Hemp: the inside story

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 it had not been made illegal,
would have brought America out of the Great
Depression.

As it so happened, William Randolph Hearst 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
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% of Dupont's business.

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 held 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.
 
Thus hemp fell victim to politics and profits and its
demonization began. On April 14, 1937, the Prohibitive
Marihuana Tax Law or 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, Robert Doughton, was a Dupont
supporter. He insured that the bill would pass Congress.

In September of 1937, Congress ruled that hemp
was a dangerous drug and exercised its authority to
render it illegal. With the stroke of pen, the most
useful crop known to man was erased from the
American landscape and our nation, if not the world,
has suffered ever since.