Guide to the Upcoming Rebellion: Part 4:
Hemp Through A Lucid Lens
By: Vindictive | 27March2001
Unless you've been living in a cave all of your life, you have probably heard that hemp aka cannabis aka marijuana is an evil and intoxicating weed. When smoked (you've probably heard), it causes brain damage and insanity and can lead to fornication, murder, suicide, and the use of even more dangerous drugs. If you are a citizen of the US, you may have heard a lot of similar "facts" -- courtesy of the American government and other groups that oppose drugs (except for prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco, of course) -- that are so factually unsupportable, they are laughable. Well, maybe not funny, exactly, if you consider that every year in the US, millions of people are still being locked up -- their lives ruined -- on the basis of laws created and maintained under the auspices of lies about cannabis. Once upon a time, eighty years ago and longer, hemp was viewed as a completely different sort of plant -- useful, even -- than the evil weed that "older and wiser heads" have turned it into. In this article, we will briefly review hemp in early American history. Then we will review the events that lead up to hemp's prohibition in the early to mid-part of the 20th century, and the genuine reasons for that prohibition. This will render you better able to decide whether or not the prohibition of hemp is justified, or just one more government-maintained farce that directly benefits corporate America. Hemp in Early America1492 Chris Columbus failed to find a shortcut to India. His sails were made from hemp. ('Canvas' ultimately came from a Greek word 'kannabis', which is the hemp plant.)1776 Early drafts of the US Declaration of Independence were written on paper manufactured from hemp. The finished product was put on vellum parchment -- animal skin. 1870 Publishing became a leading cause of deforestation when wood fiber was first utilized for making paper. Previously, most paper was made from hemp or linen (from flax). How Federal Substance Prohibition Began1914 The Harrison Tax Act regulated opiates (such as morphine) and the derivatives of the coca leaf (like cocaine). This was the very first Federal law in America that criminalized the non-medical use of drugs and it was able to do so because of its peculiar legal structure. The writers of this law had two goals: (1) regulate the medical use of the drugs, and (2) criminalize the non-medical use of them. There was a constitutional problem, however, involving State's rights. Constitutional scholars (of that time, before the US became the fascist power it is today) believed that Congress had no power to regulate a profession, nor the power to pass a general criminal law. (That's why there were few Federal Crimes until very recently.)Unfortunately, effective politicians never allow little things like a constitution get between them and their goals. Besides, society was being threatened by the scourge of evil Chinese opium-eaters (as opposed to the middle-class whites who used opium in liquid form as "tonics"). So these lawmakers came up with a novel and deceptive idea: pretend that the prohibition was actually a set of taxes. The first tax was levied against physicians. In exchange for paying a small fee, MDs got a stamp from the Government that allowed them to prescribe opiates or cocaine-based substances ... as long as they followed the regulations required to keep the stamp. So, the Harrison Act claimed to be a tax, but was really a completely new animal: regulation of the medical profession. The second tax was an extremely high fee on every non-medical exchange of these substances. Nobody was actually expected to pay a tax of (for example) $500 on a quantity of drugs that was only worth (for example) $5, but an outright criminal prohibition on what substances a free American citizen might choose to use was unconstitutional. So the law was written as a tax. If a cop caught a citizen possessing an opiate without having paid the "tax", s/he wasn't charged with possession of a controlled substance; s/he was charged with tax evasion. Now you know why, in those early days -- when the Feds were still trying on dictatorship to see how well they liked it -- the enforcement arm for the criminalization of drugs was the Treasury Department. Substance prohibition masqueraded itself as a tax issue, and Treasury collects taxes. 1919 The 18th Amendment to the Constitution established a prohibition of "intoxicating liquors". Combined with the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Act, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, through the "Prohibition Unit", was given jurisdiction over illicit alcohol. 1927 Prohibition Unit becomes the Bureau of Prohibition. 1930 Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs became the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN); Harry Anslinger was named as Director. FBN initially supported alcohol prohibition. Among the gems of wisdom that came from Anslinger's mouth was:
1930 Bureau of Prohibition moved to the Justice Department mid-1930s Traditionally, hemp fiber had to be separated from the stalk by hand; the cost of labor made it uncompetitive, but Fabricord Associates, International Harvester and George Knowles and others developed increasingly better methods of scutching hemp (separating fibers from the woody parts) at higher capacities than before, making production for all industrial uses less labor-intensive. Under Fascism, Police Always Have Work1934 The 21st Amendment to the Constitution ended the prohibition of alcohol as a beverage. Suddenly, thousands of "civil servants" -- federal law enforcement agents -- were potentially out of work if Congress didn't find something else to prohibit, since there just wasn't that many opium-eaters to harass. Fortunately for them, they didn't have to wait long.1934 The National Firearms Act -- the first Federal gun control law -- was passed to control what Congress called "gangster type weapons", i.e., machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. 1934 Bureau of Prohibition turned its responsibilities over to the Alcohol Tax Unit (ATU) within the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In 1942, responsibility for firearms law enforcement was given to ATU. In 1951, it got tobacco tax duties. In 1952, its name was changed to Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) of the IRS. In 1968, ATTD was renamed again to Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division (ATFD) of the IRS. In 1972, ATFD became independent of IRS, and was given Bureau status within the Treasury Department: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. 1937 A machine was invented for scutching hemp which could process three tons of hemp an hour and produce higher quality fiber with less loss than wood-based pulp. Hemp was nearly ready to begin undercutting competing products. Popular Mechanics predicted that hemp would become America's first "billion dollar crop." It pointed out that "10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average [forest] pulp land."
Besides its use as an euphoriant, hemp had long been used to make rope, paper and canvas. The resins of the hemp plant were used as the base for paints and varnishes. Hemp seeds were widely used in bird seed. Since these industries were going to be affected, some of the testimony before Congress came from spokesmen representing those industries. Medical evidence was introduced into the hearings. The first came from a pharmacologist who claimed he had injected the active ingredient in marihuana into the brains of 300 dogs, and two of those dogs had died. Oddly, the active ingredient of hemp -- THC -- was first synthesized in a laboratory in Holland after World War II. Whatever it was that the pharmacologist actually injected into these dogs, it almost certainly was not THC. The second bit of medical testimony came from William C. Woodward, who was both a medical doctor and an attorney. Dr. Woodward was Chief Counsel to the American Medical Association. His testimony -- in the face of hostile congressmen whose minds were already made up -- was that cannabis was not dangerous and that the AMA opposed the sham that Congress was attempting to pull. Most of the testimony, however, came from Commissioner Harry Anslinger of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Here are examples of what he told Congress: "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
"I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions."
"Here in Colorado -- and Colorado seems to have had a lot of cases of violence recently -- in Alamosa County, and in Huerfano County the sheriff was killed as the result of the action of a man under the influence of marihuana. Recently in Baltimore a young man was sent to the electric chair for having raped a girl while under the influence of marihuana." Because Congress was not sure it was constitutional to ban hemp outright, the Marijuana Tax Act taxed the plant prohibitively instead. Hemp growers had to register with the government; sellers and buyers had to fill out cumbersome paperwork; and, of course, it was a federal crime not to comply. The federal tax on an ounce or less of cannabis -- for an unregistered person -- was $100. (Legitimate marijuana was selling for $2 a pound at the time.) This effectively destroyed all commercial cultivation of hemp. Medical use was permitted in a limited fashion, but as hemp derivatives became prohibitively expensive for doctors and pharmacists, they turned to chemically derived drugs instead. All other nonmedical uses of hemp -- paper, rope, canvas, lubricants -- were taxed out of existence. Did Anslinger Believe his own Testimony?It is possible that Harry Anslinger believed the non-scientific, racist bullshit that he told Congress. (Obviously, Congress -- traditionally composed of power-mongering ignoramuses -- fell for it, hook, line and sinker.) It seems much more likely, however, that Anslinger had other motives and other reasons to want the cultivation of the hemp plant to be prohibited. It had little to do with its use in creating euphoria and everything to do with those previously mentioned industrial uses.Bear in mind that at about this same time, Fabricord, International Harvester and others were making the scutching and production of hemp from the fields easier than it had ever been before. Hemp was being outlawed just as a new technology would have made hemp paper far cheaper than wood-pulp paper. The yellow journalist, William Randolph Hearst, had been printing sensational stories for years that linked "the killer weed" to everything from Jazz to "Crazed minorities," and even unspeakable crimes -- the same sort of disinformation which made up the majority of Anslinger's testimony. In fact, Anslinger had been a part of Hearst's anti-hemp crusade since 1930, and was the source of many of his "facts". Even the term 'marijuana' was popularized by Hearst as some evil weed from south of the border. (Who could be opposed to old-fashioned cannabis or hemp, the basis of rope and canvas, grown by George Washington?) Most of the public didn't realize that the weed marijuana which "MAKES FIENDS OF BOYS IN 30 DAYS" (according to one Hearst headline) was the same thing as hemp. But why would Hearst be opposed to hemp? Hearst had a vested interest in protecting the wood pulp industry. Hearst owned lots of timber acreage and competition from the hemp industry might have driven the Hearst paper-manufacturing division out of business and caused the value of his acreage to plummet. Cheaply produced hemp would have been a threat to the DuPont Company for a number of reasons:
The millions of dollars that DuPont had invested -- as well as all those potential profits -- would have been wiped out if the newly affordable hemp products were allowed on the market. That's why it was in DuPont's best interest that hemp be prohibited. But how could they make sure that happened? One: DuPont Company's financial backer was the Mellon Bank, the chairman of which was Andrew Mellon. Two: The Treasury Department -- which, if you remember, ended up being in charge of drug taxes (aka prohibition) -- was run by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, chairman of the Mellon Bank. Three: Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (which answered to the Treasury Department), was married to Andrew Mellon's niece. If Harry Anslinger wanted to keep his job working for Uncle Andrew, he would have to be willing to lie to Congress to make sure America got what DuPont wanted: the prohibition of cannabis. The False Logic of Marijuana ProhibitionHemp wasn't prohibited because it is dangerous. Unlike hemp, alcohol and tobacco abuse kills millions of Americans each year. However these substances are legal (for adults) because -- unlike hemp -- not only were they never a threat to an established industry, they are the basis of a great amount of established industry. Governments also collect taxes on them.The Federal government prohibited hemp because it was acting as a patsy for Hearst and DuPont, as well as appealing to the sentiments of racists overly concerned with the habits of those dirty Spanish-speaking bastards from south of the border.
Only an idiot would claim that smoking cannabis is more dangerous than huffing paint ... so why is nobody pressing for special legislation to control access to paint, thinner and gasoline? Could it be because it would be ridiculous to prohibit something so useful, just because someone might use them to get high? RelatedMalevolent Prohibition Part 1: Spurious JustificationMalevolent Prohibition Part 2: Who Benefits from Prohibition?
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1937 The Marihuana Tax Act was passed -- following the same not-exactly-Constitutional
model as the Harrison Tax Act. The purpose of the act was to prohibit the cultivation of hemp in
America and the testimony leading up to this act was extremely brief, lasting about two hours.
As of this writing,