President's Use of Weed and other Drugs

"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?" - Henry Ford

Marijuana is an imbedded part of our American culture, before our nation was founded and a single document drafted, we have grown to rely on marijuana for much more than just getting high. Prohibition has been pathetically unsuccessful and many lawmakers refuse to acknowledge the truth that it is a fight they cannot win. More than half of the adult population has at least tried to smoke Marijuana and our Founding Fathers praised it! We have official Government documents that were written on hemp paper including the Declaration Of Independence and the US Constitution.

Marijuana consumption is about more than just getting high, it is about our liberty and our prosperity as a nation.

President Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton's publicly admitted to trying marijuana during his younger days, by his account, he never actually felt its effects.


"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again." –Bill Clinton

As part of MTV's "Choose or Lose" get-out-the-vote campaign for the 1992 presidential race, the cable network hosted a town-hall style meeting with then-candidate Clinton. When asked whether he had smoked marijuana, Clinton answered he had, but he "didn't inhale."

President Barack Obama

"When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point." - Barack Obama

"The war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our nation's marijuana laws." -Barack Obama

President Barack Obama's recent biography detailed a young Obama smoking marijuana during his high school days. The president had previously admitted to using the drug in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams of My Father."

Obama's history of drug use is a past behavior that is certainly still frowned upon, but he is by no means the only president to have a drug history.

President George W. Bush

Former President George W. Bush, had a turbulent drug history before his political career.

Bush has maintained a policy of silence around his past youthful indiscretions, other than to say he has been clean since 1974.

Reports of his younger days, however, suggest that Bush had a wild lifestyle for a time, indulging in marijuana and even cocaine.

President John F. Kennedy, Jr.

President John F. Kennedy, Jr., might have the most complex history with drugs out of any president in U.S. history.

Like some 42 percent of Americans today, Kennedy tried smoking marijuana during his younger days, according to an ex-girlfriend who knew him during his college years. In a book released last year, she recounts an incident in which Kennedy lit up while on vacation in Jamaica.

Kennedy also took many different prescriptions for a variety of health conditions that he kept secret from the American public. These drugs included "codeine, Demerol and methadone for pain; Ritalin, a stimulant; Meprobamate and Librium for anxiety; barbiturates for sleep" and more, according to medical records.

President Franklin Pierce

President Franklin Pierce may have had an odd way of motivating men on the battlefield.

According to contemporary accounts of Pierce, he used to smoke marijuana with his soldiers during wartime. In fact, during the Mexican-American War, Pierce declared that smoking cannabis was "about the only good thing" about the conflict.

President Ulysses S. Grant

Long before cocaine was a controlled substance that came with a heavy jail sentence for abusers, it was a legally available and widely used pain reliever. The drug, however, was as addictive then as it is now.

Stricken with oral cancer, President Ulysses S. Grant used cocaine throat drops regularly to soothe his pain. In fact, Grant reportedly took cocaine while he wrote his now famous memoirs.

He would remain addicted to the drug until the illness claimed his life at age 63.

President Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was another president who openly smoked marijuana on occasion. Like Pierce, Jackson smoked with his troops during wartime, along with tobacco cigars.

President Thomas Jefferson

"Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see."  - Thomas Jefferson

"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country." - Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the country's Founding Fathers, grew vast fields on hemp of his plantation. In fact, an early draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, a common material at the time.

Whether Jefferson actually smoked his crop is a matter of historical debate. Jefferson's Farm Book includes references to growing hemp that could indicate he was growing them for purposes of recreational smoking.

President George Washington

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere." - George Washington

George Washington, arguably the most admired figure in U.S. history alongside Abraham Lincoln, was not only a user of marijuana, but a major advocate for the spread of hemp as a cash crop in the United States.

Washington grew hemp as a fiber, and even has several journal entries detailing his efforts to grow a better crop. Washington also suffered from tooth pain, and it's believed that he smoked marijuana to bring relief.

President James Madison

James Madison was once heard to say that smoking hemp inspired him to found a new nation on democratic principles.

President James Monroe

James Monroe, the 5th US President, was introduced to hashish when he was serving as Ambassador to France, and he continued to enjoy the smoke until he was 73 years old.

President Zachary Taylor

When Zachary Taylor served as a military commanders, he smoked hemp with his soldiers.

President Abraham Lincoln

"Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica." - Abraham Lincoln

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bound of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded" -Abraham Lincoln

President John Adams

"We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption."
- John Adams, U.S. President








Also See: A few facts about Hemp, in case you were wondering:

A few facts about Hemp, in case you were wondering:

From: The Huffington Post

• The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross's flag, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp. 

• 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc. were made from hemp until the 1820s with the introduction of the cotton gin. 

• It was legal to pay taxes with Hemp in America from 1631 until the early 1800s. 

• Refusing to grow Hemp in America during the 17th and 18th Centuries was against the law. You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769. 

• Rembrants, Gainsboroughs, Van Goghs as well as most early canvas paintings were principally painted on hemp linen.

• In 1916, the U.S. Government Dept. of Agriculture predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. 

• For thousands of years, 90% of all ships' sails and rope were made from hemp. The word 'canvas' is Dutch for cannabis. 

• The hemp plant produces up to four times more cellulose per acre than trees. Hemp cultivation and production do not harm the environment. The USDA Bulletin #404 concluded that Hemp produces 4 times as much pulp with at least 4 to 7 times less pollution.

• Hemp fuel is non-toxic, biodegradable and does not contribute to sulfur dioxide air poisoning.

• In Feb. 1938, Popular Mechanics called Hemp a 'Billion Dollar Crop.' It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars.

The following information comes directly from the United States Department of Agriculture's 1942 14-minute film encouraging and instructing 'patriotic American farmers' to grow 350,000 acres of hemp each year for the war effort:

'...(When) Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850, all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable...

...Now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese...American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our industries...

...the Navy's rapidly dwindling reserves. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again; hemp for mooring ships; hemp for tow lines; hemp for tackle and gear; hemp for countless naval uses both on ship and shore. Just as in the days when Old Ironsides sailed the seas victorious with her hempen shrouds and hempen sails. Hemp for victory!'

Victory indeed.

The National Debt Crisis, The CBO's Warning and Marijuana

See The Nation Debt Clock

The CBO's warning about our dire fiscal future is real. In the CBO report, if the Bush Era Tax Cuts are allowed to expire and the $100 Billion in automatic spending cuts go into effect, then the economy will face a recession in the first half of 2013. According to the projections, the economy will shrink 1.3% however in the second half of the year they estimate a growth of 2.3%, this is of course dependent on congress doing nothing. Congress will likely act in some way, hopefully we will see the Buffett Rule come into being and some fairer tax rates, especially for the top 1% who have seen their income soar while ours dwindle.

But What if congress takes a Radical Measure to eliminate the debt and truly reduce spending... What Radical Measure would have that effect?

Legalize Marijuana!!

"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country." - Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President quote on Hemp

Yes!! Legalizing Marijuana today would have a nearly instantaneous effect on the economy, a positive effect!

See: Politics of Pot and Legalizing Marijuana

If we Decriminalize Marijuana and make it legal to sell in the same way we sell Alcohol and Cigarettes, we could tax the drug, add hundreds of thousands legal jobs to the economy, and would incur no additional enforcement costs. Enforcement would be added to the ATF's responsibilities, the DEA would be able to concentrate on real drugs instead of a weed, and we could bring down our incarceration rate.


Did you know:

• 1 in 100 Adults in the US are behind bars? 

• The average cost to house an inmate is $47000 per year

• We spend over $5 Billion a year to house inmates in federal prisons for drug crimes, mostly marijuana,

• Last year, police arrested 847,864 persons for marijuana violations, almost 90 percent of them for possession only.  

From Salon.com:

Approximate number of people incarcerated for drug related crimes:

• 108,000 people in federal prisons as of April 2010
• 280,000 people in state prisons across the country as of June 2007
• 31,500 people in California state prisons as of December 2008 

Let's expand a bit by putting it into perspective, and that means understanding how many total people are incarcerated for all crimes:

• 211,455 inmates at federal prisons as of April 2010
• 1,395,916 inmates in state prisons as of June 2007
• 171,161 inmates in California as of December 2008

So that means around half of all inmates in federal prisons are there for drugs, around 20% of inmates nationwide in state prisons are there for drugs and around 18% of inmates in California state prisons are there for drugs.

"When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
- Barack Obama, U.S. President quote on Marijuana

How legalizing weed can help the economy.

What do Alaska, Alabama, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia have in common? Their biggest cash crop—generating far more revenue than wine in the Napa Valley, tobacco in North Carolina, or pineapples in Hawaii—is marijuana. When a product gains that kind of economic foothold it’s time to take stock.

Not only is cannabis the biggest cash crop in those 12 states, it’s in the top three in 30 states, the top five in 39. In fact, marijuana is the greatest revenue producer of all agricultural products grown in the U.S. With production values of roughly $36 billion annually, the cultivation of marijuana is permanently entrenched within and integrally connected to the U.S. economy.

And it’s illegal.

Incarceration:
If legalization happens, we be able to stop sending people to jail for Marijuana crimes except for those who sell to minors. This will Save Billions and we can spend this money on better things, Like infrastructure or eliminating the deficit.

Tax revenue:
If we follow the model set in place for tobacco and Alcohol, pharmacies could be used to sell Marijuana cigarettes and we could have Hash Bars. Sin Taxes will be paid on the products sold and people will now have to pay income taxes because they will be selling it in a legitimate fashion. 

New Jobs:
If Marijuana is legal to sell, people will be hired to sell it.
Social clubs revolving around Marijuana will need people baking, rolling, and serving.
Companies that form to make Marijuana cigarettes will hire people to make them.
Farms that are now growing will hire people to harvest the plants.
Logistics, people will need to get the Products from Point A to Point B.
That's not to mention the jobs that will form due to the spending from those new spots

How Legalization will reduce crime.

See: Legalization Will Reduce Crime, Free Up Police Resources
Eliminate gang revenue:
If you no longer have to go to the guy on the corner who can shoot you if the deal goes bad, would you stop? YES!
If we have a legal way to buy Marijuana, gangs will cease to have that revenue stream, in fact, they may have to get legitimate jobs in order to make a living. You know, a job where they too will have to pay there share of taxes.

Reduce Crime:
With Gangs no longer having weed as an income source and many member getting jobs, they will be too busy to commit crimes. as a matter of fact, given that they simply will be unable to sell weed like they used to, crime will go down dramatically

Better use of Police Resources:
With marijuana enforcement off the table, police will be able to concentrate on real crimes; crimes like Rape, Domestic Violence, Burglary, and Destruction of Property.

WHAT ABOUT OUR LIBERTY!!! Weed is our RIGHT!

With 100 million Americans having used pot at least once, including the president, his two immediate predecessors, the mayor of New York and countless other luminaries from all walks of life, and with an estimated 25 million regular users, marijuana consumption is a deeply ingrained pattern of American culture. 

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."- Albert Einstein quote on Hemp

The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! - Patrick Henry During the Second Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775