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In 1911, South Africa* began the outlawing of marijuana for the same reasons as New Orleans: to stop insolent Blacks! White South Africa, along with Egypt, led the international fight (League of Nations) to have cannabis outlawed worldwide.
* South Africa still allowed its Black mine workers to smoke dagga in the mines, though. Why? Because they were more productive!
In fact, in that same year, South Africa influenced southern U.S. legislators to outlaw cannabis (which many black South Africans revered as “dagga,” their sacred herb). Many South Africans’ American business headquarters were in New Orleans at the time.
This is the whole racial and religious (Medieval Catholic Church) basis of where our laws against hemp arose. Are you proud?
Fourteen million years so far have been spent in jails, prisons, parole, and on probation by Americans for this absurd racist and probably economic reasoning. (See chapter 4, “Last Days of Legal Cannabis.”)
Isn’t it interesting that in 1985 the U.S. incarcerated a larger percentage of people than any country in the world except South Africa? In 1989 the U.S. surpassed South Africa, the 1997 incarceration rate is almost four times that of South Africa, and is the highest in the world and growing.
President Bush, in his great drug policy speech September 5, 1989, promised to double the federal prison population again, after it had already doubled under Reagan. He succeeded. In 1993, President Bill Clinton planned to redouble the number of prisoners again by 1996.* He did.
* See Appendix in the paper version of this book; fighting the police state.
Remember the outcry in 1979 when former UN Ambassador Andrew Young told the world that the U.S. had more political prisoners than any other nation? (Amnesty International, ACLU.)
the authorized on-line version of Jack Herer’s “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”
text from “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” © Jack Herer
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