I am not suggesting a world with no codes of behaviour and no agreements; I am suggesting that your agreements and codes be based on a higher understanding and a grander definition of self interest. What most laws actually do say is what the most powerful among you have as their vested interest.

Let’s just look at one example: Smoking. Now the law says you cannot grow and use a certain kind of plant – Hemp, because so government tells you, it is not good for you. Yet the same government says it is alright to grow and use another kind of plant – Tobacco. Not because it is good for you, indeed the government itself says it is bad, but presumably because you’ve always done so.

The real reason that the first plant is outlawed and the second is not, has nothing to do with health; it has to do with economics and that is to say – Power! Your laws therefore, do not reflect what your society thinks of itself and wishes to be, your laws reflect where the power is. The reason the first weed is outlawed is only ostensibly about health. The truth is, the first weed is no more addictive and no more a health risk than cigarettes or alcohol, both of which are protected by the law. Why is it then, not allowed? Because, if it were grown, half the cotton growers, nylon and rayon manufacturers and timber products people in the world would go out of business.

Hemp happens to be one of the most useful, strongest, toughest, longest-lasting materials on your planet. You cannot produce a better fibre for clothes, a stronger substance for ropes an easier to grow and harvest source for pulp.

You cut down hundreds of thousands of trees per year to give yourself Sunday papers, so that you can read about the decimation of the world’s forests. Hemp could provide you with millions of Sunday papers without cutting down one tree. Indeed, it could substitute for so many resource materials at one tenth the cost and that is the catch; somebody loses money if this miraculous plant which also has extraordinary medicinal properties incidentally, is allowed to be grown and that is why marijuana is illegal in your country.