In Marijuana: Not Guilty as Charged, Ford definitively examines and debunks each myth about marijuana, presenting facts based on meticulous studies. In a candid and common-sense tone, this book informs readers on the current debate over marijuana's medicinal value, as well as its recreational, creative, and other uses. Testimonials from people with cancer (including the author himself), AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, paraplegia, migraines, and other debilitating conditions offer convincing evidence of marijuana's medical benefits.

With equal candor, the author answers the question: If it is beneficial in so many ways, and dramatically less harmful than alcohol, tobacco, and many pharmaceuticals, all of which are legal, why is cannabis illegal?

He explains how the federal government began a systematic campaign of deception in the 1930's and continues it today. Why were U.S. legislators, professionals, and the public duped into outlawing this relatively harmless plant---along with its versatile, non-intoxicating cousin, hemp? Why was marijuana placed in the same category as heroin: "too dangerous to prescribe by a physician"? Was it to protect multinational corporations from competition by a plant that they cannot patent? From fifty years of research and interviews with hundreds of marijuana users, the author offers compelling arguments why marijuana should never have been illegal. The government is aware that marijuana has never resulted in even one documented toxicity-related death, and is medicine.

In 1995, the voters of California and Arizona saw through the malicious propaganda and approved marijuana for medical purposes. This has fanned the fire of controversy and led the Drug Enforcement Administration to threaten legal action against doctors who recommend marijuana to ease the suffering of the ill and dying.

The book vivid depicts atrocities that have resulted from the war on cannabis, including death at the hands of law enforcement officers, the rape of prison inmates, including mothers, and many other brutal injustices.

From the Author:

Marijuana: Not Guilty as Charged was five years in the writing. I've spent more than 50 years researching this challenging subject.

I'm tremendously proud of the response to this book, which is in hundreds of libraries and thousands of homes. We have received hundreds of emails attesting to its value. When we hear that some 100 million people have used cannabis, we wonder why it has not been legalized. The answer is simple: Not enough of us are getting involved. Take just one example: How many millions would you guess are members of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws? (NORML) A million? Two million? Tragically, the number is a mere 10,800. If adults are ever to use marijuana legally again, those who know its  value must become more active.

In ten thousand years of use there is not one recorded death from the overdose or toxicity of cannabis. Compare that with alcohol, which kills more than 100,000 American's each year. Or with nicotine products that kill more than 400,000 annually. Or with the FDA-approved, so-called "safe drugs" listed in the physicians' Desk Reference, (PDR), which cause the death of another 100,000 each year, and put one million Americans in the hospital annually as a result of toxicity or overdose.

David R. Ford

From the Publisher:

Marijuana: Not Guilty as Charged, is a reference book that has been sought internationally. It presents the history of cannabis all over the world, and exposes the lies that the federal government has told and told, over and over again, for more than sixty years. In the face of overwhelming evidence of marijuana's safety, they continue to charge that it is too dangerous to prescribe for any purpose, and classify it as a Schedule 1 drug, along with with heroin.

In writing this outstanding book, Dave Ford interviewed more than 300 medical and social users of marijuana, but this number represents only his immediate, formal sources. When he was in high school he created and hosted a popular radio show, "Junior Jamboree," where he broadcast live  music -- and spoke honestly with teens about drug and alcohol use. For thirty years he created highly successful programs in Hawaii, many of them for the CBS television network's affiliate there. He interviewed international celebrities, and spoke candidly with many of them about their marijuana use.

If the the young and adult cannabis users he interviewed in these and other periods of are included, the number of his first-hand sources is in the thousands. Dozens of users' stories are included in this easy-to-read book

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