The U.S. Cannabis Declaration of Independence ™

A DECLARATION, by and of the Cannabis Supporting and Consuming Citizens of the United States of America, lawfully and virtually ASSEMBLED.

When In The Course Of Human Events it becomes necessary for one class of Citizen to alter or dissolve certain political bands which have connected them with the Union, and to assume among the people of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the selective separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all People are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: — that to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among humanity, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles, and organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments and laws long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that People are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by altering or abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under partial or absolute despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the Cannabis Consuming Citizens of the United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

The history of the present government of the United States is a history of unremitting and repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of a partial or an absolute tyranny over these Citizens of these United States related to the cultivation, the possession, the commerce, the innovation, and the consumption of cannabis and cannabinoids.

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The present government of the United States has refused to assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good freely allowing the cultivation, commerce, possession, innovation, and consumption of cannabis.

The present government of the United States has unlawfully ignored, persecuted, and dissolved lawfully gathered Citizen Assemblies repeatedly and continually for opposing with firmness the invasions on the Rights of the People for their support and consumption of cannabis.

The present government of the United States has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the People remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of suffering and abuse from without, and convulsions within, caused by their support and consumption of cannabis.

The present government of the United States has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States from the free and lawful cultivation, possession, commerce, innovation, and consumption of cannabis.

For that purpose the present government of the United States has erected a multitude of new Offices, administrative and criminal laws, and sent swarms of armed and unarmed Officers to harass our People and eat out of and from their substance, solely due to their support and consumption of cannabis.

The present government of the United States has kept among us armies of armed and unarmed Officers without the consent of our People, for the sole purpose and intent of suppressing and hindering the consumption, cultural advancement of cannabis, and cannabis related commerce, technologies, and innovations.

The present government of the United States has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving assent to its acts of pretended legislation.

For establishing, financing, equipping, authorizing and empowering large bodies of armed and unarmed Officers among us, for the sole purpose and intent of identifying, arresting, prosecuting, convicting, and jailing cannabis supporting and consuming Inhabitants of these States:

For protecting such armed and unarmed Officers, by mock-trial, from punishment for any criminal acts which they commit on cannabis supporting and consuming Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our interstate commerce and trade with other States and with all other parts of the world:

For imposing taxes without our consent for the sole purpose of identifying, suppressing, hindering, harassing, arresting, prosecuting, convicting, and jailing us for alleged and pretend cannabis offenses and crimes:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury for alleged and pretend cannabis offenses and crimes:

For transporting us beyond State lines and National borders to be tried for alleged and pretended cannabis offenses:

For taking away our State charters, abolishing our most valuable State laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our State governments:

For suspending our own State legislatures, and declaring itself invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever related to cannabis.

The present government of the United States has abdicated Government hereby declaring us out of its protection, and waging war against us for our support and consumption of cannabis.

The present government of the United States has figuratively if not literally plundered the seas, ravaged the coasts, burnt the towns, and destroyed the lives of our cannabis supporting and consuming People.

The present government of the United States is, at this time, transporting large armies of armed and unarmed mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of a civilized Nation; against her own Citizens for their support of and consumption of cannabis.

The present government of the United States has constrained our fellow Citizens taken captive by lawful and unlawful arrest, to bear false allegiance against their Country and fellow Citizens, by compelling them to become the spies and informants of and on their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by the government’s hands.

The present government of the United States has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the Inhabitants of our States, treasonable insurrections, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.

The present government of the United States has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the Persons predominately of minority ethnicity who never offended any Person or law except those illegal and illusory prohibiting cannabis consumption, cultural advancement, commerce, technologies, and cannabis related innovations; captivating and carrying them into penal slavery for profit in another State or Nation and at times incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the present government of the United States against her own Citizens. Determined to keep open a market where Persons are bought and sold between government facilitated privately and corporately owned for profit penal systems, the present government of the United States has wholly prostituted itself negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit this execrable commerce largely based upon the incarceration of Citizens for unconstitutional cannabis laws. And that this governmental assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, the government of the United States is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which the government has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom government has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which government urges them to commit against the lives of another.

The present government of the United States has waged cruel war against its cannabis supporting and consuming Citizens, and thereby human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty of the People who never offended any just law, seizing their property and forcibly carrying them into captivity, and in some cases causing or compelling their death.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms:

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to govern a free People.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our non-cannabis supporting or consuming Citizens.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our journey and arrival as cannabis supporting and consuming Citizens.

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connection and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of humanity, targets of cannabis advocacy and education!

We, therefore, the Cannabis Supporting and Consuming Citizens of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in lawful and virtual Assembly, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the Authority of the good Cannabis Supporting and Consuming People of these United States, solemnly publish and declare, that these Cannabis Supporting and Consuming Citizens of these United States are, and are of Right to be, free of the consequences of all United States enacted and established law related to any prohibition of the cultivation, possession, commerce, innovation, and consumption of cannabis; that they are absolved from all allegiance to observe all such unjust and prohibitive laws, and all sanction or punishment for violation of such unjust laws is and ought to be totally and immediately null and void, and that as free and law abiding Citizens of the United States of America have full power to, contract alliances, establish interstate and foreign commerce, and to do all other acts and things which law abiding Citizens may of right do related to cannabis.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Copyright (C) 2018-2020 Charles Ankner. All Rights Reserved.

My family has been "at this" a very long time... ~Charles