Can You Tell Me – What Happened?
Professional opinion letter sourced online
- Anonymous
So, with all these uses and benefits, why is cannabis cultivation illegal in the United States
today? Here is a brief history of cannabis prohibition:
Hemp was a primary source of paper, textile, and cordage fiber for thousands of years
until just after the turn of the 20th century. It was at this time that companies like DuPont
first developed chemicals that enabled trees to be processed into paper.
DuPont’s chemicals made wood pulp paper cheaper than paper made from annual crops
like hemp. At the same time Wm. Randolph Hearst, the owner of the largest newspaper
chain in the United States, backed by Mellon Bank, invested significant capital in
timberland and wood paper mills to produce his newsprint using DuPont’s chemicals.
DuPont also developed nylon fiber as a direct competitor to hemp in the textile and
cordage industries. Nylon was even billed as synthetic hemp.
DuPont was also manufacturing chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers useful in
the cotton industry, another hemp competitor.
Mellon Bank, owned by U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, was also DuPont’s
primary financier. Mellon’s niece was married to Harry Anslinger, deputy commissioner of
the federal government’s alcohol prohibition campaign. After the repeal of Prohibition,
Anslinger and his entire federal bureau were out of a job. But Treasurer Mellon didn’t let
that happen. Andrew Mellon single-handedly created a new government bureaucracy, the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, to keep his family and friends employed. And then he
unapologetically appointed his own niece’s husband, Harry Anslinger, as head of the new
multimillion dollar bureaucracy.
At the same time, a machine was developed that was to hemp what the cotton gin was to
cotton: it allowed hemp’s long, tough fiber to be mass processed efficiently and
economically for the first time. Popular Mechanics, in February 1937, predicted hemp
would be the world’s first “Billion Dollar Crop” that would support thousands of jobs and
provide a vast array of consumer products from dynamite to plastics.
This potential rejuvenation of hemp was a major threat to Secretary Mellon’s friends and
business associates, especially Randolph Hearst with his wood paper industry and
Lammont DuPont with his petrochemical and synthetic fiber conglomerates. After all,
hemp farmers wouldn’t need DuPont’s chemicals to grow their hemp because the crop is
self-sufficient. The hemp-based ethanol fuel that was mentioned in the Popular Mechanics’
article probably didn’t sit too well with the oil companies of the time. They also couldn’t
have been too thrilled to learn that this same plant produced high-strength plastics
without a petroleum base. The hemp-based plastics developed at the time were stronger
and lighter than steel, which we can imagine wasn’t the best news for the steel industry.
In addition, the growing pharmaceutical companies were producing synthetic drugs to
replace natural medicines. Hemp extract was used for thousands of years to effectively
treat everything from epileptic fits to rheumatoid arthritis. Chances are, hemp’s
resurgence wasn’t good news for these drug companies either.
What we see is that the potential revival of the hemp industry was a threat to almost all
the corporate giants of the time, and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was at the top of
this food chain.
So Commissioner Anslinger, Mellon’s appointee, begins researching rumors that
immigrants from Mexico are smoking the flowers of the hemp plant. Racism was rampant
at the time, and there was a government movement to curb the number of immigrants
crossing the U.S. border at Mexico. Anslinger plugged into the racist sentiment, and
began referring to the “hemp” that Americans knew cannabis to be, as “marijuana,” the
Mexican slang word for the plant. He labeled it as a “narcotic” even though cannabis
flowers cannot cause narcosis, and spread exaggerated stories and outright lies that
Mexicans and blacks became violent and disrespectful to whites when they smoked the
“evil menace marijuana.”
This slander of cannabis was all just fine for Anslinger’s friends, the Mellons, the DuPonts,
and the Hearsts. In fact, Hearst’s newspapers picked up on the propaganda and fueled
the fire by publishing hundreds of lurid stories about people raping and murdering while
under the influence of marijuana. The sensationalism sold lots of newspapers, and the
people of the country actually based their opinions on this one-sided information. Of
course the stories never mentioned the hemp that people used everyday as rope, paper,
medicine, and more. The stories always referred to cannabis by the Mexican slang word,
marijuana.
With the moral and prohibitive fervor of the time duly stirred, Anslinger took his show to
Congress. At the proceedings of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, Anslinger didn’t mention
that marijuana was hemp. And because anti-marijuana propaganda didn’t mention that
basic fact, hemp industries found out almost too late about the effort to criminalize
cannabis cultivation. Testimony was heard from the full gamut of hemp companies and
advocates, from birdseed suppliers to cordage manufacturers, from farmers to physicians,
all touting hemp’s importance in American history and the many industrial, agricultural,
medicinal, and economic benefits of cannabis. Only after their testimony, was the wording
of the bill changed to allow for the continued legal cultivation of industrial hemp. Anslinger
even backed off on hemp prohibition in a very cunning maneuver.
After the Act was passed, Anslinger single-handedly usurped congressional power by
mandating hemp prohibition. He justified his action by saying that his agents couldn’t tell
the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana in the field, so hemp cultivation
made enforcement of marijuana prohibition impossible. This unconstitutional usurpation of
congressional law is still in effect today as the Department of Justice and the DEA still
cling to Anslinger’s unjust and unjustifiable prohibition on domestic hemp cultivation.
Hemp for victory
With the United States entering World War II only four years after hemp’s prohibition, and
the synthetic fiber industry still in its infancy, the armed forces experienced a dangerous
shortage of fiber for the war effort. In 1942, the U.S. government performed a convenient
about-face on the hemp issue. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
produced and distributed a motion picture called “Hemp for Victory” in which the federal
government not only promoted the many uses of cannabis hemp, but also detailed the
most efficient cultivation and harvesting methods. The picture pronounced, “Hemp for
mooring ships! Hemp for tackle and gear! Thread for shoes for millions of American
soldiers! And parachute webbing for our paratroopers! Hemp for Victory!”
By the end of the war, hemp was no longer needed for strategic purposes and synthetic
fiber was being produced more efficiently and abundantly than ever. The same soldiers
that hemp had supplied with ship’s rigging, rope, tackle, gear, shoes, and parachutes turn
against their recent ally. The Marines themselves, armed with flame-throwers, and Air
Force pilots in crop dusters are ordered to destroy the same million acres of hemp that
were recently planted for the war effort. These actions were the beginning of the modern
war on hemp.
Government Secrets
