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  Green Grass Of Home 

Posted by FoM on August 09, 1999 at 06:06:52 PT
Mark Holmberg  
Source: Richmond Times Dispatch 

Should we be surprised that Virginia is growing more and more marijuana these days? After all, the Old Dominion had the nation's first marijuana law (1619), which required that every farmer grow it. 
Legendary pot growers included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but that was back when "hemp" was processed into rope, canvas and paper. Folks started smoking it to get high in the United States soon after the turn of the century. An oft-cited history published in the Atlantic Monthly blames Mexicans fleeing the Revolution of 1910, and globetrotting sailors for the "turning on" of America.But for the first half of this century, most dope smokers lurked in the shadows -- poor people, city dwellers, jazz musicians. The nation's first anti-marijuana law is thought to have been born just north of the border, in El Paso, Texas, in 1914. By the time the Depression arrived, marijuana had been cast as the assassin of youth, the zombie-maker, the igniter of countless violent and depraved acts. Well over half the states had banned marijuana by the time the 1936 film "Reefer Madness" tried to scare America weedless. "The granddaddy of all 'Worst' movies," summed up film critic Leonard Maltin. A year later, Richmond had its "first conviction following the first arrest" under the state's new law. Linwood J. Reed was found guilty of possessing "sixteen cigarettes containing marijuana, deadly Mexican smoking weed," according to a Dec. 9, 1937, article in The Richmond News Leader. A federal agent testified that the weed "makes sex fiends out of many of its smokers." Marijuana became a little less menacing in 1944, when a study released by the New York Academy of Science indicated the drug did not cause violence or lead directly to heroin addiction. But the laws continued to tighten here and across the country until a flurry of college-student arrests in the mid- '60s -- and the politics of Vietnam -- shifted the national mood to one of decriminalization. The floodgates opened. In 1967, "Jim" told the University of Virginia newspaper that he sold enough marijuana in one semester to "send me to Nassau for Christmas." In 1968, a Lexington physician probably startled much of the state when he said Virginia's hills were alive with wild marijuana. The same Times-Dispatch article noted that marijuana can be grown "in back yards . . . or in flower boxes." Perhaps Virginia's first big pot-growing case involved a 56-year-old Martinsville man nabbed red-handed while shoving plants from his 10-acre crop into a burlap bag in 1968. And where has it all led? Well, these days, Virginia's pot crop is thought to be worth nearly $200 million each year. Mark Holmberg Monday, August 9, 1999Going To Pot: Weed Making Comebackhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread2213.shtml

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