UVSS HEMPOLOGY 101 CLUB
LECTURE SERIES 2007/08

LESSON #2 : MARIJUANA TAX ACT OF 1937 - Part 1 

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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, ‘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 Maclean’s 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.