By now, many people are aware that "Western Medicine" was created in the early 1900s by none other than John D. Rockefeller himself. Already having a monopoly on the petroleum industry, he saw a huge opportunity to control the chemical and medical industries as well. In his pursuit to take over the medical industry, he used smear campaign tactics in order to remove his holistic competition and gain a monopoly on the industry to push his petroleum based, synthetic pharmaceuticals. And so, by pushing out the natural medicines practiced for thousands of years, he was able to patent his petrochemicals and take control.
But what if I told you this was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the outlawing of hemp?
We have become so conditioned to automatically think of marijuana and THC when we hear the terms "cannibis" and "hemp" mentioned, we completely overlook the agricultural and industrial aspect of this "evil species of greenery." What if I told you the financial gain from industrial hemp far outweighs that of medicinal cannibis? We can even take it a step further than that! What if I told you the recreational use of those seeking the high of THC is, in fact, the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the trillions of dollars this one crop alone can create for local economies? From building materials, textiles, paper products, medicines and more (like more than 25,000 products to date), this crop could, and probably would, crush the monopoly big corporations have over the majority of our industries considering it can be grown in almost every environment all over the world and cannot be patentented due to the fact that it's derived from nature. And, oooh, let's face it..those big corp boys hate that!
As stated above, the hemp plant can be used from root to tip for many different products but for this article, we're going to go back in time and focus on paper.
You may ask, "Why paper of all things?" Believe it or not, paper had one of the biggest roles in causing hemp to become illegal.
In 1916, not long after the release of USDA Bulletin 404, a man by the name of George Schlichten, a 50 year old German immigrant who had been working on a simple, yet brilliant invention came into play. Schlichten had spent 18 years on the decorticator, a machine that could strip the fiber from nearly any plant, leaving the pulp behind. To build it, he developed an extensive knowledge of fibers and paper making. His desire was to stop the felling of forests for paper, which he believed to be a crime. His native Germany was well advanced in forestry and Schlichten knew that destroying forestry meant destroying needed watersheds.
During this time, turn-of-the-century newspaper barons needed huge amounts of paper to deliver their increasingly swelling circulations. Nearly 30% of the four million tons of paper manufactured in 1909 was newsprint. By 1914, the circulation of daily newspapers had increased by 17% with an estimated growth of over 28 million copies. Come 1917, the price of newsprint was rapidly rising, which caused some concern for those seeking to invest in the paper mill industry. Schlichten had thoroughly studied many kinds of plants used for paper, among which were corn, cotton, and yucca. However, hemp seemed to be his most favored and the paper he made from hemp was even better than what was produced for USDA Bulletin 404 because his decorticator machine was able to eliminate the retting process. By 1917, Schlichten anticipated he could make 50,000 tons of paper yearly, at a retail price of less than 50% of the newsprint price of that time using hemp production! He also noted that each acre of hemp would preserve almost 5 acres of forest. Sadly, during this time, instead of embracing new cost-effective technology, newspaper giants decided to take the easy way out and raise their prices as many corporate giants do.
It wouldn't be until the 1930s that we would see the decorticator machine resurface when it was dubbed by articles in popular magazines as "The machine that would make hemp a Billion Dollar Crop" and that "Modern technology was about to be applied to hemp production, making it the number one agricultural resource in America...and thousands of new products, creating millions of new jobs that would herald the end of the Great Depression!" Well, thanks to the bidding of W.R. Hearst, this never happened. Instead, hemp was persecuted, outlawed, and forgotten.
Enter Hearst, DuPont, and Mellon (DuPont's chief financial backer)
In the mid 1930s, when the new mechanical hemp fiber stripping machines, along with the machines that conserved hemp's high-cellulose pulp finally became state-of-the-art, available, and affordable, the enormous timber acreage and businesses of the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division, Kimberly Clark (USA), St. Regis, and virtually all other timber, paper, and large newspaper holding companies, stood to lose billions of dollars. Not to mention, at the same time, DuPont had just patented processes for making plastics from oil and coal, as well as a new sulfate/sulfite process for making paper from wood pulp. Competing against environmentally friendly and cost-effective hemp paper and natural plastic technology would have jeopardized the lucretive financial schemes of Hearst, DuPont, and DuPont's financial backer, Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburg.
Let the "Yellow Journalism" begin! Different name, same media lies!
During the mid 1920s, Hearst began the smear campaign against hemp, running stories implicating the use of "marijuana" (a term never used in the States before this time) in many accounts of made up, irrational acts stating "Marijuana makes these acts completely logical to its pitiful captives, who have become slaves to its false promise," claiming the perpetrators were Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and other "dark-skinned" folks." Sound familiar?
The added Influence of Henry J. Anslinger
Upon alcohol becoming legal in 1933, Henry J. Anslinger became the director of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics, now known as the DEA, and strongly opposed hemp. Because of his influence, American society, along with politicians, started to view government and law enforcement officials as the "experts" on marijuana.
On April 14, 1937, Herman Oliphant introduce the Marihuana Tax Act bill directly to the House Ways and Means Committee instead of other appropriate committees such as Food and Drug, Agriculture, Commerce, etc. It is thought that his reason for doing so was because the "Ways and Means" was the only committee that could send bills directly to the House floor without being subject for debate. The Ways and Means chairman, Robert L. Doughton (a key DuPont ally) was quick to rubber stamp the bill, sailing it right through Congress and on to the President.
So, with this knowledge in mind, it begs the question...Is hemp that "evil green plant" we were raised to fear OR is the banning the outcome of malicious greed? You tell me!