The Reasons Behind Prohibition

     Cannabis was one of history's most widely used plants. Tincture of Cannabis was the basis for almost every copy-righted medicine prior to the discovery of aspirin (Aspirin is derived from acylic acid. A natural way to ease pain is with dogwood /willow trees. What you do is break off a twig, peel off the outer bark. Inside that bark is a yellow inner-bark. Peel it out and start chewing on it. It really has no taste to worry about. But if you are allergic to aspirin DO NOT use this. It also works on scratches, just hold the inner-bark on the scratch!).  Hemp was used for rope, twine, and cloth. Sailing ships were loaded with hemp. The word "canvas" is derived from "cannabis", because that's what canvas was. Sails were made of hemp because salt water deteriorated cotton. Old sails were made into wagon covers and ultimately original LEVI'S JEANS. And the pressed oil from hemp seeds was used for paints and varnishes. Everyone knew what hemp was. But nobody knew what marijuana was.

     America in the 1900's saw two powerful rivals, agriculture and industry (In my own humble opinion this is where we took the wrong turn. Up until this time America and her immigrants were all agriculturally oriented), faced off over several multi-billion dollar markets. When Rudolph Diesel produced his engine in 1896, he'd assumed it would run off of vegetable and seed oils, especially hemp, which is superior to petroleum. Just think about that for a second. A fuel that can be grown by our farmers that is superior to foreign oil, and put these farmers back to farming. A lot of history would have been rewritten!

      Along comes an elite group of special interests dominated by the DuPont chemical company, which was in the PETROLEUM business, and it's major financial backer and, of course, key political ally, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon; a banker who took over Gulf Oil Corporation, later in life. In 1913, Henry Ford opened his first auto assembly line, and Gulf Oil opened its first drive-in gas station.

     In 1919, with ethanol fuel ready and set to compete with gasoline, Alcohol Prohibition began. When President Harding made him Secretary of the Treasury, he was considered the richest man in America. In the 1920's, Mellon arranged for HIS BANK to loan his cronies at DuPont money to take over General Motors. DuPont had developed new additives to increase the combustion power, as well as the sulfate and sulfite process that made wood into paper. If you are ever near the Southeast Georgia coast, you WILL smell the paper mills. They have a distinct aroma that you will never forget.

      In the 1930's, Ford Motor Company operated a successful biomass fuel conversion plant using cellulose at Iron Mountain, Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch ethyl-acetate and creosote from hemp. The same fundamental ingredients for industry were also being made from fossil fuels. (Messing with DuPont money, maybe?)

      During the same period, DuPont was developing cellophane, nylon, and Dacron from fossil fuels. DuPont held the patents on many synthetics and became a leader in the development of paint, rayon, synthetic rubber, plastics, chemicals, photographic film, insecticides and agricultural chemicals.

      From a 1937 DuPont Annual Report there is a clue to what would be happening next:  "The revenue raising power of government may be converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization."

      William Randolph Hearst now enters the picture. Hearst's company was a major consumer of the cheap tree-pulp paper that had replaced hemp paper in the late 19th century. The Hearst Corporation also happened to be a large logging company, and produced DuPont's wood-pulp paper, which yellowed and fell apart in a short time. Hearst Newspapers were also known for their sensationalist stories (1930's version of the National Enquirer). Hearst despised poor people, black people, Chinese, Hindus, and all other minorities. Most of all he hated Mexicans. Poncho Villa's cannabis-smoking troops had reclaimed some 800,000 acres of prime timberland from Hearst in the name of the Mexican peasants. All of the low-quality paper the company planned to make by deforesting its vast timber holdings was in danger of being replaced by low-cost, high quality paper made from hemp.

      Hearst had always supported any kind of prohibition, and now he wanted cannabis included in every anti-narcotics bill. Never mind that cannabis wasn't a narcotic. Facts weren't important. The important thing was to have CANNABIS completely removed from society, doctors, and industry.

     Through screaming headlines and horror stories, “marihuana" was blamed for murderous rampages by blacks and Mexicans. Hearst continued to use his power of the press to impress on his readers the "DANGERS OF THE MARIHUANA PLANT."

      When the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was formed in 1932, Mellon's NEPHEW Harry Anslinger was appointed as its chief, a job in Mellon's Treasury Department that was CREATED JUST FOR HIM!!! Treasury agents were beginning to operate on their own agenda. Deep in the throes of the depression, congress began to re-examine all federal agencies. Anslinger began to fear that his department was in danger of emasculation. Although worldwide, hemp was still big business; in 1935 the Treasury Department began secretly drafting a bill called The Marihuana Tax Act. The Treasury Department's general counsel Herman Oliphant was put in charge of writing something that could get past both Congress and the Court DISGUISED as a TAX REVENUE BILL. Congress wasn't all that interested in the matter; the ONLY information they had to work with was that which was provided to them by Anslinger. They deliberately collected horror stories on the evils of marihuana pulled primarily from the Hearst newspapers (IMAGINE THAT), called Anslinger's Gore Files. Crimes that had never happened at all were being attributed to marijuana.

     So, in 1937, Anslinger went before a poorly attended committee hearing and called for a total ban on marijuana. He stated under oath "This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effects of which cannot be measured". Bureaucrats planned the hearings to avoid the discussion of the full House and presented the measure in the guise of a tax revenue bill brought to the six member House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by one of DuPont's allies, Robert Doughton of North Carolina. This bypassed the House without further hearings and passed it over to the Senate Finance Committee (1930's version of Obama-style law making) controlled by another crony, Prentiss Brown of Michigan, where it was rubber stamped into law. Once on the books, Anslinger would "administer" the licensing process to make sure that no more commercial hemp was ever grown in the United States. Clinton Hesterm assistant general counsel for the Department of the Treasury, explained to the House Committee “The leading newspapers of the United States have recognized the seriousness of this problem and have advocated federal legislation to control... marijuana...The marijuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope, largely because of the failure of the public to understand the harmfulness.."

      At the last minute, a few pro-hemp protesters arrived in DC. Most people had no idea that "marihuana", merely a slang word taken from a drinking song celebrating Poncho Villa's victory, "La Cucaracha", was the same thing as cannabis hemp, a plant which had been an important crop since the founding of the country (without hemp rope and "canvas", ships could not sail!). Ralph Loziers of the National Oil Seed Institute showed up (representing paint manufacturers and lubrication oil processors), and stated that hempseed was an essential commodity. Dr. William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association spoke in defense of cannabis medicines and in protest of the way the bill was handled. Woodward complained that there was no certain data that marijuana use had increased, and stated that if it had, the "newspaper exploitation of the habit had done more to increase it than anything else". Asked point blank if he thought federal legislation was necessary, he replied "I do not  ... it is not a medical addiction that is involved." Woodward went on to criticize the way the word "marihuana" had been used to deliberately confuse the medical and industrial hemp communities. "In all you have heard here thus far, no mention has been made of any excessive use of the drug or its excessive distribution by any pharmacist. And yet this bill is placed heavily on the doctors and pharmacists of the country, and may I say very heavily - most heavily, possibly of all - on the farmers of this country... We cannot understand yet ... why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any initiative, even to the profession, that it was being prepared ... no medical man would identify this bill with a medicine until he read it through, because marijuana is not a drug ... simply a name given cannabis."

       A few days later, Representative Fred Vinson of Kentucky was asked to summarize the AMA's position. He lied (that's hard to believe, a lie from a politician) to the effect that the medical group's legislative counsel (Woodward) "Not only gave this measure full support, but also the approval from the AMA."

      The act passed without a roll call vote (I think we found the inspiration for our current administration.). Now we can see why it was prepared in secret - passage of the Act put all hemp industries firmly under the control of the very special interests that most benefited from its repression over the years - prohibition police and bureaucrats working in conjunction with the Big Oil companies, the timber companies, the alcohol and tobacco industries, and Big Pharma (today, the urine testing, property seizure, police and prison industries).

      Also in 1937; DuPont filed the patent on Nylon, a synthetic fiber that took over many of the textile and cordage markets that would have gone to hemp. More than half the American cars on the road were built by GM, which guaranteed DuPont a captive market for paints, varnishes, plastics, and rubber, all which could have been made from hemp (and eco-friendly). Furthermore, all GM cars would subsequently be designed to use tetra-ethyl leaded fuel exclusively, which contained additives that DuPont manufactured. All competition from hemp had been outlawed.