Craig Lee's Kentucky Hemp Story. Joe Domino

Craig Lee's Kentucky Hemp Story - Joe Domino


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and I were on the same page: blue-collar, anti-war, pro-guns, state-rights, and pro-cannabis. Gatewood convinced me that night at the VFW Lodge to play a greater role within Kentucky’s cannabis legalization movement. Gatewood had fortified my convictions; he made me feel comfortable standing away from the pack. Once I told him I was onboard, Gatewood and I began mapping our strategy. We understood the biggest obstruction blocking cannabis legalization was that the general public didn’t understand the intricacies of the cannabis plant and how cannabis could be grown for various needs.

      It was bad enough most Americans didn’t know where their food came from; therefore, I fretted: why would the average Joe care about the differences between hemp and marijuana? I had serious doubts whether we could rally enough support for the reforms we had in mind. Gatewood never entertained my doubts; he possessed an unwavering determination to make people care. His idealism was against all odds, because, at the time, Google, YouTube, and Facebook were still genies in the bottle. Throughout the 90s, the “powers that be” maintained a tight noose on the flow of information. The vast majority of school books came from only four publishing houses located in New York City. And the New York publishing cabal decided there was no scientific or biological difference between industrial hemp and psychoactive marijuana. With only their self-interest in mind, the big publishers felt no remorse allowing generations of Kentuckian school children to go through life without ever being taught a quip about Kentucky’s rich hemp history.

      Gatewood and I agreed, over Super Bowl chips and salsa, that in order to proliferate Kentucky’s cannabis industry, we had to inform the public on the differences between hemp and marijuana. In order to do so, each plant had to receive its own seafaring ship and captain. Each captain would steer separate courses. It was time to bifurcate the facts and set the record straight. Our plan had hatched: divide and conquer. Craig Lee would push the hemp movement with all he had, and Gatewood would continue carrying the medical cannabis torch. I would focus on hemp’s 25,000 industrial uses while Gatewood would reverberate the benefits of medical cannabis for muscular-dystrophy, PTSD, cancer, and epilepsy.

      By delegating each initiative, we could perform our advocacy efforts with laser focus. And we effectively cross promoted each other’s platforms by holstering each other’s business cards. Mine was clearly labeled Craig Lee, the “Industrial Hemp Expert,” and Gatewood’s card was iconized the “Medical Cannabis Guru.” We branded each end of the Cannabis spectrum with our faces and smiled at the opposition from all sides. It irritated “The Man” that we always had a good time performing our duty. The irony was comical: in order to fight the bureaucracy, we had to create our own! Super Bowl Sunday, in 1994, etched our two-prong approach into stone. With Gatewood in my corner, I never hesitated telling people I was a full-fledge hemp advocate. I knew that if I did my part on the hemp front—Gatewood was executing his part twice as hard.

      When the evening surrendered to time, Gatewood shot me one last bedevilled glance. At this moment, I knew I had hitched myself onboard for the long-haul. I was taking up the good fight against Gatewood’s staple nemesis:

      GG: “The chemical-pharmaceutical-Military-Industrial-trans-national-corporate-elite-SOBs who never said the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America or to the republic to which it stands and they’re not warm and fuzzy about your children, or your grand-children—and they view the constitution and the bill of rights as impediments to the implementation to a new-world order and global economy. And I’m not going down without a fight!”

      Yes Sir!

       Somewhere in the jungle of Vietnam during 1979

       “Beef, beef, beef! Shit on a shingle—I am tired of BEEF!”

      I beckoned my bellicose diatribe as a crowd of dispirited first-class privates looked-on in terror. They’ve never seen insubordination like this before. Just this mornin’ I ran into General So-n-So, and he asked me: “Captain Lee—is everything going all right?”

      The privates quivered when Major Hooks barged in to investigate the “disturbance.” The Major didn’t have to look far. I continued without missing a beat: “I wish I was back there NOW! I would tell the General about this CHOW! This is the fortieth meal I had with BEEF. I’m starting to wonder if we’re only here to feed the BEEF Machine!”

      Meat began spilling from the privates’ spoons in disgust. Major Hooks wasn’t having none of it either. “CAPTAIN LEE—if the General comes in this mess hall—YOU keep your mouth shut—YA HEAR!?”

      Everyone thought I’d come down with jungle fever. We were in the jungles of Vietnam, after all. Nothing was implausible. In truth, I wasn’t tweaking out or anything—quite the opposite. My nerves were as stoic as a hummingbird’s wings: “SIR. With all due respect, if the General walks up to me and asks a direct question,” I said, coolly, “SIR, I will give him a direct answer.” Like walking a tightrope, I knew how to get my point across, “SIR, if the General asks me about the chow—I will tell him about the Chow. SIR.” I persisted, “This chow SUCKS, Sir.”

      Boiling, the Major’s temper spilled over, “If YOU say anything to the General ‘out of the way’—I’ll see that you’re on KP the rest of the time you’re here!”

      I parried, “SIR, you have the right to do that. SIR. And I have the right to address the General if he addresses me. SIR.”

      The privates were trembling. Some trembled in anger and some in fear; they all believed I was sentencing them to KP duty, which is as bad as it sounds. They fumed while ruminating, “What the hell is this man doing!?” They couldn’t comprehend what had gotten into me. What these privates neglected to understand was that I was in full control of the situation. In the military, if one follows the right protocol, then one can stand there and talk anyway he or she pleases—just don’t cuss him. Tell him he’s wrong: “You’re wrong, SIR!”

      * * *

      In complete disclosure, I was ahead of my Army peers when it came to understanding military protocol. I studied the subject while I was at Fort Hood Texas Army Base during my first year in the service. While stationed there, I encountered one ugly Native American from the Blackfoot Tribe. His name was Jim Rose. His story captured me.

      Jim deserted the Army after eighteen months of serving. He went AWOL right before his battalion’s deployment. Jim hated the Army and never regretted his decision to leave. Although Jim felt justified in his actions, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as an outlaw. He decided to turn himself over to the authorities. Equipped with his Army documentation, Jim Rose went to his local sheriff and declared himself a deserter. The sheriff decided to lock-up Jim Rose until he could learn more. After a couple days the sheriff yells to Jim, “The Army doesn’t even know you exist! They have no record of you!”

      How could this be? Jim Rose had served his nation valiantly for eighteen months and possessed all the paperwork to prove it—and no one had any clue who he was? To sort out the fiasco, the Army transported Jim Rose to Fort Hood to face trial. And that’s where I’d meet him. On the base awaiting his trial. I volunteered to be his legal aid. My part-time job was to acquire legal books, on Jim’s behalf, from the Fort Hood Military Library. Interestingly, I learned, by law, every military base must maintain a legal library. I got involved because Jim’s case was unique. The absurdity of it all intrigued me: how could the world’s most powerful and sophisticated military on the planet lose track of one of their own? Then one day, out of the blue, a hysterical Indian comes running down the hallway toward me. My first reaction was, “Is this a jail break!?”

      Panting, Jim sputtered, “LEE, LEE! I’m a FREE MAN!”

      The doggone Blackfoot had done it. He had hit the jackpot too. Not only did Jim never have to go to jail, but he had also flipped the entire system on its head. Because the prosecution had no record of Jim deserting, the courts awarded Jim with an undesirable discharge over the more severe offense, a dishonorable discharge. Furthermore, not only couldn’t the prosecution prove Jim was a deserter,


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