The "Marihuana" Trick: A Brief History of the Federal Campaign to Destroy Hemp
by Doug Yurchey
Part II
(Part I here)
The campaign against hemp begins. In the 1930s, innovations in farm machinery would have caused an industrial revolution when applied to hemp. This single resource could have created millions of new jobs generating thousands of quality products. Hemp, if not made illegal, would have brought American out of the Great Depression.
William Randolph Hearst (Citizen Kane) and the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division of Kimberly Clark owned vast acreage of timberlands. The Hearst Company supplied most paper products. Patty Hearst's grandfather, a destroyer of nature for his own personal profit, stood to lose billions because of hemp.
In 1937, Dupont patented the processes to make plastics from oil and coal. Dupont's annual report that year urged stockholders to invest in its new petrochemical division. Synthetics such as plastics, cellophane, celluloid, methanol, nylon, rayon, Dacron, etc. could now be made from oil. Natural hemp industrialization would have ruined over 80 percent of Dupont's business.
Politics and special interests. Andrew Mellon became Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury and Dupont's primary investor. He appointed his future nephew-in-law Harry J. Anslinger to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Secret meetings were hald by these financial tycoons. Hemp was declared dangerous and a threat to their billion dollar enterprises. For their dynasties to remain intact, hemp had to go. These men took an obscure Mexican slang word "marihuana" and pushed it into the consciousness of America.
Media manipulation. A media blitz to poison the public mind against the use of hemp while renaming it marihuana raged in the late 1920s and 1930s. Hearst's newspapers ran stories enphasizing the horrors of marihuana. The menace of marihuana made headlines. Readers learned that it was responsible for everything from car accidents to loose morality.
Films like "Reefer Madness" (1936), "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth" (1935), and "Marihuana: The Devil's Weed" (1936) were propaganda pieces designed by these industrialists to gain public support for the passage of anti-marihuana laws.
Reefer Madness, the best known of the three films, characterized marihuana as "a violent narcotic" that compelled people to commit "acts of shocking violence," caused "incurable insanity" and had "soul-destroying effects." The film even depicts a man who, while under the influence of the marihuana, "killed his entire family with an axe" and explained that "the menace of marihuana" is "more viscious, more deadly even that these soul-destroying drugs (heroin, cocaine)!"
Reefer Madness did not end with the usual "The End." The film concluded with these words plastered on the screen: "TELL YOUR CHILDREN."
In the 1930s, people were very naive; even to the point of ignorance. The masses were like sheep waiting to be led by the few in power. They did not challenge authority. If the news were in print or on the radio, they believed it had to be true. They told their children and their children grew up to be parents of the baby boomers.
On April 14, 1937, the Prohibitive Marihuana Tax Law, the bill that outlawed hemp, was directly brought to the House Ways and Means Committee. This committee is the only one that can introduce a bill to the House floor without it being debated by other committees. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Robert Doughton, was a Dupont supporter. He insured that the bill would be passed by Congress.
Dr. James Woodward, a physician and attorney, testified too late on behalf of the American Medical Association (AMA). He told the committee that the reason the AMA had not publicly opposed the Marihuana Tax Law sooner was that the association had just discovered that marihuana was/is hemp.
Few people, at the time, realized that the deadly menace they had been reading about on Hearst's front pages was in fact passive hemp. The AMA understood hemp to be a MEDICINE found in numerous healing products sold over the last hundred years.
In September, 1937, hemp became illegal. The most useful crop known to man becaem a drug and our planet has been suffering ever since.
Congress banned hemp because it was said to be the most violence-causing drug known. Anslinger, head of the Drug Commission for 31 years, promoted the idea that marihuana made users act extremely violent. In the 1950s, when America was preparing to fight the communist threat, Anslinger claimed the exact opposite: marijuana will pacify you so much that soldiers would not want to fight.
Today our planet is in desperate trouble. Earth is suffocating as large tracts of rain forests disappear. Pollution, poisons and chemicals are killing people. These great problems could be reversed if we industrialized hemp. Natural biomass could provide all of the planet's energy needs that are currently supplied by products made from crude oil. Hemp could be the solution to soaring gas prices and petrochemical pollution.
The wonder plant. Hemp has a higher quality fiber than wood fiber. For fewer caustic chemicals are required to make paper from hemp than from trees. Hemp paper does not turn yellow and is very durable. The plant grows quickly to maturity in a season where trees take decades.
All plastics should be made from hemp oil. Hempen plastics are biodegradable. Over time, they would break down and not harm the environment. Oil-based plastics, the ones we are very familiar with, help ruin nature; they do not break down and are causing great harm. The process to produce the vast array of natural (hempen) plastics will not ruin the rivers as Dupont and other petrochemical companies have done. Ecology does not fit in with the plans of the oil industry and the political machine. Hemp products are safe and natural.
Medicines should be made from hemp. We should go back to the days when the AMA supported hemp cures. "Medical marihuana" is given out legally to only a handful of people while the rest of us are forced into a system that relies on chemicals. Hemp is only healthy for the human body.
World hunger could end. A large variety of food products can be generated from hemp. The seeds contain one of the highest sources of protein in nature. ALSO: They ahve two essential fatty acids that clean your body of excess cholestrol. These essential fatty acids are not found anywhere else in nature! Consuming hemp seeds is the best thing you could do for your body. Eat uncooked hemp seeds.
Clothes should be made from hemp. Hemp clothing is extremely strong and durable over time. You could hand clothing, made from hemp, down to your grandchildren. Today, there are American companies that make hemp clothing; usually 50 percent hemp. Hemp fabrics should be everywhere. Instead, they are almost underground. Superior hemp products are not allowed to advertise on fascist television. Kentucky, once the top hemp producing state, made it illegal to wear hemp clothing. Can you imagine being thrown in jail for wearing quality jeans?
The world is crazy...but that does not mean you have to join the insanity. Get together. Spread the news. Tell people, and that includes your children, the truth. Use hemp products. Eliminate the word "marihuana." Realize the history that created it. Make it politically incorrect to say or print the M-word. Hemp must be utilized in the future. We need a clean energy source to save our planet.
The brainwashing continues. Now, the commercials say: If you buy a joint, you contribute to murders and gang wars. The latest anti-hemp commercials say: If you buy a joint...you are supporting TERRORISM! The new enemy (terrorism) has paved the road to brainwash you any way THEY see fit.
There is only one enemy; the friendly people you pay your taxes to; the war-makers and nature destroyers. With your funding, they are killing the world right in front of your eyes. Half a million deaths each year are caused by tobacco; half a million deaths each year are caused by alcohol (and nearly a million people each year die from pharmaceutical drugs).
Ingensting THC, hemp's active agent, has a positive effect; relieving asthma and glaucoma. Hemp tends to allieviate the nausea caused by chemotherapy, causing people's appetites to return so they can take on nutrients and being feeling better so the healing process can begin.
There is physical evidence that hemp is not like any other plant on this planet. One could conclude that it was brought here for the benefit of humanity.
Hemp is illegal because billionaires want to remain billionaires.
End of part II.
