“About four or five or six years ago, I was presented with an opportunity to maybe kind of focus on something that would be of importance to me. “
“What I know about hemp is, I know that it can provide oxygen for a sky that’s being suffocated.”
“I’m looking around what’s just going on socially, politically and environmentally see and everybody’s scattered you know either it’s anti-fracking or it’s anti-nukes or anti-oil see but these segments see and I look and then the same thing going on at the same time is about green economy, green economics, all this kind of alternative energy, all these things going on and I looked at hemp and hemp obviously to me is, I look at it as an earth medicine right, because it would be applicable in everyone in these anti positions. It would be something that would help alright, because I mean if you looked at hemp you know, the anti-fracking movement, they should be endorsing hemp. Growing hemp there’d be no need for the fracking.”
“I’m hearing us, you know, here we are, we’re talking about medicine for us, medicine for us, medicine for us. And my feeling is, well hold it. The medicine for the earth, hemp, you know. Let’s be inclusive of the earth. Let’s do this for the Earth. To me it’s like an environmental thing. Let’s do this for the earth, because it is Earth medicine. It would help us to reduce our deep addiction and dependency on the fossil-plastic-chemical reality.”
“We got cannabinoid receptors in our body, throughout our whole body. We have a DNA, physical relationship to the plant. This is reality, you know.”
“So they first went out to outlaw the hemp, you know, the AMA that existed then opposed it. You know it’s kind of interesting. And now they oppose the legalization.”
“But the twist, our grandparents generation, they had a relationship with hemp. From medicinal to all of the other aspects we’re talking about. And then within one generation, two generations, all that information and knowledge got disconnected alright because the petrol, the forest petrochemical industry, all right, they were threatened by [it], that hemp would do everything they could do and there wouldn’t really be a need for them.”
It’s interesting that you mentioned the American Medical Association. One of the other stories that we’ve been telling is about the evolution of a medical industry and the demonization of hemp it actually started with the Pope in the 1400s who said take it out of the anointing oils and if anyone uses it they’re witches and we’ll burn them at the stake during the Inquisition. And then you fast forward to the late 1900s when the medical establishment was really, or the late 1800s, when the medical establishment was really taking its foothold and they were treating people with bloodletting and mercury and everything. And you see every commercial on TV today, yeah we’re gonna get you a boner, we’re gonna fix your heart, but you’re gonna die after you take our medicine. It’s no different now. They demonize, not just hemp, but mushrooms that can cure cluster headaches. Ibogaine which will get people [with] heroin addiction. So it’s all these earth medicines that they’ve kept from us. “They demonize medicine and replace medicine with narcotic…They demonize medicine and replace it with some type of chemical. Alright, because number one, the earth doesn’t grow drugs. This doesn’t happen, alright. Man makes drugs through a chemical process out of the plants and herbs that the earth grows. See, so when I look at things like mushrooms and hemp and various things that come out of the earth, right, they are medicines and they should be used as a medicine.”
“What our approach is, we’re looking at hemp, industrial hemp, our whole objective is to get people thinking about it. That’s our goal. Get it out there however we can and get people thinking about it.”
“People talk about the economics of recreational and medicinal marijuana. The economics of industrial hemp would dwarf the economics of these recreational and medicinal, just dwarf it.” Just with medicinal hemp they’re estimating with legalization one hundred twenty billion dollars in tax revenue, and like you said the hemp industry would dwarf that. So you’re talking trillions and trillions of dollars. “And that’s why the petrochemical groups oppose this, because that’s going to be their billions and billions of dollars.”
“I think that out of desperation, if nothing else, many people will be willing to listen and consider alternative ways to deal with the situation.”
“When I look back at all of the movements, all the stuff that went on in my life we never had a movement that was really land-based. The anti-war movement, see it was never inclusive of the people who are land-based, and see hemp gives us that opportunity to be inclusive of the farmers. The people that work with the land.”
“Our objective is we just want to stimulate discussion because we figured if people are talking about it, then they’re thinking about it.” –on Hempstead project
“I think hemp will save the family farm… in the sense, they could generate this economic base without having to poison the land and the water in order to do it.”
“It isn’t about saving the planet, it’s about saving ourselves. The planet will outlast us. Whatever we do, we’re doing to us.” ~