-------- Original Message --------
Subject: How Did Cannabis Become Illegal?
Date: 9 Oct 2000 21:00:07 GMT
From: dclxvi@best.com (Josh Geller)
Organization: Green Republicans of California
Newsgroups: alt.law-enforcement
MEDICINAL HOPE
The Journal Of The Humboldt Cannabis Center
index Vol 1 Issue 3 Nov/Dec '99
How did Cannabis Become illegal? [part 1]
by, Alisha Clompus
It all started in 1916 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
chief
scientists, Lester Dewey (a botanist) and Jason Merrill (a chemist),
invented new hemp pulp technology for papermaking. In 1917
G.W.Schlichten patented a hemp-decorticating machine. This new
technology made hemp a viable paper source instead of fiber, rag,
and
wood-pulp paper. For the next twenty years advancing technology
and
the building of roads continued to increase the value of hemp.
In the mid-1930's mechanical hemp fiber stripping machines
and
machines to conserve hemp's high-cellulose pulp became
state-of-the-art, available and affordable technology. In 1937,
commercial hemp crops in the U.S. totaled at 10,000 acres, much
of it
in Wisconsin, Illinois and Kentucky. At this time 4 million pounds
of
hemp seed was used in birdseed alone each year. This put almost
all
timber, paper and large newspaper holding companies in danger.
Also,
in 1937 DuPont had patented new sulfate/sulfite processes to make
paper from wood pulp, which accounted for over 80% of their sales
for
the next 50 years. In that same year, they patented processes
to make
plastics out of coal and oil, and the famous nylon. The invention
of
the cotton gin and other cotton and wool machinery, and the
importation of cheaper hemp also led to its downfall.
Throughout the 20's and 30's DuPont was the U.S. Federal government's
chief munitions maker. The process of nitrating cellulose into
synthetic fibers and plastics. The first synthetic fiber, rayon,
is
stabilized guncotton (nitrated cloth), the basic explosive of
the 19th
century.
In 1931, Andrew Mellon with his Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
was DuPont's chief financial backer. Mellon was also involved
in the
Teapot Dome Scandal in which companies that he was involved in
were
caught stealing and reselling the federal government's petroleum
reserves. During his reign of Hoover's Secretary of Treasury,
Mellon
conveniently appointed his niece's fiancé, Harry J. Anslinger
to be
the head Commissioner of the newly re-organized Federal Bureau
of
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FBNDD). He held this position for
the
next 31 years. Soon after he was appointed, Anslinger became obsessed
with "the evils" of Cannabis.
Prohibitions against non-medical usage had been enacted in
Ca. (1915),
TX. (1919), La. (1924) and NY. (1927). In the Southwestern states,
where Mexican workers introduced the relaxational and recreational
use
of Cannabis, fear of this largely unknown substance grew. In the
mid-30's, Anslinger began to use his previous experience in journalism
to turn this fear into "Reefer Madness". He wrote "Marihuana,
the
Assassin of Youth", the first in a series of articles and
book
depicting murder, suicide and the seduction of schoolchildren
as
results of the use of Cannabis.
William Randolph Hearst perpetuated this type of propaganda
through
his nation-wide newspaper chain, which made up around 40% of the
US's
media. He continued to fuel the flame of "yellow journalism"
he had
started with denouncing Spaniards, Mexicans, and Latinos during
the
Spanish American War. He painted pictures of the "lazy, pot-smoking
Mexican" and the "marijuana crazed Negroes." Through
repetitive use,
Hearst pounded the Mexican slang word "marijuana" into
the American
consciousness: "hemp" and "Cannabis" virtually
disappeared. This
guaranteed that no one would realize the world's chief medicine
and
premier industrial resource had been outlawed and pushed out of
the
language. Ironically, today Hearst's newspapers in Ca and Fl are
among
the strongest opponents to the drug war and International Paper
is
actually working for hemp.
By 1937, 46 of the 48 states had banned marijuana. Anslinger
abandoned
his earlier hopes for federal prohibition; even he had come to
doubt
the constitutionality of such a law. So the Treasury Department
held
secret meetings and they decided to impose an "occupational
excise
tax" upon dealers and a "transfer tax" upon dealings
to be collected
by the U.S. Treasury; non-payment of this tax would constitute
a
felony.
During the Congressional hearings, Anslinger told legislators
that if
you smoke a joint, "you're likely to kill your brother".
He also
stated to Congress that about 50% of all violent crimes in the
U.S. were committed by Spaniards, Mexican-Americans, Latin Americans,
Filipinos, Negroes and Greeks, and these crimes could be directly
traced to marijuana. If he had actually checked FBI statistics
he
would have known that at least 65 to 75% of all murders in the
U.S. had been and still are alcohol related.
During the House Ways and Means Committee meetings, Dr. William
Woodward, a legislative counsel for the AMA (American Medical
Association), testified that Cannabis in medial preparations had
not
been abused and the new provisions would cause hardships for
doctors. The National Oil Seed Institute also lobbied against
the new
Tax Act.
The entire House hearing lasted a total of 90 seconds and consisted
of
one question before the final vote. Congress asked if anyone had
consulted with the AMA and Representative Fred Vinson (KY) answered
for the House Ways and Means Committee by lying and saying, "Yes,
we
have, a Dr. Wharton [Woodward?] and the [AMA] are in complete
agreement!" House hearings concluded with no significant
changes in
the proposed bill and then sailed through the Senate.
In August 1937, President F.D.R., who had come into office
repealing
prohibition, signed into law the Marihuana Tax Act. A federal
police
force was created to save polluting industries and to reinforce
some
white politicians' policies of racial hatred. By 1941 Cannabis
had
been deleted from the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and the National Formulary,
the official compendia of drugs. This law eventually carried over
into
the Controlled Substances Act. In 1969 in the case of the
U.S. vs. Timothy Leary, the Supreme Court ruled the Marijuana
Tax Act
unconstitutional 32 years after it was adopted.
The 1938 - 1944 New York City "LaGuardia Marijuana Report"
refuted the
idea that marijuana caused violence and cited other positive
results. Anslinger denounced Mayor Fiorella La Guardia, the New
York
Academy of Medicine and the doctors who researched the
report. Anslinger proclaimed that these doctors would never again
do
marijuana experiments or research without his personal permission,
or
be sent to jail.
He then used the power of the U.S. government, illegally, to
virtually
halt all research into marijuana while he blackmailed the AMA
into
denouncing the New York Academy of Medicine and its doctors for
the
research they had done. How did he get the AMA on his side after
they
were against his Marijuana Tax Act in 1937? Anslinger's FBN was
responsible for prosecuting doctors who prescribed narcotic drugs
for
what he, Anslinger, deemed illegal purposes. The FBN had prosecuted
more than 3,000 AMA doctors for illegal prescriptions through
1939. In
1939, the AMA made specific peace with Anslinger on marijuana
and as a
result only 3 doctors were prosecuted for illegal drugs of any
sort
from 1939 to 1949.
This brought up a perfect example of "gutter science",
of which the
outcome of a study is biased. To refute the LaGuardia Report,
the AMA,
at Anslinger's personal request, conducted a 1944-45 study showing
that 34 Negro GI's (and 1 white GI for statistical "control")
who
smoked marijuana became disrespectful of white soldiers and officers
in the segregated military.
>From 1948-50, Anslinger changed his angle of approach from
the
violence caused by marijuana propaganda to the exact opposite
and used
it, with his good friend Senator McCarthy, to fuel the fire against
Communism ("Red Baiting") which came to be referred
to as
"McCarthyism". Before a strongly anti-Communist Congress
in 1948 (and
from thereafter in the press) he testified that marijuana was
a much
more dangerous drug than what he thought before. He said that
it
caused its users to become so peaceful and pacifistic that the
Communists could and would use marijuana to weaken our men's will
to
fight. So now Congress voted to continue the marijuana law for
the
exact opposite reason that they had outlawed it in the first place.
To
top it all off, Anslinger had supplied McCarthy (his best senatorial
friend) with morphine illegally for years and actually wrote about
it
in his autobiography.
At first the Communists of Russia and China frequently ridiculed
America's marijuana paranoia in the press and at the United
Nations. Sadly, the idea of pot and pacifism got so much sensational
world press for the next decade that eventually Russia, China
and the
Eastern Bloc Communist countries (who grew large amounts of cannabis)
outlawed marijuana for fear that America would sell or give it
to
their people to make their soldiers more pacifist. These countries
had
been using Cannabis as a medicine, a relaxant and work tonic for
thousands of years with no thought of prohibitive laws.
{Sources: Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes - 10th
Edition
(1995); www.crisconrad.com; www.marijuananews.com; www.druglibrary.org}
Vol 1 Issue 3 Nov/Dec '99