HempFile

... began in the United States in 1937 when congress outlawed it with the marijuana tax
act. At the time, practically nobody, including the congressional representatives responsible
for the act, knew that marijuana was the flowering bud of the hemp plant. It was big
money politics that brought about the prohibition of hemp.
The history of hemp can be traced as far back as 1000 B.C., and until the later part of the
1800’s was the world’s single largest agricultural crop. It was fundamental for the
production of thousands of products, from fiber, fabric, and paper, to lighting oil, incense,
and medicines. Additionally, it was a primary source of protein for both livestock and
humans.
Hemp is a woody, herbaceous annual, which uses sunlight more effectively than virtually all
other plants. It can reach a height of over twenty feet in one growing season, and can be
grown in most climates and soil conditions. This can be accomplished without the aid of
over irrigation, herbicides, synthetic pesticides, and fertilizers. The extensive root growth of
the plant aerates the soil and increases the productivity of farmland. This makes it an
excellent rotation crop, with a potential of ten tons produced on a single acre in a four-
month growing season.
The seed of the hemp plant is the second most complete source of vegetable protein,
second only to the soybean. However, it has a much higher protein potential as it is more
efficiently utilized by the human body. This is because it contains the highest content of
enzymes, endistins, and essential amino acids of any other food source. These enzymes and
endistins aid in the digestive process, thus increasing the nutritional value of other foods.
The protein rich extracts of the seed can be used to make tofu-like curd, and margarine, at a
ten to twenty percent reduction in cost of similar soybean products. Despite these facts,
the government continues to wage war against this propitious plant.
The seeds of the hemp plant are thirty-percent oil by weight, and before its prohibition was
the most widely used oil in paints and varnishes. Thus, it could provide a biodegradable
substitute to the petrochemicals that replaced it in these products. Additionally, it can be
used as an alternative fuel source in diesel engines, and as a natural lubricant for engines
and other machinery. This has serious implications in our present society where wars are
waged over the need for petroleum products, especially for fuel.
Until 1883, up to ninety percent of all paper was made from hemp fiber, which is superior to
wood paper, lasting up to four times as long. In 1916, the USDA invented a hemp pulp
paper process that could essentially make hemp paper production cheaper than wood
paper. The only determent was the expense of harvesting the labor-intensive hemp. The
USDA had estimated that the fiber from one acre of hemp could replace the fiber of four
acres of trees.
Additionally, the hemp paper would require one-seventh to one-fifth the quantity of
pollution-causing, sulfur-based, acid chemicals. If this hemp paper process were
implemented today, it could easily replace seventy-percent of wood pulp paper.

Until the 1820’s, approximately eighty percent of all fabrics were made from
hemp fibers. Hemp is softer, warmer, and more absorbent than cotton.
Additionally it has three times the tensile strength of cotton, and is many
times more durable. Today, over fifty percent of the chemicals used in
agriculture in the U.S. are used in cotton farming. In comparison, hemp can
be grown with virtually no chemicals.
Before 1937, up to ninety percent of all rope, and cordage was made from
hemp, and the hemp rope was far stronger than any other naturally
produced cordage. Unfortunately, naturally produced rope has been
replaced by petrochemical substitutes such as nylon and other plastics.
As a result of hemps prolific growth rate, as stated above, up to ten tons per
acre within a four-month growing span, it is our planets number one
renewable biomass resource. Biomass, in essence, is fuel, regardless of
whether it is coal, petroleum, or hemp. However, unlike burning fossil fuels,
hemp produces no heavy metals, sulfur, or other toxins.
The gas given off by burning hemp is carbon dioxide, which is one of the
greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. However, one must take
into consideration that the production of hemp, would in effect, use up these
gases in the production of oxygen.
Given the prolific growth rate of the plant, it is easy to see that any adverse
effect would be reversed by the process of photosynthesis, which converts
carbon dioxide to oxygen. Additionally, hemp biomass can be converted into
charcoal, methane, or methanol, which could essentially replace most fossil
fuels.

It was near the end of nineteenth century that hemp lost its agricultural
dominance. This was the result of the abolishment of slavery, as hemp
required many hours of back breaking labor to harvest, and at the time, no
practical machinery had been invented to replace the slaves that had
performed the grueling task. The cotton gin made hemps rival crop cotton a
cheaper ingredient in fabrics. Additionally, with the advent of a sulfide-based
production method, wood replaced hemp as the main ingredient in paper.
In 1916, the USDA predicted that once the machinery capable of harvesting
hemp was developed, it would again replace cotton as Americas number one
crop. In 1937, a device for harvesting hemp called the decor-ticator was
constructed, though as this device became available to American farmers,
something was happening that would make its invention irrelevant.
Smoking of the flowering tops of cannabis sativa, a strain of the hemp plant
was becoming very popular in the cities of America. It was said to be the
most violence-inducing drug in the history of humankind. Its use became
very popular with inner city minorities, and it was purported that it drove
them to insolence. This was only an excuse for the passing of the marijuana
tax act, as there were other forces at work.
The truth be told, for thousands of years the flowering tops of the hemp
plant has been used medicinally with no distinguishable side effects. In fact,
from the 1840’s through the 1890’s, marijuana was the second most
prescribed drug in the United States. Additionally, for three thousand years
before that, it was one of the most widely used drugs in the world.

Cannabis has therapeutic value in the treatment of glaucoma, anorexia, migraines,
asthma, nausea, epilepsy, infection, stress, tumors, rheumatism, and arthritis. The result
of the prohibition of the hemp plant has led the masses to believe that marijuana has no
medicinal uses, and to this day is listed as a schedule one narcotic by the United States
government.
The forces behind the prohibition were primarily two power mongers with their own
capital gain in mind. The first, William Randolph Hearst, the San Francisco newspaper
publisher, who not coincidentally happened to own a paper manufacturing plant, as well
as millions of acres of prime California timber-land. Undoubtedly, he stood to lose
countless billions in revenue with the advent of the hemp-decorticating machine.
Through his newspaper articles Hearst made the word marijuana a household name,
associating it with violence and crime.
The other person who was instrumental in the prohibition of cannabis was Pierre
DuPont, founder of the still prevalent DuPont chemical corporation. His interest in the
prohibition was, as Hearst’s, monetary as well, as he held the patent to the sulfuric-acid
wood pulp paper process. Additionally, his synthetic petrochemicals replaced hemp seed
oil, and hemp cordage. Natural resources, such as hemp, have much more competitive
markets, and cannot be patented, while his synthetics were far more profitable, since
they can be patented, and monopolized.
You may wonder how these power mongers succeeded in their drive to make cannabis
prohibition a reality. In 1931, Harry J. Anslinger was appointed to the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs by his Uncle-in-law, Andrew Mellon. Mellon was the
Secretary of Treasury under Hoover, and not coincidentally, DuPont’s Banker. The
testimony before Congress in 1937 in favor of making cannabis illegal consisted almost
entirely of Hearst newspaper articles being read aloud by Anslinger.
Obviously, DuPont and Hearst made billions from the prohibition of hemp, and others
are still profiting. Cotton farmers, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, would lose
countless billions of dollars if hemp became legal again. Most all of the funding for anti
marijuana
organizations in this country is funded by pharmaceutical companies.
Hemp is likely the world’s most renewable resource, and the U. S. has not only prohibited
its use, but it has adopted a policy of forced extinction on the species. This single plant
species has literally thousands of uses, not only medicinally, but it could replace the
majority of uses of fossil fuels, petrochemicals, and timber.
The legalization of hemp would be an enormous step toward saving perhaps thousands
of species, and restoring the ecosystems of our planet without eliminating the standard
of living to which we have become accustom. It was, and still is the big money power
mongers that control, not only the use of hemp, but also our very lives. Is this the
democratic dogma that the founders of the United States had in mind? I think not!