Behold the Wunder Plant!

 

 

 

Marijuana is not dangerous to its users, their friends and families, or the society that they occupy. Pot does not harm the body or the mind, nor does it pose a threat to the public. What it does endanger is the tobacco and alcohol industries, with it’s obvious uses as an addiction free recreational substance with no physiological harm over long term use; The oil companies, with the boundless possibilities hemp holds as an alternative fuel source; The major chemical conglomerates, who fear the endless derivatives that can be acquired from ganja; The logging and paper industries, who know cannabis produces more yield per acre of a higher quality product. Those at the helm of each of these multi-billion dollar industries use their influence to keep cannabis illegal, and have been for years. The nation has been lied to, the world has been lied to, and humanity as a whole has been forced to deprive ourselves of this wonder-plant.

 

 

 

“The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies. “

 

 

 

Even the word Marijuana was introduced into american society as a weapon against hemp. This obscure mexican slang word was used in papers and on radios thorughout the country in the hopes of linking the plant with the extreme anti-mexican sentiment that was prevelant in the country during the 30s.

 

 

 

The uses of Cannabis:

 

America was built (or grown) on hemp! A few facts you should know;

 

 

 

* All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s; * It was legal to pay taxes with hemp in America from 1631 until the early 1800s

 

 

 

* Refusing to grow hemp in America during the 17th and 18th Centuries was against the law for farmers.  You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769

 

 

 

* George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers  grew hemp;. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America.

 

 

 

* Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in America and it processed hemp. Also, the War of 1812 was fought over hemp. Napoleon wanted to cut off Moscow's export to England

 

 

 

* For thousands of years, 90% of all ships' sails and rope were made from hemp. The word 'canvas' is Dutch for cannabis

 

 

 

* 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc. were made from hemp until the 1820s with the introduction of the cotton gin

 

 

 

* The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross's flag, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp

 

 

 

* The first crop grown in many states was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for Kentucky producing 40,000 tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th Century

 

 

 

* Oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China, although hemp industrialization probably goes back to ancient Egypt

 

 

 

* Rembrants, Gainsboroughs, Van Goghs as well as most early canvas paintings were principally painted on hemp linen

 

 

 

* In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. Government studies report that 1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees. Plans were in the works to implement such programs

 

 

 

* Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935

 

 

 

* Henry Ford's first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the car itself was constructed from hemp. On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, 'grown from the soil,' had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel

 

 

 

* Hemp called 'Billion Dollar Crop.' It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars

 

 

 

 * Mechanical Engineering Magazine (Feb. 1938) published an article entitled 'The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop that Can be Grown.' It stated that if hemp was cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the U.S. and the rest of the world

 

 

 

Even as late as 1942, aspects of the government were stil supporting hemp!

 

 

 

The following information comes directly from the United States Department of Agriculture's 1942 14-minute film encouraging and instructing 'patriotic American farmers' to grow 350,000 acres of hemp each year for the war effort:

 

 

 

'...(When) Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850, all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable...

 

 

 

...Now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese...American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our industries...

 

 

 

...the Navy's rapidly dwindling reserves. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again; hemp for mooring ships; hemp for tow lines; hemp for tackle and gear; hemp for countless naval uses both on ship and shore. Just as in the days when Old Ironsides sailed the seas victorious with her hempen shrouds and hempen sails. Hemp for victory!'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Various commercial entities, with virtually limitless capital, have suppressed the truth from the people.

 

It began with two companies, the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division and it's owner, media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, along with owning nearly every news outlet on the west coast, owned vast acerage of timberlands. Most paper products in america came from his country. Hemp provides higher quality paper, with more paper per acre, a far-faster rate of return, and with far less damage to the enviornment. Mass production of hemp would have ruined him.

 

 

 

In 1937 the Dupont company patened the process to create plastics from fossil fuels. The Dupont Annual Report urged investors to channel their capital to Dupont's new petrochemical division. Hemp oil, though, produces a far stronger plastic with a far lower cost, and is a renewable resource, versus norenewable fossil fuels. The industrilization of hemp would have ruined over 80% of Dupont's business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In 1921, Andrew Mellon, one of Dupont's primary investors, was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Herbert Hoover. Mellon then in turn appointed his nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

 

 

 

These three men, William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Mellon, and Harry Anslinger, conspired to attack cannabis on two fronts, both through legislation and the media. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst's newspapers ran stories covering the horror of 'Marihuana.' The American people during this period were far more likely to take as absolute truth what they read in newspapers then they are today, and with stories of children using Marihuana and murdering their familes all over the papers, it was only a matter of time before a public outcry demanding that this 'menace' is stopped.

 

 

 

Films like 'Reefer Madness' (1936), 'Marihuana: Assassin of Youth' (1935) and 'Marihuana: The Devil's Weed' (1936) were propaganda designed by these industrialists to create an enemy. Their purpose was to gain public support so that anti-marihuana laws could be passed.

 

 

 

Examine the following quotes from 'The Burning Question' aka REEFER MADNESS:

 

 

 

    * a violent narcotic.

 

 

    * acts of shocking violence.

 

 

    * incurable insanity.

 

 

    * soul-destroying effects.

 

 

    * under the influence of the drug he killed his entire family with an ax.

 

 

    * more vicious, more deadly even than these soul-destroying drugs (heroin, cocaine) is the menace of marihuana!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reefer Madness did not end with the usual 'the end.' The film concluded with these words plastered on the screen: TELL YOUR CHILDREN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Dr. James Woodward, a physician and attorney, testified too late on behalf of the American Medical Association. He told the committee that the reason the AMA had not denounced the Marihuana Tax Law sooner was that the Association had just discovered that marihuana was hemp.

 

 

 

Few people, at the time, realized that the deadly menace they had been reading about on Hearst's front pages was in fact passive hemp. The AMA understood cannabis to be a MEDICINE found in numerous healing products sold over the last hundred years.

 

 

 

In September of 1937, hemp became illegal.

 

 

 

Congress banned hemp because it was said to be the most violence-causing drug known. Anslinger, head of the Drug Commission for 31 years, promoted the idea that marihuana made users act extremely violent. In the 1950s, under the Communist threat of McCarthyism, Anslinger now said the exact opposite. Marijuana will pacify you so much that soldiers would not want to fight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The battle against Marijuana goes on, even today. With every new scientific study published that laudes the benfits of hemp, with every court case won in favor of Medical Marijuana, the industrial forces that fear hemp's uses both ad medicine and as a cash crop spend more money to keep hemp illegal. The evidence of this is apparent wherever you turn. Everyday you see on television, on billboards, and in magazines, ads from the Partnership for a Drug Free America, a front organization for anti-marijuana activists attempting to trick america into staying away from cannabis. Parnetership for a drug free america recieves millions of dollars from companies that serve to benefit from the criminilzation of marijuana, including American Brands (Jim Beam whisky), Philip Morris (Marlboro and Virginia Slims cigarettes, Miller beer), Anheuser Busch (Budweiser, Michelob, Busch beer), R.J. Reynolds (Camel, Salem, Winston cigarettes), as well as pharmaceutical firms Bristol Meyers-Squibb, Merck & Company and Proctor & Gamble. These companies fund Partnership not so that it can keep the nation's youth off of harmful or dangerous narcotics, but so that marijuana can remain villified in the public eye and thus never become a viable contender to their specific, legal poisons.

 

 

 

 

 

Partnership then embarked on a wild campaign of misinformation. As time has gone on, and scientific research and opinion has consistently moved away from their anti-marijuana stance, Partnership and other anti-marijuana agencies have had to adopt desperate tactics. Their tactics have changed over the years. First, they claimed marijuana posed a risk to your health, and when science suggested otherwise, they claimed that marijuana funded terrorism. Today, the general public is skeptical of these claims, and so ads have moved onto claims that people are 'less fun' on marijuana, or that they're somehow 'hurting friends and family.

 

 

 

Ads concerning that life is 'less fun' and that you're 'slow or boring'

 

 In this particular next ad, the Partnership takes the most honest approach they ever had;

While it's true that your energy to do exciting things like ice skating may be diminished while high, this is hardly an arguemnt to make a substance illegal and take away the choice to use it from otehrs. The protagonist of this commercial chooses not to smoke, as he's afraid he'd miss out on the fun of life, but really, go ice skating, THEN get high!

It's worth noting that ads concerning the threat of punishment have always been present, but the fact that something is illegal dosen't factor into why it should or shouldn't be illegal (despite the fact that this logic, this endless oboros, seems to pervail through the US government and much of it's people), and therefore dosen't factor into this discussion.

 

 

Please, educate yourself about hemp, and educate your friends and families. Archaic belifs and greedy people have led to our nation and our world depriving ourselves of this wunderplant.

 

 

Sources referenced:

Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer.

 

G. M. Herdon. Hemp in Colonial Virginia,

 

Webster's New World Dictionary.

 

U.S. Government Archives.

 

State Archives.

 

 Sherman Williams Paint Co. testimony before Congress against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.

 

Popular Mechanics, Feb., 1938.

 

From Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1938:

 

Hemp Paper Reconsidered, Jack Frazier, 1974.

 

LA Times, Aug. 12, 1981.

 

Wikipedia

 

as well as a variety of websites used for research.