157
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
suffered back then could have been from some
injuries I've had, and that's what contributed to
these muscle spasms.
In any respect, the medical marijuana
helps the muscle spasms, helps the low-back pain,
and I think it's a very good antidepressant for me
over pharmaceutical medications. They have not
worked in the past on me. I did try other
resources first, and they just didn't work. They
either had side effects that just made it just
unacceptable even for the benefit I might have
gotten or they just didn't work.
And I just think it should be between
a patient and their doctor if medical marijuana is
right for them. It shouldn't be a matter of law
enforcement, and obviously, there is a lot of
personal use of marijuana out there, and I don't
want to address that at this point, but I believe a
lot of people that are personal use users don't
realize they're medical users until they quit. And
when they quit for a job, for instance, so they can
pass the urine test or whatever reason, then that's
when they find out, "Wow, I felt better when I
smoked."
And that's when I started getting
158
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
raging migraines, when we were on probation, and I
couldn't smoke. And so I think it's a good thing
to allow -- to allow it to help people with their
suffering, and it shouldn't just have to be people
that are terminally ill. I can definitely
understand that part, but why should you have to be
dying and still have to just suffer and be in pain
when there's something available that would help
your pain?
And I don't know about anything else
to really say about it, but I think it should
happen. And I believe it will someday soon maybe.
Maybe sooner. That was always my -- my goal that
it would be public and I didn't have to break the
law or feel like a criminal because I use something
that is good for a medicine.
(Short recess.)
JOHN McCORMICK: All right.
I'm John
McCormick. I was -- I am a student here at the
University of Iowa. I wasn't planning on doing a
presentation today. I was here actually to take
pictures of other speakers but got here a little
late for people-taking pictures.
159
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Last semester and also during the
sumemrtime, I had a class for art history and got
on a topic with the teacher about different
posters, movie posters. I'm a cinema student and
comparative literature student and how art -- or
movie posters are pretty influential and are art
pieces within themselves.
And to go along with this. I got
interested in this subject off of there's kind of a
cult film called Reefer Madness that's an old --
and I'll get to the movie poster -- old 1936 movie
about how -- it was a government-run movie on how
it's very bad for people to smoke marijuana and
that smoking marijuana would lead you to kill
people.
And through that, through a couple of
years after that, there was similar movies that
came out to kind of dissuade people from -- from
using and smoking that.
So what I'm trying to show is just a
little bit of history behind it and kind of
where -- where a lot of the influences came from
because at that time when you had a movie from the
government that was a big influential thing -- and
we'll get to that. The government actually played
160
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
both sides of this.
So Art of Prohibition. So one of the
first ones that came out, and like I said, I just
made this -- this slide show right now because I
lost the original one beforehand. But this is --
this is one of the first ones.
In 1936, Marihuana One, and you can
see how they're injecting marijuana, which is not
even true. Peole don't inject marijuana. But
they saw, like, needles are kind of scary to
people. I don't like needles personally. And --
and how it has, you know, "Misery. Weird orgies,
wild parties, unleashed passions, crazy things."
And what this is trying to show is
things from the jazz era. One of the big
influences that people saw is that a lot of jazz
musicians used marijuana while playing. There's
quotes from John Coltrane saying that, you know --
you know, "Marijuana makes music sound good,"
things like that, so they all did that. This was a
way to kind of go against that. It's that showing
that these weird orgies and wild parties were evil.
So it says "Weeds with roots in hell." And so
that's one of the first ones that came out, and
we'll keep on moving on because I know I'm on a
161
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
time limit here.
So this is the one that became a cult
classic, Reefer Madness. And you can kind of read
the different things from it. You know, "Women cry
for it. Men die for it," things like that. And
within the movie, a kid, a high school kid, begins
to smoke marijuana cigarettes with an older kid
that brings him to these parties. Eventually he
starts smoking so many of these that he goes crazy,
steals a car, and crashes.
The older guy in the film, which is
these pictures right there, eventually goes crazy
playing the -- or listening to piano, and when a
guy comes in, he shoots and kills him. And then it
says -- it has some tropes of a guy talking to --
from the government saying "This is, you know,
very, very bad for you, and you know, it will lead
you to your death."
Another one, I actually haven't got a
chance to watch this. They're not very many copies
left of it but Assassin of Youth, so again, same
type of idea going through it.
Another thing that you keep on seeing
recurring happening is marijuana is spelled wrong,
and one of the big reasons for this, another reason
162
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
if you want to kind of bring in the -- the race
aspect to it is that another resason why it was
originally made illegal was that people from
Mexico, workers from Mexico, used marijuana as kind
of, like, after their day of work, they used to
smoke it.
Back then, you know, a lot of people
that made these posters did not have a grasp of
Spanish and marijuana spelled with an H instead
of a J because J in Spanish has an H sound.
Now, this is another one. This is --
I like this poster because I think it's pretty
funny. Devil's Harvest, you know, again, the smoke
of hell debauchery. You can see all these
different things that are going around it, saying
all this.
And that's in 1942, so we're getting
into World War II, and then all of a sudden, they
do a 180 on it, and a lot of those were not
actually from the government. The ones -- there's
only one or two that are actually -- that it was
movies that I just showed were -- were influenced a
lot by Harry Anslinger, and he got a lot of the
money from that.
163
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Ann Hearst who bought up a lot of
stuff -- of -- sorry -- woodlands in the Northwest
in order to make pulp mills.
Now, in 1943, Hemp for Victory came
out, and this is during World War II where we
needed hemp for rope. Hemp is one of the best
materials that you can -- that you can make.
The only other, I think, natural fiber
that has a higher tensile strength, I think, is
flax. Flax is a little bit harder to grow. So
hemp has over 1,500 different products, and those
products are going up exponentially as the years go
on.
Right now currently United States is
the only industrial country that does not grow
their own hemp, so we have to import it all.
My dad is actually a farmer -- or
sorry. Not a farmer -- but he's been involved in
it his whole life, and he's -- he's a seed corn
dealer and works with farmers for, you know, his
whole entire life.
One of the key issues -- and it's kind
of funny in Iowa we don't bring up the hemp issue
even though North Dakota and Minnesota have -- that
we don't use it as a third rotation crop because
164
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
you can grow it up to three times a year -- or at
least in our region we can only grow it three times
a year, roughly, or maybe two.
And again, hemp got rolled into
marijuana even though you can't get high from --
from hemp. It has a lower -- I think it's .002
level of THC, which that means you would have to
smoke about the state of Iowa in order to get high
off of it.
This continued on, and this is kind of
the end of my presentation because I made it right
now, but this continued on with a little bit more
of the movies became more intrigued. Culture
around this era started to become a little more
wanting to -- what was going on there? So bigger
movies came out that kind of dealt with that.
So Days of Sin and Nights of
Nymphomania, you know, kind of give the idea what
are these crazy parties that you hear all about?
And actually a change in attitude towards marijuana
started to begin around -- around this era.
And you saw a lot of swinger parties
pop up and people just trying it, and that's when
the shift of it becoming kind of like an
underground type of thing into the mainstream.
165
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
So -- and then after this, you get
ones that have mixed messages of -- of the use and
on from there, like, famously, Easy Rider and
things like that so -- and that's what I have on
the fly, so thank you.
CARL OLSEN: You ain't getting the
good stuff. I hate when that happens.
JOHN McCORMICK: Yeah.
Does anybody
have any questions? Yeah. I came across a lot of
stuff while researching the -- the art of the --
and went into production of the films so --
(Public Meeting concluded at 6:50 p.m.)
166
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
C E R T I F I C A T E
I, SueAnn Jones, Certified Shorthand
Reporter and Notrary Public in and for the State of
Iowa, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a
true and accurate computer-aided transcription of
the public meeting as taken stenographically by and
before me at the time and place indicated on the
title page;
That I am neither a relative nor employee
nor attorney nor counsel of the parties to
this action, and that I am not financially
interested in the action.
Dated this 22nd day of October, 2009.
__________________________________
SUEANN JONES, CSR, RPR