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UVSS HEMPOLOGY 101 CLUB – LECTURE SERIES 2007/08
By Hempology | September 24, 2007
Sept. 25/07
Lesson #2: Marijuana Tax Act Of 1937
The Marijuana Tax Act was passed in the US in 1937 after years of racist propaganda confused the public into thinking that a new drug menace spread by blacks and Mexicans was causing the demise of young white girls. In reality, cannabis was primarily prohibited throughout Western society in an attempt to eliminate hemp production so certain industries could strengthen their control over the marketplace. In the 1800’s, hemp was primarily in competition with cotton, while it was the main source for rope and canvas around the world. Apparently a few slave owners tolerated cannabis use, but not alcohol. For many former slave owners the prohibition of cannabis was a way of controlling and suppressing black people. In 1916, a process that could turn the woody pith, or hurds, into paper was invented. All the hemp paper made before was from the fiber. That same year the US Department of Agriculture published U.S.D.A. Bulletin No. 404 entitled “HEMP HURDS AS PAPERMAKING MATERIAL? that reminded farmers that 1 acre of hemp produces as much fiber as 4 acres of trees.
The next year George Schlichten patented a decorticator that could separate the fiber from the hurds in the field, leaving the fiber in beautiful shape for clothing. The invention of the automobile created a large demand for fuel, which could come from plant oils or fossil fuels. Companies producing fossil fuels began creating other products, including plastic and paints. Chemical companies were, and still are, selling massive amounts of pesticides, fertilizers and dyes to the cotton industry. When the newspaper industry, which had direct connections with the chemical, pulp/paper and forest industries, learned of the new hemp paper process and realized the threat it posed to their financial interests, the real campaign to eliminate cannabis began. Led by William Hearst and his vast newspaper and magazine publications, the ‘Reefer Madness’ propaganda convinced many North Americans that marijuana should be made illegal. Andrew Mellon, founder of the Gulf Oil Corporation and banker of Dupont Chemicals, became the head of the US Treasury Department and hired his nephew, Harry Anslinger, to lead the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1929.
Throughout the 1920’s these industrialists stopped purchasing cannabis in the production of goods, instead promoting new synthetic ropes and cloth, chemical paints, petrochemical fuels, plastics and prescription drugs. Governments were convinced by industrial lobby groups to stop buying hemp products and stop researching hemp in favour of new synthetic products. In Canada, Emily Murphy, the first female judge in the British magistrate, wrote a series of anti-drug letters in MacLeans magazine that later became published as the Black Candle in 1922. The next year, 1923, Canada prohibited the use of marijuana, followed by Britain in 1928. California passed marijuana laws in 1913, followed by Wyoming and Utah in 1915, and Texas in 1919. It was not until 1937 that the marijuana laws were passed in the US, primarily because it took a while to convince the population that there was a problem. The only groups that opposed the Marijuana Tax Act were the American Medical Association, who saw cannabis as a useful, safe, affordable medicine, and poultry farmers, who used hemp seed for egg production. In 1938, Popular Mechanics printed a story titled, ‘New Billion Dollar Crop’, not realizing that the plant had been effectively made illegal with the law passed the year before.
LESSON #2: MARIJUANA TAX ACT OF 1937 (con’t)More…
In the early 1900s, the western states developed significant tensions regarding the influx of Mexican-Americans. The revolution in Mexico in 1910 spilled over the border, with General Pershing’s army clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Later in that decade, bad feelings developed between the small farmer and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Then, the depression came and increased tensions, as jobs and welfare resources became scarce. One of the “differences” seized upon during this time was the fact that many Mexicans smoked marijuana and had brought the plant with them. However, the first state law outlawing marijuana did so not because of Mexicans using the drug. Oddly enough, it was because of Mormons using it. Mormons who traveled to Mexico in 1910 came back to Salt Lake City with marijuana. The church was not pleased and ruled against use of the drug. Since the state of Utah automatically enshrined church doctrine into law, the first state marijuana prohibition was established in 1915. (Today, Senator Orrin Hatch serves as the prohibition arm of this heavily church-influenced state.) Other states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). DrugWarRant.com by Peter Guither
Thousands of tons of hemp hurds are used every year by one large powder company for the manufacture of dynamite and TNT. A large paper company, which has been paying more than a million dollars a year in duties on foreign-made cigarette papers, now is manufacturing these papers from American hemp grown in Minnesota. A new factory in Illinois is producing fine bond papers from hemp. The natural materials in hemp make it an economical source of pulp for any grade of paper manufactured, and the high percentage of alpha cellulose promises an unlimited supply of raw material for the thousands of cellulose products our chemists have developed. It is generally believed that all linen is produced from flax. Actually, the majority comes from hemp—it is estimated that more than half of our imported linen fabrics are manufactured from hemp fiber. All of these products, now imported, can be produced from home- grown hemp. Fish nets, bow strings, canvas, strong rope, overalls, tablecloths, fine linen garments, towels, bed linen and thousands of other everyday items can be grown on American farms. Popular Mechanics, New Billion Dollar Crop, 1937
Cannabis and its preparations and derivatives are covered in the bill by the term “marihuana” as that term is defined in section 1, paragraph (b). There is no evidence, however, that the medicinal use of these drugs has caused or is causing cannabis addiction. As remedial agents, they are used to an inconsiderable extent, and the obvious purpose and effect of this bill is to impose so many restrictions on their use as to prevent such use altogether. Since the medicinal use of cannabis has not caused and is not causing addiction, the prevention of the use of the drug for medicinal purposes can accomplish no good end whatsoever. How far it may serve to deprive the public of the benefits of a drug that on further research may prove to be of substantial value, it is impossible to foresee. The American Medical Association has no objection to any reasonable regulation of the medicinal use of cannabis and its preparations and derivatives. It does protest, however, against being called upon to pay a special tax, to use special order forms in order to procure the drug, to keep special records concerning its professional use and to make special returns to the Treasury Department officials, as a condition precedent to the use of cannabis in the practice of medicine. in the several States, all separate and apart from the taxes, order forms, records, and reports required under the Harrison Narcotics Act with reference to opium and coca leaves and their preparations and derivatives. W.C. Williams, Legal Counsel, American Medical Association, July 10, 1937
1916: This is the year William Randolph Hearst begins using his newspapers as a weapon against “marijuana.” The enormous timber acreage and businesses of the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division stand to lose billions of dollars and perhaps go bankrupt. Bulletin 404 is a direct threat to his investments. No one in America knows that “marijuana” is “hemp” because it is Hearst himself who brings the word “marijuana” into the English language via his newspapers. The Spanish word for hemp is “canamo”. But Hearst chooses the Mexican Sonoran colloquialism, “marijuana” which guarantees that no one will realize he is talking about the world’s chief natural medicine and finest industrial resource. In its Bulletin 404 the USDA announces that 1 acre of hemp will produce as much pulp as 4.1 acres of trees and use 1/4 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to breakdown the lignin that binds the pulp fibers. http://www.whutaworld.com/2timeline.html Murphy, Emily, THE BLACK CANDLE, Thomas Allen, 1922Booth, Martin, CANNABIS: A HISTORY, Bantam Books, 2004Mills, James, CANNABIS BRITANNICA: EMPIRE, TRADE AND PROHIBITION 1800-1928, Oxford University Press, 2003Bollinger, Lorenz, CANNABIS SCIENCE: FROM PROHIBITION TO HUMAN RIGHTS, Peter Lang Pub. Inc., 1997Herer, Jack, THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES, AH HA Publishing, 1985Deitch, Robert, HEMP- AMERICAN HISTORY REVISITED, Algora Publishing, 2003Roulac, John, HEMP HORIZONS, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1997Rosenthal, Ed, ed., HEMP TODAY, Quick American Archives, 1994Robinson, Rowan, THE GREAT BOOK OF HEMP, Park Street Press, 1996
Bonnie, Richard + Whitebread, Charles H., THE MARIUANA CONVICTION: A HISTORY OF MARIJUANA PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES, University of Virginia Press, 1974
Himmelson, Jerome, THE STRANGE CAREER OF MARIJUANA: POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY OF DRUG CONTROL IN AMERICA, Greenwood Press, 1993Gibson, Kenyon & Nick and Cindy MacKintosh, HEMP FOR VICTORY: HISTORY AND QUALITIES OF THE WORLD’S MOST USEFUL PLANT, Whitacker Publishing, 2006
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