Can we just stop celebrating Harry Anslinger, the putative architect of the drug war?
Luckily that trend went away a few years ago, but no doubt it’ll come back around on someone’s content schedule.
But still…
Native Americans don’t quote and post about Custer
Jews don’t quote and post about Hitler, and
Blacks don’t quote and post about James Earl Ray.
But oddly friends of Cannabis post about Anslinger way more than necessary.
It’s enough to say it’s a “racist unconstitutional law for 89 years” without celebrating his infamy.
And even worse is changing our language to make long-dead racist cop Anslinger happy by eliminating a specific and beautiful Mexican term in use since at least 1850 (marijuana) for a general European one (Cannabis).
We need more nomenclature for mankind’s most-useful plant, not fewer. Some have 30 words just for snow!
Especially if you give his racist boss a pass, the guy who signed the law in the first place and refused to invite 4-Olympic-Gold-Medal-winning Jesse Owens to the White House because he was Black.
No one else honors their oppressors like we do.
But Industrial Hemp in the U.S. and Canada started its Golden Age around 1990 thanks to visionaries and mentors such as these folks below.
If you need to know who we should honor more in the hemp industry, those who actually did good and helped us progress in their small but meaningful way, here’s but a partial alpha list including those who passed on:
Ken Anderson
Chris Bennett
Christie Bohling
David Bonvillain
Iván Bócsa
Pamela Bosch
Chris Boucher
Alan Brady
Joe Brown
Jace Callaway
Veronica Carpio
Kathleen Chippi
Robert Connell Clarke
Chris Conrad
Shaun Crew
Todd Dalotto
Etienne de Meijer
Robert Davis
Lyster Dewey
Ben Dronkers
Adam Dunn
Barbara Filippone
Denny Finneran
Etienne Fontan
Jack Frazier
Ken Friedman
Michael Funk
Gale Glenn
Jake Graves
Lenda Hand
Karl Hillig
Chris Iverson
Mari Kane
Michael Karus
Brooks Kelly
Caren Kershner
Geoff Kime
Gabe Kirchheimer
Patrick Lange
Richard Lee
Malcolm MacKinnon
Dion Markgraaf
Brigitte Mars
J-P Mathieu
John McPartland
Vito Mediavilla
Carol Miller
Marie Mills
Helga Mölleken
Carolyn Moran
John Patterson
Josh Raderman
Paolo Ranalli
Kehrt Reyher
Marcus Gary Richardson
Lawrence Ringo
Anita Roddick
Richard Rose
Ernie Small
John Stahl
Alexander Sumach
Roland Theimer
Richard Tomcala
Mark Tucci
David Watson
Dave West
Don E. Wirtshafter
Eric Zima