Friday, June 7, 2013

jack herer [ the emperor wears no clothes ]


Jack Herer was an author and cannabis activist whose 1985 book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana, inspired the modern marijuana legalization movement. The title of the book is a reference to the classic fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, and Herer used Andersen's story as an allegory for the government’s position of official misrepresentation and prohibition of cannabis. In 1973, the year I was born jack also published GRASS…. A self-described “normal American nerd” and veteran of the Korean War, Herer was born in New York City and raised in Buffalo, NY. After his stint in the Army, he worked as a sign painter before moving to Los Angeles with his first wife and children in early 60’s. Herer would marry four times and father six children. “I was 30 years old and this girl I knew found out I had never gotten high,” Herer recalled about his first experience with cannabis. “Nobody had ever told me about marijuana. She tried three times to get me high. Finally, it worked, and I had the most incredible sex I'd ever had.” Before long, Herer left the sign business, divorced and opened a head shop on Venice Beach, California. It was around this time that he met another head shop owner and a longtime marijuana advocate, Edwin M. Adair III, better known as “Captain Ed.” Kindred spirits, the men pledged to campaign for the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana. Following the advice of his friend, Herer also began archiving information about the history of cannabis, its chemical properties, and its numerous medical, industrial and agricultural applications. That was in 1973. However, it wasn’t until Herer served 14 days in prison in 1981, after he’d been arrested for trespassing on federal property while collecting signatures for a California ballot initiative, that he began writing "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" while behind bars. After his release, Herer moved to Portland, Oregon, where he opened another head shop and finished his manuscript. While Herer printed the book, fittingly, on hemp paper, it is also available to read free, online. To date, there have been 16 print editions and over 600,000 copies sold. A bestseller in Germany – Deutschlanders know their beer and their bud, evidently – the book has been translated into a dozen different languages. Here in America, it helped galvanize the early legalization and decriminalization movement, and firmly established Jack Herer as the father, or “Hemperor” of the cause. For nearly 40 years, Herer crisscrossed the country, logging hundreds of thousands of miles while campaigning to restore the hemp plant to heart and soil of American agriculture. He envisioned the widespread acceptance and use of cannabis as having no less than global repercussions. “Growing hemp as nature designed it is vital to our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure the survival of our planet,” Herer once commented, pointing out that hemp, or its derivatives, can be used to produce paper, fiber, food and fuel. In 2000, at a hemp festival near Eugene, Oregon, Herer suffered a stroke. After a prolonged and difficult recovery, his health had improved in recent years to the point where he resumed his busy speaking schedule. Unsurprisingly, Herer partly attributed his recovery to daily use of highly concentrated marijuana oil. Herer then suffered a heart attack after speaking on stage at the Portland Hempstalk Festival. He passed away on April 15, 2010 in Eugene, while in the beloved presence of his wife Jeannie, whom he had married in September the year previously. Jack Herer was 70 years old……..I have met Jack thrice in life and once in Amsterdam….  On Venice Beach in California- we passed around a huge spliff that Jack rolled, this is way back when Jack was healthy and vibrant as hell…. On the corner of 21st Ave and Irving in the Nob Hill neighborhood of Portland, Oregon- a man was standing out front of the eco-swanky Tribeca eatery trying to get people to sign his petition to legalize medical marijuana in Oregon State, this man looked vaguely familiar, upon further inquiry it was none other than Jack Herer, smoking a joint right out front, I invited him and his guests(two oregon state representatives) in for dinner, we later smoked several bowls of organic oregon kush for dessert…. Once in Hendersonville, NC- Jack and a couple of NC State Representatives stayed at the Inn that I was running and ate big Italian countryside cuisine and strategized about how they would legalize in NC, the next day I was able to spend the entire day with Jack smoking some of NC’s best reefer, this was post stroke and it was hard to see Jack in this state, he was in ruff shape and several months later we lost him…. Now in Amsterdam it was a different story jack was full of life and celebrating the fact that the Jack Herer strain was winning a huge amount of attention in the cannabis world…