( skip to End )  |   ( next )  |   About the Issue    |     ( prev )  |   ( go to Top )  Why we fight . . . You must look hard at the news, but you can see the war goes on. So, then, do we. This site was and will continue to be about cannabis law reform. The mission, continues.

( skip to End )  |   ( next )  |   Consider this, Portland   |     ( prev )  |   ( go to Top )  The government's own statistics show Portland has at least 23,772 marijuana consumers. The same conservative figures show at least 29,930 marijuana consumers in Multnomah County. The 1995 NHSDA and Census Bureau numbers also reveal at least 150,040 marijuana consumers in Oregon. Have you any idea of the taxes you're paying in the ongoing effort to build prisons for them all? Follow those numbers. . . . You can help end the war on drugs just by asking every elected official and candidate for public office for a straight answer to one simple question: Exactly how many drug offenders do you want to put in prison to have the best results? The government's own statistics say that 71 percent of cannabis consumers and other illegal-drug users age 18 and older are gainfully employed, compared to just 63.3 percent of the general population age 16 and older. Are you starting to get the impression you haven't been told the whole story? How is prison going to make marijuana smokers as a whole into more productive citizens? According to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 60 percent of American parents have smoked marijuana at least once in their lives. According to NIDA, only 35 percent of the general population age 12 and older has smoked marijuana. So . . . How does imprisoning and fining marijuana offenders and trying to make them unemployed and homeless help to promote "family values"?

( skip to End )  |   ( next )  |   The background on hemp . . .   |     ( prev )  |   ( go to Top )  . . . includes a strip of hemp canvas. "Canvas" comes from the Latin word "cannabis." All canvas was made of hemp (Cannabis sativa, L.) until the late 19th century. Every ship that sailed until the advent of the steam engine required tons of hemp fiber for its canvas sails, ropes, rigging and oakum, used to caulk seams. No other fiber could withstand seawater so well. Hence to control the hemp market was to control the world's seaways. That is what the War of 1812 was all about. It went like this: Because hemp required so much labor at that time to turn into fiber, Russia, which had the cheapest labor force, eventually produced 80 percent of the Western world's hemp and 90 percent of Britain's. During the Napoleonic wars, Britain blockaded France, which in turn tried to neutralize Britain's fleet by blocking its access to Russian hemp. Napoleon and Czar Alexander agreed to do just that in their 1807 Treaty of Tilset. Although Americans were at first neutral in the conflict, Britain began confiscating American ships and impressing American crews caught trading with the French or their allies. However, the English quietly offered immunity to the Americans if they agreed to bypass the French and bring back hemp from Russia for the British navy. John Quincy Adams, the American consul in St. Petersburg in 1809, wrote that "As many as 600 clipper ships, flying the American flag, in a two week period, were in Kronstadt," St. Petersburg's port. Napoleon, enraged when the Czar refused to stop trading hemp to the Americans for rum, sugar, tobacco and coffee, invaded Russia. The rest of the story is told in Jack Herer's book, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes." Find out how to order it from our page of links.

( skip to End )  |   ( next )  |   How you can help   |     ( prev )  |   ( go to Top )  What you can do to help the cause: Write. Contact the media and legislative representatives and tell them how you feel about the war. Write, email, call and fax your concerns on a regular basis. Spread the word. Tell your friends and neighbors about the cause and get them involved. Speak before public interest and community groups. Form/join neighborhood and local organizations. Research. Look up information. Write stories and contribute. Update us with news/info and help keep this Library current and functional. E-mail the Librarian with questions, comments ... or ideas! Please give us some feedback - stop by and sign the Guestbook.

( skip to End )  |   ( next )  |   Portland NORML's history   |     ( prev )  |   ( go to Top )  Since Marijuana Library first went online in 1995 as Portland NORML, this site has grown to become one of the largest drug-policy-reform resources on the Web, with over 50 megabytes of information in more than 800 files (not including more than 12 megabytes of graphics). Just one of this site's unique features is an immense archive of local, national and international news articles on cannabis and drug policy, spanning a period from about 1999 back to 1992 and even farther. Please take some time to check out the other extensive offerings in our various directories - big as this home page is, it hardly begins to describe the entire site. Whatever your opinions may currently be about cannabis and drug policy, you are guaranteed to find a lot of fascinating and authoritative information here. Portland NORML's original webmaster was Phil Smith, a High Times Freedom Fighter (May 1997) and medical-marijuana patient whose psychiatrist recommends his use of cannabis for major depression and the debilitating side effects from 10 years of toxic FDA-approved chemotherapy. (This tends to discomfit those who would have you believe the "Reefer Madness" myth that cannabis use causes or exacerbates mental illness. As usual, the drug warriors' science is 180 degrees wrong, and of course quite harmful.) Convicted of trying to provide cannabis to other medical-marijuana patients below cost in 1997 in Portland, Smith ended up maintaining this site from exile in San Francisco, where he is not considered a criminal. He has since retired from web duties, but his legacy lives on. Thanks Phil! QUICK OVERVIEW | Marijuanalibrary.org has an estimated value of $ 9,198 USD and receives about 207 pageviews per day. The site has Google Pagerank of 4 and ranked # 1,996,750 in the World based on Alexa traffic ranking. This domain is currently hosted by Bell Canada with IP address of 209.139.194.119 on the server that is located in Canada. Estimated Worth: $ 9,198 USD; Daily Pageviews: 207; Alexa Rank: # 1,996,750; Compete Rank: # N/A; Canada PageRank: 4 ... source - http://webdetail.org/www.marijuanalibrary.org Statistics Summary | There are 3,497,326 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Marijuanalibrary.org, and it is located in the US. The site has been online for at least six years. Alexa Traffic Rank: 2,884,799 Global Rank; Reputation: 157 Sites Linking In ... source - http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/marijuanalibrary.org