JEMM: Hello we are here with Richard and Brenda from the Hemp Museum and we are going to see what’s up with the Hemp Museum and what their plans are and what their past, future and present is and what they’re feeling like today. So, Richard how are you today?

RICHARD: I’m fi ne thank you very much and it’s great to be here today.

JEMM: When did you start the Hemp Museum?

RICHARD: The Hemp Museum started about 1990 the army moved into the Kings Ranch and during that time there was a big demonstration and we moved out of the hills and into the Kings Ranch for the demonstration and I picked up a copy of Jacks book afterwards, one of the things we had in common was a hemp movement so, that was the start of it. I’ve been growing for almost 20 years in Mendocino County JEMM: What’s the Kings Ranch?

RICHARD: It’s a national park where people were growing; it got raided by the army.

JEMM: What year was that?

RICHARD: 1990 or 1991, so that actually led to the start of the museum. I’ve been an activist before I entered congress in 1986 as a pot grower. I got to go to candidates’ nights and debates with sheriffs and the D.A. JEMM: So then you started collecting stuff related to Hemp?

RICHARD: Well I was growing so I had hemp but I didn’t really realize the extent of the hemp part of marijuana cause I had been growing for smoke. And here I had this resource that I learned about so I started chopping it up and learned how to make paper and press boards working in my backyard and made varnish and all kings of things plastics and experimenting to start a museum. The fi rst place I went was the Hall of Flowers and they had the Hemp Expo in 1990 JEMM: Where was that?

RICHARD: Golden Gate Park. I took big hemp stocks down there. It was the fi rst expo that I had heard about.

JEMM: So then you started collecting more hemp?

RICHARD: Every place I went I started collecting and kept collecting and ive collected to the present day and I have a huge collection of hemp related things from all over the world.

JEMM: Do you travel around the world to fi nd this stuff?

RICHARD: I get other people to travel, I don’t have fi nances to travel around the world but I do collect things so they come to me in various ways a lot of antique stores, a lot of fl ea markets just picking up things like sailing ships, there’s a lot of history people have been sailing the oceans and lakes for many years and here hemp was involved from the get go.

Hemp ropes and sails, cloth, fl ags and banners and uniforms and all kinds of things on the sailing ships. Not to mention homespun which was used around the world and the history of paper is hemp history. The fi rst paper used was hemp the fi rst printing was done on hemp paper in china. China kept it a secret for 500 years.

JEMM: So if we went to China and searched hard enough we could fi nd a lot of old hemp stuff?

RICHARD: Oh yeah. And new hemp stuff they still grow it. They are a part of the world where hemp was never outlawed.

JEMM: So it’s still not outlawed there?

RICHARD: Absolutely not. I have a board that I just put in the museum with 99 different varieties and blends of hemp that came from china. So they’re going wild with this stuff.

JEMM: What about other places like Amsterdam?

RICHARD: Europe is getting into the mold because Europe has the alliance cannabis also for hemp purposes. Amsterdam has sort of legalized marijuana right, the sale of it.

And a lot of European countries are following suite and trying to decriminalize and all that that. The hemp thing has been subsidized so they’re growing hemp. England has been growing hemp for paper for 10 years they’ve never stopped growing it for paper and for rolling paper and all that.

JEMM: I guess in Italy its legal to grow it?

RICHARD: Yeah. And it was always semi legal to grow it there because I always allowed of little of it to be done but now their back in subsidizing it because they’re back in the European community. There are no trees left in Europe for paper so they had to do something.

That’s one part of the equation but the Germans are making plastics, the rest of the world is leaving us behind. Because we call everything marijuana in the United States and when you call it marijuana you cant grow it.

We can import anything but we cant grow it so were stuck there. Were hoping that Mr. Obama the president will get on board and learn about hemp and change the attitudes.

The west coast leads said that in 5 minutes he could change the whole thing just with a couple signatures telling the attorney general to back off. We in California broke the prohibition with prop 215 that was the end of prohibition because we now have a right to grow and obtain and use marijuana for any of the purposes in which it provides relief. And you being in this medical marijuana magazine here, I was in court challenging the SB 420 laws that they put in. This is unconstitutional and no one gets it yet but they did in the plant because their not the same as the initiative so that’s the whole law it changed the initiative. The initiative is a system where the people make the law and the government cant touch it. That’s the whole idea behind it. The government set up a whole system of eleven page laws about changing the peoples initiative to their own rules and regulations any of that clarifi cations all that are amendments and they have to be said back to the people for a vote and they never where this is just blatantly unconstitutional. And here were trying to operate on SB 420 when we know its unconstitutional because I challenged them and I went there.

JEMM: But they did get rid of it didn’t they?

RICHARD: Yeah the laws are a mess here and were back with prop 215 and counting on the government to set up a distribution system for all the people. They should follow the constitution. Laws on marijuana have to be uniformly carried out throughout the state that’s in the constitution. So they gave it to the counties. Which is again unconstitutional.There is a lot of legal action that need to be done to straighten out the whole mess of marijuana laws.

JEMM: So what do you think about NORML and ASA and groups like that?

RICHARD: They don’t get it about the constitution for one thing. No body told them probably that it was unconstitutional for them to go along with this and I don’t know where the lawyers where but there aren’t many constitutional lawyers in the hemp movement and they don’t want to push that. They want these little bits and pieces along the way. We want it legalized all the way. This is a mistake. In California weHave the strongest rights of anyone in the world as far as I'm concerned. We have inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, privacy so these are incredibly strong there is no national privacy right but in California we have one. As for the right to happiness how can you tell me that I cant smoke something that makes me happy you have to ask me if you can outlaw it. We are in good shape in California and we just need good lawyers to send this information to every case to the Supreme Court till they get it right.

JEMM: And part of the Hemp Museum is to raise awareness?