leaked out.

"Although one lawyer friend once told me to do that plan and then declare bankruptcy on the IRS debt"
Tax debts & student loans are two forms of debt that bankruptcy can not eliminate...

iirc, you used to be able to file bankrupcy on student loan debt, back when student loans were private, not publicly funded.

Now that government has Nationalized the student loan industry, you can't.

Even before then. Once the Feds started backing private lenders against default on student loans, student loan debt was rendered not dischargeable in bankruptcy by Congress...

Perhaps it's this process:

1) Fight the IRS in court the rest of your life
2) Die penniless from legal fees, leaving IRS nothing to take

The question remains, how is an idiot cop going to be able to tell the difference?

Hemp farming is like putting up a big sign saying, "shoot me I'm growing something that looks like a drug".

The question remains, how is an idiot cop going to be able to tell the difference?

...the same way they tell if your dog is a threat. Shoot first! Ask questions later.

The problem is that hemp is a weed and it requires no cultivation.
The best way to solve the police problem is the elimination of police officers by returning to the well-regulated militia that the standing armies known as police departments replaced.
www.constitution.org/lrev/r...

A read of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" will quickly clear up what appears to be a giant hole in your understanding of the banning of hemp. From the evidence, it seems as though HEMP was the leading target, with psychoactive cannabis being used as the "scare tactic" to ban the industrial uses. Given that William Randolph Hearst controlled vast swaths of pine forest, and his friend DuPont had recently invented a way to make paper from wood pulp (versus hemp), and he needed to put his competitors out of business, and given that the recent invention of the decorticator device (which, like the cotton gin did for cotton, revolutionized the processing of hemp plants into fiber) which would massively increase the utility of this plant, thus threatening the cotton industry and others, the imperative to shut down hemp cultivation was far more important than some concerns about a few mexicans and blacks smoking "reefer." I am surprised that you would ignorantly portray this as a crusade against "drugs." Seems you have fallen for the same "Reefer Madness" that was used to get hemp banned (and every other plant that was related).

Stow your condescension. I'm quite familiar with this theory, and talked about it in detail here:

https://mises.org/library/a...

It is *one* of two major theories about the motivation to seek marijuana criminalization, neither of which are anything more than educated conjecture supported by circumstantial evidence and incentive theories.

Well, given that the essential "banning" of this plant took the form of a tax on a raw agricultural product that basically made it permanently economically-unviable, but ultimately did NOTHING to really halt the growing of high THC plants for consumption, the outcome seems to point quite well towards hemp being the target, not smokeable cannabis.

what did you think of chris' podcast series? did you learn anything?

Great article https://industrialhempfarms... was so happy to see the 2018 Farm Bill pass. Hemp has been legal in Colorado for years and the feds must have seen how much money was in it for them. This was a long time coming

Thanks for the great Peice,
IHF LLC - Hemp Biomass Seller, Hemp Futures Contracts, CBD Extraction Services, Hemp Seed Wholesale, Hemp Clones Wholesale

THC is a component of the oil that the cannabis plant exudes to protect its leaves and flowers from solar radiation. The stalk is where the fibers come from, not the leaves and flowers.
Anslinger was about to lose his job to alcohol relegalization. He chose marijuana as the scapegoat to insure his employment would continue.

Legalize cannabis. If I want to get high that's my business as long as I am not intruding on anyone else or their property. Less harmful than pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine. Stay out of my life!

less harmful if you smoke a little and don't operate machinery. more harmful if you eat a lot and fly a passenger jet over a densely populated area. it's all conditional.

The last sentence says a lot;
"what may be the most pointlessly destructive law in the last century."

Well, this goes to prove one needs no intelligence to work for a government bureaucracy, only arrogance and conceit and of course the drive to dominate others. After all isn't that why people go to Washington and join the bureaucracy other than a fat paycheck and pension? Especially when they cannot compete in the private business market because they cannot meet the standards.
Unfortunately America is now behind in hemp , way behind Canada and the stigma with hemp compared to cannabis still persists among the ignorant and illiterate.
Henry Ford made panels for his first cars from hemp so what does that tell you about its uses. Imagine what else can be made especially with the technology to refine and discover new uses.

i wonder how many cancer patients continue to eat grilled steak and drink beer while asking for "cbd therapy". LOL

Hemp has a great multitude of uses.
For naval industry, it was essential because salt water did not corrode/decay it as it does cotton.
It produces more "biomass" per acre than any other industrial crop or trees, supposedly.
Its seeds are extremely nutritious, high in protein and essential fats.
It can be used to create fuel, building materials (plasterboard or fibreboard type), paints, cosmetics, insulation, medicine, of course clothes and other fibre-based products...
It also, supposedly, improves he quality of soil.

So, right here, you have a great many powerful interest groups that may view it as unwelcome competition, especially after they have established themselves in the markets already.

But better do your own research, this is hearsay I have collected over 20-odd years and never bothered to verify...

Yes. Hemp paper does not use the acid process that Dow patented to use on wood pulp paper, so hemp paper lasts longer.

Let's just say it's a lot like the murder of JFK. It's not just "who did it", but "who DIDN'T do it?"

That too.
The same clown that got America into a war with Spain.

You do know who Hearst was?