Hemp — The Super Weed — Part II

by Willi Glenn

See Part I

Greed, Racism and Lies

HOUSTON, TX--As the dark side coalesced into a solid front to maintain their oil and its by-product monopolies, they must have experienced personal tingles for their ability to kill several birds with one stone. Hearst had not forgiven Pancho Villa and the citizens of Mexico for fighting back against his intended deforestation of their country. His hatred of Mexicans spilled over to other minorities, so when he saw financial advantages in vilifying Mexicans, Negroes and other dark skinned folks, he attacked with the virulence of a deadly scorpion.
  
     Hearst had the reputation of hiring the best writers in the country (i.e., Mark Twain and Jack London), and his reporters were encouraged to take yellow journalism to its highest form. Many historians believe that the smear campaign Hearst and Pulitzer launched against Spain was the most influential factor in starting the Spanish American War.

     So when Hearst turned his power, experience, and hatred toward hemp and marijuana, the little weed was in a precarious predicament. He and Anslinger had powerful reasons to fight tooth and nail against cannabis. They both hated minorities and they both had financial reasons to fear commercial applications of the decorticator. Hearst fought for his monopoly and Anslinger fought for his job and the family interest in Gulf Oil. Consequently, Hearst welcomed Anslinger’s ranting editorials and together, bonded by ethnic hatred, they vomited their venom throughout America.

     Headlines like:

                     NEW DOPE, MARIJUANA, HAS MANY VICTIMS
                 MARIJUANA MAKES FIENDS OF BOYS IN 30 DAYS

     These stories that were fabricated about minorities under the influence of marijuana, raping and slaughtering innocent people, appeared almost daily under bolded captions:

Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him....Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid spectres...

     HEMP NEWS quotes from an unnamed newspaper published in 1934:

Marijuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.

     Some Interesting Anslinger quotes:

There are 100,000 marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negros, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana usage.

…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.

Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.

Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.

Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing

You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.

Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.

     From 1935 to 1937, Pierre Du Pont, seeing a wide open window of opportunity, joined Hearst and Anslinger in the war against drugs and lobbied Herman Oliphant, chief counsel of the Treasury Department, for the prohibition of cannabis, arguing synthetic petrochemicals, plastic, and fuel additives such as tetraethyl lead derived from oil and produced by DuPont’s petrochemical division made hemp obsolete in the market place.


Contributions from Hollywood

     When Hollywood got involved, people plunged into full-fledged panic. In his article The Marijuana Conspiracy—the Real Reason Hemp is Illegal, Doug Yurchey writes:

      Films like Reefer Madness (1936), Marihuana: Assassin of Youth (1935) and Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed (1936) were propaganda designed by these industrialists to create an enemy. Their purpose was to gain public support so that anti-marijuana laws could be passed.

     Examine the following quotes from The Burning Question aka Reefer Madness:

• a violent narcotic
• acts of shocking violence
• incurable insanity
• soul-destroying effects
• under the influence of the drug he killed his entire family with an ax
• more vicious, more deadly even than these soul-destroying drugs (heroin, cocaine) is the menace of marihuana!

     Reefer Madness did not end with the usual THE END. The film concluded with these words plastered on the screen:

                                            TELL YOUR CHILDREN

 
When the End Justifies the Means

     Prohibitionists loved the war against marijuana. It gave them something to do. They must have been frantic between 1933 when 21st Amendment opened the gates to hell for America and 1937 when they were finally able to put their stamp on a prohibition law that ruined farmers throughout the country. A group that produced such characters as Carrie Nation and William Jennings Bryant could couldn’t be allowed to go down with a whimper just because there was nothing to prohibit, no matter what the cost.

     Carrie Nation believed that "Men are nicotine soaked, beer besmirched, whiskey greased, red-eyed devils...." It was one of her gentler opinions, probably brought on by her marriage to and subsequent divorce from her alcoholic husband. To save men from themselves, she marched an army of angry women, armed with hatchets and filled with the burning light of sanctimonious zealotry, into saloons and totally destroyed inventory, fixtures, equipment and furniture. The fact that she financially ruined small businesses and the folks who worked long hours to establish them must have added to her feeling of omnipotence.

     One might assume that she had more loose screws than most of us, but she was well respected in some groups and made a relatively good living selling tiny hatchets and lecturing. Her brave legacy still lives in the hearts of prohibitionists everywhere.

     William Jennings Bryant, a closet prohibitionist until 1910, had no background in science, especially the science of Darwinism. But in spite of his ignorance on the subject, he tirelessly lobbied for states to ban schools from teaching evolution, which he saw as a threat to the very soul of America. He was in his highest glory during the Scopes Trial, even though, in the end, it probably killed him. He died peaceably in his sleep, self righteousness and pride in winning the Monkey Trial intact.


Politicians Didn't Read Proposed Legislation Back Then Either

     With a horrified public behind them, Anslinger and the gang were able to get the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 passed. It placed an exorbitantly high tax on Marijuana; however, it seems that the original version wasn’t meant to include hemp because, even back then, people knew hemp didn’t have enough THC to buzz an ant. But, remember, the dark side was more interested in eliminating hemp as competition to oil, plastics and pharmaceutical conglomerates than getting marijuana out of the hands of children. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics must have felt justified in their use of lies, subterfuge, and arm twisting to slip hemp into the bill. After all, they were preserving power, profits and the American way of life.
 
     Now the real question is: did the legislators read the bill? If they did, why didn’t they know they were passing a piece of legislation that included hemp? Is there something in DC’s drinking water that makes it impossible for lawmakers to read and understand exceptionally destructive bills before they pass them?


Lovely Reminiscences of Prohibition

     Another question for historians is: what the hell was the legislature thinking when they passed a bill against marijuana anyway? Prohibition had cost up to $2 million dollars a day just to enforce during the greatest depression the U.S. had ever experienced. According to Robert Deitch (Hemp-American History Revisited) Prohibition laws “seriously elevated the street price of alcohol.” So, prohibition didn’t prohibit anything, it just jacked up the price and “drained $10 million a day out of the legal economy…” while increasing the consumption of whiskey and other hard liquors. (Large breweries were easy targets for government enforcers, while smaller distilleries could be concealed. And too, it was easier for a man to hide a flask of whiskey in his pocket than a bottle of beer.)

     Some economists blamed the cost of enforcement, incarceration and lost tax dollars due to prohibition for the Great Depression. So why did lawmakers leap so willingly into passing another unenforceable law?


The End of Economic Sanity

     The devastation the tax heaped on farmers was mind-boggling. Cash crops were left rotting in fields that already impoverished farmers had to clean up at their own expense. Many hemp brokers and manufacturers lost everything and closed their doors while others moved their failing businesses out of the country. And the dark side gained control of a plant that could have eliminated worldwide hunger, U.S. dependency on foreign oil, oil spills, and the destruction of ancient woodlands and rain forests. But the most devastating blow of all was the illusion of danger they created that continues to castrate politicians over seventy years later.

     However, the Cannabis tax and subsequent anti-marijuana laws had a built in flaw that saved the little plants from almost certain doom. The cannabis laws didn’t take human nature into consideration.

Part III — Coming October 9, 2010

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