Friday Fun: DEA Raids Thomas Jefferson's Opium Stash

It's amazing how some political elements try to paint the founding fathers as puritanical God-fearing goody-two-shoes. Nothing could be farther than the truth. Washington detested organized religion. Franklin, my favorite, was a womanizing nudist that loved to drink Beer. And Thomas Jefferson had an Opium stash.
Yes, that's right. Opuim poppies don't just grow in Laos or Afghanistan, they can grow right in your backyard too.
This article in "Alternet" is titled "How The DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden From Memory".
Here's a snip:

"Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson's famous estate.
Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson's crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison."
(snip)
"Prosecutions for crimes involving opium or opium poppies are rare. But that has less to do with the frequency of poppy crimes and everything to do with suppressing information about the opium poppy. A public trial might inadvertently publicize forbidden information at odds with the common spin about poppies and opium. This might pique interest in the taboo subject and, worse, undermine faith in the government."

(D.R.)********
Let me clearly state that naturally occuring substances are rarely physically addicting; the opium poppy, marijuana leaf, psychoactive mushroom, the coca leaf.
In their natural state, they are medicinal, spiritual, and enhance creativity. Studies of primitive man suggest natural drugs found in plants and fungus changed primitive minds and that became the dawn of art and music.
--A bite of the Apple, Eve?
But Pharmaceutical corporations want to synthesize these chemicals and put them in pills and charge your overpriced and underperforming insurance corporation lots of money so you take those pills every day.
Perhaps it took the collapse of the mythical free-market with last years "Great Bank Robbery" to turn the tide on simple marijuana possession. I believe seventeen states have legal medical marijuana right now, with bankrupt California leading the way to legalization and taxation of the largest agricultural industry in the state.
We'll see...