BobNarley

1.3 CANNABIS AND AMERICAN HISTORY
Like their European forbears, Americans cultivated Cannabis primarily for hemp fibre. Hemp seed was planted in Chile in 1545,(64) Canada in 1606, Virginia in 1611, and in the Puritan settlements in Massachusetts in the 1630s(15). Hemp-fibre production was especially important to the embryonic colonies for homespun cloth and for ship rigging. In 1637, the General Court at Hartford ordered that "every family within this plantation shall procure and plant this present year one spoonful of English hemp seed in some soyle."(12)
Hemp growing was encouraged by the British parliament to meet the need for fibre to rig the British fleets. Partly to dissuade the colonists from growing only tobacco, bounties were paid for hemp and manuals on hemp cultivation were distributed. In 1762, that state of Virginia rewarded hemp growers and "imposed penalties upon those that did not produce it."(2)
The hemp industry started in Kentucky in 1775 and in Missouri some 50 years later. By 1860, hemp production in Kentucky alone exceeded 40,000 tons and the industry was second only to cotton in the South. The Civil War disrupted production and the industry never recovered, despite several attempts by the United States Department of Agriculture to stimulate cultivation by importing Chinese and Italian hemp seed to Illinois, Nebraska, and California. Competition from imported jute and "hemp" (Musa textiles) kept domestic production under 10,000 tons per year. In the early 1900s, a last effort by the USDA failed to offset the economic difficulties of a labour shortage and the lack of development of modern machinery for the hemp industry (64). However, it was legal force that would bring an end to US hemp production.
For thousands of years marijuana had been valued and respected for its medicinal and euphoric properties. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica of 1894 estimated that 300 million people, mostly from Eastern countries, were regular marijuana users. Millions more in both the East and the West received prescription marijuana for such wide-ranging ills as hydrophobia and tetanus.
By the turn of the century, many doctors had dropped marijuana from the pharmacopoeias: drugs such as aspirin, though less safe (marijuana has never kill anyone), were more convenient, more predictable, and more specific to the condition being treated. Pill-popping would become an American institution.
Marijuana was not a legal issue in the United States until the turn of the twentieth century. Few Americans smoked marijuana, and those that did were mostly minority groups. According to author Michael Aldrich, (1) "The illegalisation of Cannabis came about because of who was using it" - Mexican labourers, southern blacks, and the newly subjugated Filipinos.
In states where there were large non-white populations, racist politicians created the myths that marijuana caused insanity, lust, violence and crime. One joint and you were addicted, and marijuana led the way to the use of "equivalent drugs" - cocaine, opium and heroin. These myths were promoted by ignorant politicians and journalists, who had neither experience nor knowledge of Cannabis, and grew into an anti-marijuana hysteria by the next generation.
For example, the first states to pass restriction on marijuana use were in the Southwest, where there were large populations of migrant workers from Mexico. One of the first states to act was California, which, "with its huge Chicano population and opium smoking Chinatowns, labelled marijuana 'poison' in 1907, prohibited its possession unless prescribed by a physician in 1915, and included it among hard narcotics, morphine and cocaine in 1929." (1)
In marijuana, the mainstream society found a defenceless scapegoat to cover the ills of poverty, racism, and cultural prejudice. San Franciscans "were frightened by the 'large influx of Hindoos ... demanding Cannabis indica' who were initiating 'the whites into their habit.'" (11) Editorialists heightened public fears with nightmarish headlines of the "marijuana menace" and "killer weed," and fear of Cannabis gradually spread through the West. By 1929, 16 western states had passed punitive restrictions governing marijuana use.
Marijuana was not singled out be anti-drug campaigners. During this time, Congress not only banned "hard" narcotics, but also had prohibited alcohol and considered the prohibition of medical pain killers and even caffeine.
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in 1930 with Harry Anslinger as its first commissioner. During the first few years of operation, the bureau minimised the marijuana problem, limited mostly to the Southwest and certain ghettos in the big cities of the East. However, the bureau was besieged with pleas from local police and sheriffs to help with marijuana problems. The FBN continued to resist this pressure, because Commissioner Anslinger had serious doubts as to whether federal law restricting marijuana use could be sustained as constitutional. Further, FBN reports indicate that the bureau did not believe that the marijuana problem was as great as its public reputation. Control of the drug would also prove extremely difficult, for as Anslinger pointed out, the plant grew "like dandelions." (11)
The joblessness and misery of the depression added impetus to the anti-marijuana campaign. This came about indirectly, by way of focusing public sentiment against migrant and minority workers who were blamed for taking "American" jobs. Much of this sentiment grew out of cultural and racial prejudice and was supported by groups such as Key Men of America and the American Coalition. The goal of these groups was to "Keep America American."
However, by 1935 almost every state had restricted marijuana use, and local police and influential politicians had managed to pressure the FBN to seek a federal marijuana law. The constitutional question could be circumvented by cleverly tying restrictions to a transfer tax, effectively giving the federal government legal control of marijuana.
With this new tack, the FBN prepared for congressional hearings on the Marijuana Tax Act so that passage of the bill would be assured. Anslinger and politicians seeking to gain from this highly emotional issue railroaded the Marijuana Tax Act through the 1937 Congress. Anslinger made sure that "the only information that they (the congressmen) has was what we would give them at the hearings." (11) No users were allowed to testify in pot's defence, and doctors and scientists were ridiculed for raising contrary views (16). The new federal law made both raising and use of the plant illegal without the purchase of a hard-to-acquire federal stamp. The FBN immediately intensified the propaganda campaign against marijuana and for the next generation, the propaganda continued unchallenged.
The marijuana hysteria also ended any hopes for a recovery of the hemp industry. What had been needed was a machine that would solve the age-old problem of separating the fibre from the plant stem, an effort which required considerable skilled labour. The machine that could have revolutionised hemp production was introduced to the American public in the February 1938 edition of Popular Mechanics. But the Marijuana Tax Act has been passed four months earlier, and the official attitude toward all Cannabis is best illustrated by this quote from Harry J. Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics: "Now this (hemp) is the finest fibre known to man-kind, my God, if you ever have a shirt made of it, your grandchildren would never wear it out. You take Polish families. We'd go in and start to tear it up and the man came out with his shotgun yelling, 'These are my clothes for next winter!'" (2)
During the war years, after the Japanese had cut off America's supply of manila hemp, worried officials supplied hemp seed and growing information to Midwestern farmers. In Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, hemp farmers showed their wartime spirit by producing over 63,000 tons of hemp fibre in 1943.
Unlike many of our ancient domesticated plants, Cannabis never lost its colonising tendencies or ability to survive without human help. Cannabis readily "escapes" cultivated fields and may flourish long after its cultivation is abandoned. However, Cannabis always keeps in contact by flourishing in our waste areas - our vacant fields and lots, along roads and drainage ditches, and in our rubbish and garbage heaps. Perhaps it awaits discovery by future generations. The cycle has been repeated many times.
States that once supported hemp industry are now dotted with stands of escaped weedy hemp. Weedy hemp grows across the country, except in the Southwest and parts of the Southeast. Distribution is centered heavily in the Midwest. Most of these plants are descended from Chinese and European hemp strains that were bred in Kentucky and the grown in Midwestern stated during World War II. But some weed patches, such as in Kentucky and Missouri, go back perhaps to revolutionary times.
The Anslinger crusades that continued through the sixties are a fine example of government propaganda and control of individual lives and beliefs. We still feel the ramifications in our present laws and in the fear-response to marijuana harboured by many people who grew up with Anslingian concepts. Poor Cannabis, portrayed as a dangerous narcotic that would bring purgatory upon anyone who took a toke - violence, addiction, lust, insanity - you name it, and marijuana caused it. All it ever did to us was get us stoned ... things slowed down a bit ... enough to stop and look around.

Hopefully, we are living in the last years of the era of illegal marijuana and the persecution of this plant. Cannabis is truly wondrous, having served human needs for, perhaps, 10,000 years. It deserves renewed attention not only for its chemical properties, but also as an ecologically sensible alternative for synthetic fibres in general and especially wood-pulp paper. May Cannabis be vindicated.

BobNarley

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