Bob Marley

Kaya, the name of one of Bob Marley's reggae albums is a Jamaican word for cannabis, hemp, marijuana. The backcover of this album shows a picture of a burning joint (by Neville Garrick). The Japanese edition of Kaya was released with a different backcover, so rabid was the anti-marijuana paranoia there.

Bob Marley has always defended this often maligned herb. He equated condemnation of this natural herb with blasphemy. How could a plant created by God be made illegal by humans? "You mean they can tell God that it's not legal?" he once asked a Canadian journalist. If growing cannabis is to be a crime then by man's laws God who made all plants was a criminal too. Bob was not surprized that people who smoke the weed were persecuted by "Babylon", the ruling system, reminding people: "Them crucify Christ, remember?"

One of Marley's greatest hits, "I Shot the Sheriff" (which was made popular by Eric Clapton), describes the fate of a marijuana grower hunted by a fanatical law enforcement officer:

Sheriff John Brown always hate I,
for what, I never know.
Everytime I plant a seed,
he said, kill it before it grow.
He said, kill them before they grow.

Few people know that the cancer that lead to Marley's death was a brain tumor that started out on his foot. It was first noticed when a football (soccer) injury refused to heal. Bob was playing football for hours a day. Maybe we should ban soccer? ;-) For religious reasons Bob refused to have his toe amputated and the cancer spread to other parts of his body. It is amazing that at his young age he survived more than two years with his cancer. It might have been because of his strict diet, the unorthodox medical treatment he received by Dr. Issel in Bavaria, or it might have been the cancer reducing effects of THC, the main active substance in marijuana (see a US government study that showed fewer cancers in THC-treated animals).