A rational, structured and (hopefully) persuasive argument, constructed and kept brief and balanced with difficulty, due to the strength of the feelings by the author, and the amount convincing of evidence on one side, and the complete lack of it on the other.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, To have some new material,

Or a viable petroleum substitute, Wouldn’t that be swell?

And if innocents were reprieved, and so much suffering relieved

I know I’m some sort of left wing fool, but that’d be nice as well

The materials durable, versatile, comfortable, cheap

The fuel is biological, natural and clean

And those poor sods behind bars for such time?

How could all this be entwined with their crime?

And the pain people suffer through MS, arthritis, asthma and more

Well we all know the remedy,

which, with research, could one day be a cure

Hate to bring this up, keep harping on, as I know the records broken

Legalisation is a crazy dream, as the minority have spoken.

Destroyed by a demonstration of power, by the bloody USA.

And who controls America? Yup it’s the same just now as then

The stars and stripes is in the hands of your friendly petrochemical men

They’d just developed Nylon, and other stuff

That stinks and chokes n creates toxic smokes

For a minimum of human toil

And quality hemp had got a little too cheap,

The cloth it was making a little too sleek

and could have stopped you selling more oil

Oh yes, there were loads of other silly reasons,

c’mon, it’d feel better to confess,

I know once booze was legalised

you needed jobs for the likes of Eliot Ness

And there were all those filthy Mexicans,

whom you couldn’t just lock away

And you were beginning to understand that fear prevents affray.

And then you have solicitors who enhanced the drugs bad name

Case after case after case, again and again and again

Okay, I’m sorry, am I going to fast?

Blaming lawyers without cause?

Alright, well, I’ll explain this in a simple way,

with occasional thoughtful pause

Lets just say I’ve just got done for ABH in the USA in 1935

I kicked a klansman’s head in, sadly he survived,

I’m looking at the chair if they went and threw the book,

And some smarmy lawyer bastard comes up to me

sayin he can get us off the hook,

A plea of diminished responsibility,

Just say I smoked something days before,

Something, which ironically I’d neither seen nor heard of,

let alone tried to score

Of course I’m going to tell the court I was high as a bloody kite

And “of course m’lud, now I see that what I did just wasn’t right.”

I’m not thinking of the headlines “pot menace strikes once more”

I just want an easy sentence, I don’t need a cancer cure

“Oh but cannabis lead to other drugs”

Who’s faults that?…moron

Something’s got to feed the kids

Ain’t you heard that there’s a war on?

Yup, they declared a war on drugs,

and now their standing back

They think we’re much too stoned to counter their attack

But leaders of the free, lets not let it come to that

I know that once a law’s been bankrolled through,

its dreadful hard to repeal it

There’s lobbyists, statutes, republicans,

I know, my friend, I feel it

But Its undemocratic, its unpatriotic,

It slows down the advance of man

And though its proved to be impossible,

you still seem to think you can

I’m not asking for a U-turn

Its almost seventy years too late for that

I’m giving you a chance to right your wrongs

Throw it in my face, then that is that.

For the x imprisoned innocents, its

“I’m sorry I allowed marijuana to continue to be outlawed”

On the blackboard x amount of times,

It’s a small punishment I know,

For your evil heinous crimes,

But it should remind you every time, that Mari Juana is YOUR word

& that hemp was the only word for weed that Congress had ever heard

And every jobsworth copper who enforced this crazy law

And stolen buds or resin,

And I’m not concerned what for,

Whether concern was genuine,

Or you couldn’t be bothered to score

Or if you didn’t like the look of us,

thought “what are they here for”

Well done, you could smell it,

Wow! your nostrils must be great

But stealing peoples ganja,

Then trying to be their mate

Its pathetic, its infuriating,

and makes you look abituva twit

How long did you think

we were gonna stand for that?

You must return it all,

Else snakes make you look low.

What, you’ve smoked it all already?

Well you best get on the grow

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the joy hemp seed could bring,

Better food and drink and paper, plastics, oils and other things

I’ve ignored the simple truth that hemp could turn the deserts into plains

Just as I’ve not mentioned your pet mobsters untaxed gains

There’s so much propaganda which I need to shine straight through

Its hard to be unbiased, when you have this point of view.

For every fact made up, about this sacred plant

I want to see you smoke a bowl, and don’t tell me you can’t

Because, I tell you now,it’s an effing wonder drug

The worst that could be said is that it turns some people into bores

Buddidoubt you need worry bout that,

though you may just realise your flaws

But its never fucking killed no one, unlike your shitty laws.