On October 30, 1929, a bill sponsored by a senator from Texas was introduced to amend the Narcotics Drugs Import and Export Act of 1922 so that it would include cannabis. The Bureau of Prohibition rejected the bill on the basis that cannabis was grown domestically. Similar action to add cannabis to America’s first federal drug law, the 1914 Harrison Narcotic Act, which controlled opium, coca and their derivatives, was also rejected.
Cannabis had obviously not been a problem when the Harrison Act was drawn up. But at that time Hearst didn’t need it to be, nor did Mellon, or Du Pont.
By the late 1920s, the potential for hemp in making fuel for gas and diesel engines had become a threat to the profits of the petroleum industry. The potential of a revitalized hemp industry was also a looming threat to those making money in the tree pulp paper industry.
The International Paper Company also had a large stake in getting rid of hemp. One of the richest men in America, J.P. Morgan and the bank J.P. Morgan & Company held interest in this company. Mellon Bank had financial ties to J.P. Morgan.
From 1927 to 1935 the International Paper Company was called the International Paper and Power Company, doubling the reasoning behind its support to ban hemp farming. The company produced the pulp that was made into much of the nation’s newsprint. This gave it a tie-in with the dominant media of the day, the newspaper industry. Not only was the International Paper Company opposed to the development of hemp for paper, it was also opposed to and worked against the development of making paper out of farm waste, such as corn stalks.
The U.S. government’s Bureau of Forestry and Forest Products also had a huge interest in making sure trees remained the most popular material for paper and building products, both of which could be made from hemp (plywood made from hemp fiber and resin is four times stronger than plywood made from tree wood, and is les susceptible to rot and infestation). The U.S. government owned millions of acres of forestland and had conducted its own research into which trees would be best for the production of paper. Those working in the government departments controlling the U.S. forests held interest in keeping wood pulp as the chief source for material for paper. Their department budgets would increase as the demand for both tree pulp and building materials increased.
For years the Bureau of Forestry dismissed studies concluding that hemp and farm waste were perfect materials for making paper. Information was available at least as early as 1910 indicating that hemp was an ideal material for paper. The 1910 Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture included the C.J. Brand study, Utilization of Crop Plants in Paper Making, which stated, “In addition to the waste materials that are available, evidence has been gathered that certain crops can probably be grown at a profit to both the grower and manufacturer, solely for paper-making purposes. One of the most promising of these is hemp.”
Furthering its actions discouraging investment in the hemp industry, in April 1931 the U.S. government’s Bureau of Plant Industry of the Department of Agriculture issued a statement discouraging farmers from cultivating hemp. The Bureau of Plant Industry withdrew its support from its research into industrial hemp in 1933. The research studies were being conducted by Dr. Andrew H. Wright and Dr. Lyster H. Dewey.
Under the Roosevelt administration, starting in 1935 the Civilian Conservation Corps was used to plant hundreds of thousands of acres of Southern Pine trees on government forest land in southern states. The trees were planted specifically for the benefit of the paper pulp and lumber industries and to make the U.S. less dependant on Canadian tree products. It was the specific type of tree the government’s researchers found to be excellent for paper pulp and building material. News of this was published in the June 7, 1934, edition of the New York Times in an article titled Roosevelt Approves Development of New Southern Industry. Investors quickly followed, including the St. Regis Paper Company, J.P. Morgan, Du Pont, Great Northern Paper Company, and the International Paper Company. This stands as another example of how large corporations and the wealthy men who were affiliated with them manipulated government to spend millions of U.S. dollars to their benefit. It also shows why the same men and companies wanted to do away with the emerging hemp industry.
At one point the International Paper Company was involved in a stock deal with Hearst. But, because of a 1929 Federal Trade Commission investigation authorized by Senate Resolution 292, which was introduced by Senator Thomas Schall of Minnesota, the two companies liquidated their stock deal. But in 1930, Hearst and other newspaper publishers invested in the newsprint companies. This was reported in the September 19, 1930, issue of the New York Times in an article titled Hearst Interests Acquire Canada Stock: Relinquishing Shares in Their Own Subsidiary. By the mid-30s the tangled web of newspaper companies investing in newsprint companies that made their paper from wood pulp increased the reasoning to get rid of an alternative raw material source of paper. Perhaps this is why the March 10, 1929, edition of the New York Times printed the article titled Cornstalk Paper Not Satisfactory. As if they had to convince investors that putting their money into companies developing non-tree paper was a bad idea, which it wasn’t. In an article published on March 24, 1929, the New York Times published an article quoting R.S. Kellog of the Newsprint Institute, who was critical of the development of paper from farm crops. To say the least, The Newsprint Institute was not the most reliable source for unbiased information on the best raw material for paper.
The plan to get rid of the competition, hemp, was in the works.
A way had to be created to make hemp into such a problem that it needed to be outlawed. What better way than to give its close relative plant an image overhaul, with a new slang name, and to label it as a destroyer of sanity and society?
As mentioned earlier, August 12, 1930, was the day the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established under the Treasury Department. Harry J. Anslinger was appointed as its commissioner. Anslinger had contacted the American Drug Manufacturers Association and the American Medical Association, proposing strict limits on cannabis. Both associations were against the limits, and both wanted cannabis to remain available as a medicine.
As a way to establish uniformity in record keeping as it applied to medications, in 1922 the American Medical Association drafted the early stages of guidelines to standardize the way prescription drugs were prescribed and controlled. The medical community was aware that some of the very same substances they prescribed as medicine were also being misused and sometimes played a part in crime. Newspapers dramatizing front-page stories about crime to increase circulation often presented the image of drug-crazed addicts committing various crimes.
In 1923 representatives from the American Medical Association as well as pharmaceutical companies gathered and approved a draft of the proposed guidelines.
In 1925 the National Conference of Commissioners for Uniform State Laws gathered. Composed of governor appointees from each state, the commission also drafted a measure that would place controls on medications. Known as the Uniform State Narcotic Act of 1925, this document included cannabis as one of the substances to be controlled. But the act did not become law. Instead, another draft of the act was composed in 1928, which did not apply the same strict rules to cannabis as it did to other controlled substances. Other drafts were composed in 1929 and 1930.
The September 12, 1932, conference held to recompose the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act included representatives of the AMA, Department of State, the Public Health Service, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and the National Association of Retail Druggists. The AMA Bill was drafted and was prepared for presentation to the National Conference of State Commissioners in October. The National Association of Retail Druggists (NARD) attorney, E. Brookmeyer, opposed Section 12 of the measure to include the control of cannabis in the AMA Bill. Because of the NARD opposition to Section 12, it was deleted from the act.
On October 8, 1932, a meeting was held called The National Conference on Commissions on the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act. They accepted a revised draft of the bill, which classified cannabis as a narcotic with a similar status as opium. With the goal of getting state legislatures to adopt the proposed law, Anslinger directed the agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to work with the sponsors of the Uniform Act to lobby the legislatures and conduct a campaign to tilt public opinion in favor of the act.
One of Anslinger’s sources to compose his propaganda demonizing marijuana was the 1929 Wickersham Commission Report on Crime and the Foreign Born. Within the report was the Warnhuis Study which associated marijuana with crime and Mexicans. Anslinger also relied on sensationalistic Hearst news stories as if the stories were fact. He also used police reports that related to crimes allegedly committed by minorities.
“Those who are accustomed to habitual use of the drug [marijuana] are said eventually to develop a delirious rage after its administration during which they are temporarily, at least, irresponsible, and prone to commit violent crimes.”
– Anslinger’s Bureau of Narcotics brochure, 1932
Finding a newspaper industry eager for sensationalistic stories, Anslinger’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics used this to their advantage. If they could stir the public into a frenzy about so-called drug-crazed criminals, then the lawmakers would be pressured to act, including by approving legislation criminalizing the use of cannabis. In September and October 1931 The Christian Science Monitor published articles using information provided by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
But the country as a whole had more important issues to deal with than the random violence that might be caused by mythical drug-addicted criminals. These were not the best of financial times for the country. To adopt and enforce such a law as the Uniform Act would have been quite expensive. What all of this proposed legislation did was increase the public awareness and curiosity about this substance that was now being called marihuana. When the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act was passed in 1932 it applied weak regulations to cannabis, leaving individual states to decide how to control the substance within their borders.
As all of this was taking place, it remained in the interests of certain American businessmen, politicians, and government workers to kill hemp farming, hemp research, the inventions and redesign of machinery that greatly improved hemp farming and processing; and the development of hemp products and extracts that could interfere with the profits of the wood pulp industry, the petroleum industry, the coal industry, and the emerging plastics industry.
In his quest to spread mistruths about hemp and cannabis, Anslinger found a friend in William Randolph Hearst. Hearst had the need to increase the financial worth of the millions of acres of trees he had a permit to harvest from federal land, and to increase the worth of the paper companies he had interest in. Anslinger had the need to make hemp illegal, because his family and their business and political associates needed hemp out of the picture. Hearst already had a history of printing outrageous stories that would sell newspapers. But then he had an even better, and more self-serving reason to print salacious stories that would increase circulation. He had financial problems, and he needed to save his empire. It was a perfect match. Anslinger needed to get the public and those in authority to view marijuana as a huge and growing problem. There is no better way to do this than through the mass media. Hearst’s publishing empire provided the perfect avenue because, in that time before radio and TV, Hearst newspapers and magazines were the mass media.
While in the past the Hearst papers printed stories about all the other drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, the new focus was on cannabis, which they called marihuana, and hashish, which is made from cannabis resin.
Hearst already had some experience in publishing bizarre stories about marihuana. One story appearing in Hearst publications on February 25, 1928, was headlined, “Marihuana Causes New Peril: Weed Drives Friends to Murder.” In the same month another story told of how a person on marihuana would grab a knife and “run through the streets, hacking and killing everyone.” It went on to say that a person could “grow enough marihuana in a window box to drive the whole population of the United States stark, staring, raving mad.”
With Anslinger, Hearst took his marihuana stories a bit further.
Crazy stories were drawn up to spread the news that marijuana turned boys into ax murderers, and made people kill random strangers and fight with police. Hearst’s yellow journalism described horror stories to create public fear of the horrible monster drug, marihuana.
“Marihuana influences Negroes to look at White people in the eye, step on White men’s shadows, and look at a White woman twice.”
– Hearst newspaper story on marihuana printed nationwide, 1934
Much to Anslinger’s chagrin, few states did much to enforce the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act. The states were to vote on the optional marijuana clause and by April 1934 only Florida, Nevada, New York, and New Jersey had voted for the clause. The Act also denied Anslinger’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics jurisdiction over cannabis.
In July 1933 Anslinger sent all federal legislatures a Federal Bureau of Narcotics White Paper titled Official Statement on the Need for Uniform Drug Act. In it he expressed his views that marijuana needed to be added to the act.
Anslinger’s interest in hemp was apparent in that he sourced the Department of Agriculture for information on the hemp industry. In December 1933 Anslinger received a report written by Dr. Andrew H. Wright and Dr. Lyster H. Dewey. It was titled Hemp Fiber Production and gave a bleak picture of the hemp industry, mostly because the industry had not received the interest of investors or financial backing of research and development, and it had trickled to a small number of farms, and mostly in Wisconsin.
When news of potential legislation placing limits on cannabis reached Dr. Wright and Dr. Dewey, in the spring of 1934 they contacted the Federal Bureau of Narcotics seeking information on how the legislation might affect industrial hemp. Wright and Dewey knew that hemp showed economic potential as an alternative source for paper, building materials, and other products (fabric, fuel, animal feed, etc.).
Wright and Dewey received a response from Anslinger on April 7, 1934. Anslinger mentioned the 1927 Nebraska law that outlawed the cultivation of marijuana, and he explained that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics did not have jurisdiction over cannabis, but that it was working to add a clause to the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act that would require the growers and producers of cannabis to be licensed. Anslinger advised that the Wisconsin State Legislature enact a “regulatory measure to ensure that the flowering tops of the plant” were not used for “improper or nonmedical use.” Anslinger was purposely confusing the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana.
One way Anslinger learned about the renewed interest in industrial hemp was through correspondence with Wright and Dewey. As researchers working on developing hemp strains, these two were at the center of the interest among investors as a potentially huge new source for cellulose, fiber, and oil products that would compete with certain industries, including lumber, paper, fabric, plastics, and petroleum.
Anslinger also learned of the growing hemp industry through Helen Howell Moorehead. She was a member of the Foreign Policy Association and secretary of the League of Nations Opium and Dangerous Drug Advisory Committee. After learning through the Department of Agriculture that there were hemp farms being set up in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin that were using the improved hemp-processing machinery to produce saleable hemp materials, Moorehead shared the information with Anslinger.
Apparently people in certain industries weren’t happy with the fact that there were suddenly thousands of acres of hemp being planted in the Midwest. Under Anslinger’s direction, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics began requesting and receiving reports from the Bureau of Plant Industry, which was tracking the progress of the new hemp industry.
Literature in trade publications as well as in commercial magazines was helping to fuel interest in “alternative” crops and farm waste that could be used to create various industrial materials. Popular Mechanics magazine featured at least two articles covering this topic. The May 1930 issue featured an article titled Money from Farm Waste. The September 1934 issue included an article titled New Uses for Old Crops. Throughout the 1930s the Paper Trade Journal regularly featured articles and studies mentioning hemp as an ideal material for paper.
In 1935 Anslinger began a new plan to tilt public opinion in favor of outlawing the use of marijuana. The propaganda mill to make the public fear marijuana went into overdrive. Information was spread in the press that marijuana was destroying youth, a threat to good people everywhere, and triggered crime, caused insanity, and was used by the underclass. He provided misleading information to a variety of groups that he knew would also cooperate if they were led to believe that this marijuana substance was a menace to society. Among the groups he worked with were the National Councils of Catholic Men and Women, The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the National Parent Teacher Association, and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. At this point marijuana was not well known, and relatively few Americans knew about its use. But what they were learning about it was information based on lies being spread by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and others interested in destroying the hemp industry.
These actions to build public awareness of this so-called threat just so happened to coincide with renewed interest in hemp farming in the Midwest. It also was in sync with the emerging wood pulp industry and those investing in it, including the International Paper Company, the Du Pont Company, and Hearst. These actions stand as a perfect example of how industry pressures government to form public policy using exaggeration and lies to benefit corporate interests. It is government for the few at a cost to many. In this case, the entire planet, which soon would bathe in greenhouse gasses spewed by millions of engines burning petroleum.
In June 1936 the Conference for the Suppression of Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs was held in Geneva. Stuart Fuller of the State Department accompanied Anslinger to the Conference where they proposed to add a ban on cannabis to the international treaty. All of the other nations rejected the proposal.
Other plans were in the works.
Back home, Anslinger had known about a pamphlet produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Farmer’s Bulletin No. 663 provided farmers with information about how to cultivate both hemp and poppies for the pharmaceutical industry. Under Anslinger’s direction, the pamphlet was removed from circulation.
“Police officials in cities of those states where it is most widely used estimate that fifty percent of the violent crimes committed in districts occupied by Mexicans, Spaniards, Latin-Americans, Greeks, and Negroes may be traced to this evil.”
– Federal Bureau of Narcotics propaganda, 1935
In September 1936 the Chicago Tribune published an article by Frank Ridgway about its own hemp farming titled, Day by Day Story of the Experimental Farms. On September 28, 1936, Anslinger sent a letter of concern about this article to Elizabeth Bass, the district supervisor of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics office in Chicago. She then met with a worker on the Chicago Tribune’s experimental farm and questioned him about the planned uses of the hemp crop.
Reporting back to Anslinger, Bass was then instructed to visit the farmers who were growing hemp. He also asked her to “Ascertain the demand for the machine that was used to harvest marijuana. Find out the places in the U.S. where there is such a demand. Find just what the hemp is used for in those sections.”
In her November 3, 1936 letter that is now in the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 files of the National Archives, Bass shared her view with Anslinger that, “Objections raised by the manufacturing druggists who have slight need of the extracts of the cannabis in medicinal compounds will be trifling when compared with the country-wide protests that will be raised as with one voice by the experimental stations everywhere developing the use of the fibers of the cannabis plant stems for every variety of textile.” In other words, Bass was telling Anslinger that a ban on growing hemp would be a major problem for a lot of farmers, investors, and other businesspeople.
On November 4, 1936, the Chicago Tribune printed another article by Frank Ridgway about the newspaper’s experimental hemp farm. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 files of the National Archives show that Bass sent Anslinger a copy of this article on November 6, 1936.
In 1937 three new hemp companies formed in Minnesota. These included the Central Fibre Corporation, the Champagne Paper Company, and Chempco, Inc. Additionally, the Amhempco Corp. of Danville, Illinois, which began hemp farming in 1935, became the largest of all the new hemp companies as it had planted over 7,000 acres of hemp in 1937. More bankers, farmers, and investors became interested in this growing industry. Some of the farms were using hemp harvesting machines made by the John W. Deere Co. of Moline, Illinois.
The April 12, 1937 edition of the Washington Herald published an article in which Anslinger again compared marihuana to “the hideous monster Frankenstein.” The Hearst newspapers and magazines often shared stories, so one story, or a slightly different version of it, might be printed in other Hearst publications in cities across the U.S.
Furthering his propaganda machine, Anslinger used a study conducted by a French pharmacist named Dr. Jules Bouquet. The study was conducted in the North African province of Tunisia. The study was titled the Sub-Committee on Cannabis of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs. Anyone reading Bouquet’s words today should be able to detect more than a hair of racism, yet Anslinger relied on these same words as if they were scientific conclusions that would support the proposed legislation against marijuana.
“The basis of the Moslem character is indolence. These people love idleness and day-dreaming, and to the majority of them work is the most unpleasant of all necessities. Inordinately vain-glorious, thirsting for every pleasure, they are manifestly unable to realize more than a small fraction of their desires. Their unrestrained imagination supplies the rest. Hemp, which enhances the imagination, is the narcotic best adapted to their mentality. The hashish addict can dream of the life he longs for. Under the influence of the drug he becomes wealthy, the owner of a well-filled harem, the delightful cool gardens, of a board richly supplied with exquisite and copious viands. His every longing is satisfied, happiness is his. When the period of intoxication is over and he is again faced with the drab realities of his normal shabby life, his one desire is to find a corner where he may sleep until a new orgy of hemp brings him back to the realm of illusions.”
– Dr. Jules Bouguet, a French hospital pharmacist, author of study on cannabis use in Tunisia for the Sub-Committee on Cannabis of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs
Anslinger revived and exploited the questionable story of the “assassins.” This story evolved over the years and had something to do with Marco Polo’s travels in Persia. Polo’s Il Milione (The Travels of Marco Polo) recounts how he heard about a brutal group of people living in mountains of northern Persia under the rule of an Islamic dissident master, Hasan bin-Sabah, who required his followers to kill anyone at his command. The followers are said to have been users of hashish and were called the hashshishin, which became the word assassin, and the followers as The Order of Assassins. But Anslinger’s use of the myth of the Old Man of the Mountain and the assassin terminology had more to do with distorting this myth into getting people to believe that marijuana makes people want to kill, or that the substance is an “assassin of youth.” On the contrary, marijuana and hashish are more likely to induce a placid state.
It is clear that Anslinger was using falsehoods and boldface lies to destroy the hemp industry.
A Mankato, Minnesota, attorney named G.P. Smith was interested in investing in the growing hemp industry of the Midwest. Hearing about the proposed new law that would restrict hemp farming, he wrote a letter to Minnesota Congressman Elmer J. Ryan.
In the June 12, 1937 letter Smith stated, “We are unable to understand why such a bill should be proposed because, according to our information, it could serve no good purpose and would embarrass, if not kill, an important agricultural development.”
Ryan passed the letter along to Anslinger’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Anslinger packed a letter with lies and distortions and sent it to Congressman Ryan reassuring him that the proposed bill would allow for the hemp industry to continue while bringing “out into the open all production and sale of the tops, leaves, and seeds of the hemp plant which contain the dangerous drug marijuana and to prevent, if possible, the illicit production and sale of these tops, leaves, and seeds.”
Anslinger knew he was not telling the truth. He was aware of the studies about hemp, and that it held promise of becoming a huge industry. He also had a clear understanding of the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana. And he continued on with his campaign to end the cultivation of hemp by passage of the Marijuana Tax Act so that the financial interests of certain industries would be protected. By April the Marijuana Tax Act had already been drafted.
“The sprawling body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day after a plunge from the fifth story of a Chicago apartment house. Everyone called it suicide but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marihuana, and history as hashish. It is a narcotic used in the form of cigarettes, comparatively new to the United States and as dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake.”
– Marijuana Assassin of Youth, American Magazine, July 1937; credited to Harry Anslinger
“In Los Angeles, a youth was walking along a downtown street after inhaling a marihuana cigarette. For many addicts, merely a portion of ‘reefer’ is enough to induce intoxication. Suddenly, for no reason, he decided that someone had threatened to kill him and that his life at that very moment was in danger. Wildly he looked about him. The only person in sight was an aged bootblack. Drug-crazed nerve centers conjured the innocent old shoe-shiner into a destroying monster. Mad with fright, the addict hurried to his room and got a gun. He killed the old man, and then, later babbled his grief over what had been wanton, uncontrolled murder. ‘I thought someone was after me, he said. ‘That’s the only reason I did it. I had never seen the old fellow before. Something just told me to kill him!’ That’s marijuana.”
– Harry Anslinger antimarijuana propaganda published by Hearst, 1937
The propaganda worked. The public fear brought the states and law enforcement to encourage the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to come up with a solution for this greatly exaggerated concern that marijuana was going to destroy the youth of America and cause incurable insanity in those who dared partake of the drug. (Morgenthau took over as Secretary of the Treasury from Andrew Mellon in 1932.)
Herman Oliphant was the general counsel of the treasury. He was assigned the task of drafting a law that would rid society of marijuana. Failing to create legislation that was unlikely to be judged in conformity with constitutional standards, Oliphant had already been considering the National Firearms Act as well as the Harrison Narcotics Act. Finding that the National Firearms Act effectively imposed a large tax on machine guns, and that Congress upheld it on March 29, 1937, Oliphant found what he thought could be a constitutionally acceptable way to put an end to hemp farming and the marijuana market. Seeing that a large tax on machine guns was ruled constitutional in the case of the National Fire Arms Act, Oliphant believed that the same could be done for hemp and marijuana.
Secretly, Anslinger and Oliphant drafted the Marijuana Tax Act. Dismissing any advice they received from the medical and scientific community, Anslinger and Oliphant continued to work on their plan to present the Marijuana Tax Act to Congress.
In April 1937, using fake news stories and doctored information that was truly a pack of lies, treasury attorney S.G. Tipton provided the case in support of the Marijuana Tax Act. It was presented to a six-member House Ways and Means Committee on April 14. The committee was selected because it presented bills to the House of Representatives free of consideration or debate from other congressional committees. This way representatives from districts where hemp was grown would not be able to oppose the legislation.
Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina chaired the House committee presented with HR 6385. He was a friend of the Du Pont family. When Doughton called the Ways and Means Committee hearing into order on May 11, 1937, he described HR 6385 as a “bill to impose an occupational excise tax upon certain dealers in marihuana, to impose a transfer tax upon certain dealings in marihuana, and to safeguard the [tax] revenue therefrom by registry and recording.” He used the terminology that they wanted him to use, referring to cannabis as marihuana, thus sticking to the agenda to outlaw the cannabis plant, and its relation, hemp.
The Treasury Department’s own assistant counsel, Clinton Hester, presented more lies to the committee by stating, “The purpose of HR 6385 is to employ the federal taxing power not only to raise revenue from the marihuana traffic, but also to discourage the current and widespread undesirable use of marihuana by smokers and drug addicts, and thus drive the traffic into channels where the plant will be put to valuable industrial, medical, and scientific uses.” Of course that made no sense because the bill would effectively apply prohibitive taxes on the plant such a way that it wouldn’t be traded, and there would be no revenue raised. Hester wasn’t stupid. He was simply saying the words that he was told to say because there was huge money to be made by his associates if the bill became law.
Anslinger testified at the Ways and Means Committee hearing with some more lies and outlandish reasoning when he said, “This traffic in marijuana is increasing to such an extent that it has become the cause for the greatest national concern. In medical schools the physician-to-be is taught that without opium, medicine would be like a one-armed man. That is true, because you cannot get along without opium. But here is a drug that is not like opium. Opium has all the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug (marijuana) is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured.”
“I think it is an established fact that prolonged use leads to insanity in certain cases.”
– Dr. Carl Voegtlin, chief of the Division of Pharmacology of the National Institutes of Health, lying as he testified at the Ways and Means Committee hearing on marijuana, April 1937. Voegtlin used no scientific evidence because studies had been blocked under Anslinger’s reign as head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which denied scientific institutions the use of marijuana in scientific studies.
Dr. William C. Woodward, an attorney and director of the American Medical Association’s Bureau of Legal Medicine spoke against the bill, and attacked it as based on unsound research. He clearly was of the opinion that cannabis should be kept on the market as a medicine, and even spoke against the “marihuana” terminology being used at the meeting. Woodward smartly questioned the claims made by, the prefabricated testimony of, and the unfactual newspaper articles presented by Anslinger. Woodward expressed his concern with the way the proposed law had been created without the use of scientific evidence, and with no input from various agencies and departments that could present statistics supporting or dismissing Anslinger’s claims. Unfortunately, Woodward also displayed some measure of belief in the newspaper articles, a sign of the trust people had in journalism at that time.
“That there is a certain amount of narcotic addiction of an objectionable character no one will deny. The newspapers have called attention to it so prominently that there must be some grounds for statements. It has surprised me, however, that the facts on which these statements have been based have not been brought before this committee by competent primary evidence. We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marihuana addiction. We are told that the use of marihuana causes crime.
But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marihuana habit. An informed inquiry shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point.
You have been told that schoolchildren are great users of marihuana cigarettes. No one has been summoned from the Children’s Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit, among children.
Inquiry of the Children’s Bureau shows that they have had no occasion to investigate it and know nothing particularly of it.
Inquiry of the Office of Education – and they certainly should know something of the prevalence of the habit among the schoolchildren of the country, if there is a prevalent habit – indicates that they have had no occasion to investigate and know nothing of it.
Moreover, there is in the Treasury Department itself, the Public Health Service, with its Division of Mental Hygiene. The Division of Mental Hygiene was, in the first place, the Division of Narcotics. It was converted into the Division of Mental Hygiene, I think, about 1930. That particular bureau has control at the present time of the narcotics farms that were created about 1929 or 1930 and came into operation a few years later. No one has been summoned from that bureau to give evidence on that point.
Informal inquiry by me indicates that they have had no record of any marihuana or cannabis addicts who have ever been committed to those farms.
The bureau of Public Health Service has also a division of pharmacology. If you desire evidence as to the pharmacology of cannabis, that obviously is the place where you can get direct and primary evidence, rather than the indirect hearsay evidence.
…There is nothing in the medical use of cannabis that has any relation to cannabis addiction. I use the word ‘cannabis’ in preference to ‘marihuana,’ because cannabis is the correct term for describing the plant and its products. The term ‘marihuana’ is a mongrel word that has crept into this country over the Mexican border and has no general meaning, except as it relates to the use of cannabis preparations in smoking.
… We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even, to the profession, that it was being prepared.”
– Dr. William C. Woodward, arguing against passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937
Woodward’s corrective words and displeasure with the proposed law were not welcome. The Chairman, Doughton, reproached Dr. Woodward by reading newspaper articles as if the articles were fact. But the articles contained lies about marijuana and fabricated stories about crimes committed by people who supposedly smoked marijuana. The chairman (friend of Du Pont) essentially dismissed Dr. Woodward’s argument and said that without the proposed law “we would have no civilization whatever.”
The general counsel for the National Oil Seed Institute, Ralph Loziers, argued against the law at the House hearing. He reasoned that hemp seed “is used in all the Oriental nations and also in a part of Russia as food. It is grown in their fields and used as oatmeal. Millions of people every day are using hemp seed in the Orient as food. They have been doing that for many generations, especially in periods of famine.”
Because of the testimony of a representative from a birdseed company, who said that hemp seed was a main component of his product and beneficial to the plumage, hemp seed was excluded from the bill, and remained legal to sell for bird and animal feed.
On June 14, 1937 HR 6385 was presented to the full House. The representatives were presented with some of the fabricated information about how marijuana was ruining society, destroying the minds of the country’s youth, and increasing crime.
The act was passed by the House and went to the Senate Committee on Finance, which conducted their hearing on July 12, 1937.
Who chaired the Senate Committee on Finance that was presented with HR 6385? Prentice Brown of Michigan. Who were Brown’s friends? The Du Pont family.
Anslinger spoke as a witness and again used his fabricated news stories to argue for the bill. He also dismissed concerns that the bill would negatively affect the industrial hemp industry.
Several hemp industry leaders were there to present their case. Wisconsin’s Rens Hemp Company founder, Matt Rens, argued for a reduction in the proposed tax. He was supported in his argument by the superintendent of the Danville, Illinois, AmHempCo Corporation.
The Hemp Chemical Corporation was also represented by a spokesman at the hearing. His words give an idea of how new was this whole concept of a relationship between hemp and a so-called dangerous drug that was going to ruin society. He said that people “did not know until two months ago that the hemp which they grew there contained marihuana. Until this agitation came up they did not dream of it.” His words indicate how Anslinger’s campaign had successfully confused and misinformed even the most involved industry leaders.
“We have to contract our seed from growers [with] acreage [that] runs anywhere from a quarter of an acre up, and we have no objection to the bill. In fact, any attempt to prevent the passage of a bill to protect the narcotic traffic would be unethical and un-American. That is not the point, but we do believe that a tax of $5 is going to be prohibitive for the small [raw hemp materials] dealer as well as the man that grows the crop, because he will average, I do not know what the acreage will be, but they raise as little as two acres.”
– Superintendent of AmHempCo Corporation of Illinois
Anslinger’s side came to a compromise to appease the hemp industry. This was that the hemp industry could still sell its hemp stalks, if the stalks were free of foliage, including the leaves and budding tops before the stalks could be transferred to the processor or other company purchasing the hemp stalks. But he knew that removing the foliage from each hemp stalk would be labor intensive and cost prohibitive, further impacting the farmers and making it unlikely that their businesses could survive the extra labor cost. He also knew that industrial hemp would not get a person high.
The House ignored the information presented by Dr. William C. Woodward of the AMA who clearly argued against every aspect of the proposed law. It also ignored the arguments by hemp industry leaders to lower the proposed tax. When a New York member of the house asked the Speaker what the bill was about. Speaker Sam Rayburn answered, “I don’t know. It has something to do with a thing called marijuana. I believe it’s a narcotic of some kind.” The House member asked, “Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?” A member on the committee rose and answered with a lie, and got Doctor Woodward’s name wrong. “Their Doctor Wentworth came down here. They support this bill 100 percent.” Interestingly, after little debate and apparently believing in or supporting the lies, the purchased and manipulated members of Congress unanimously passed the bill. They did so at the end of a Friday afternoon session when some of those who would have been at the meeting had left for the summer weekend.
The propaganda used to make people believe in the horrible demon monster, marijuana, worked. Section 14 of the Tax Act granted the Federal Bureau of Narcotics the jurisdiction over marijuana.
In the self-righteous halls of the politicos one needs to present what political society views as exemplary characteristics, and vote in a way that will be good for the political career. One’s social standing and financial connections are more important than whether or not the vote is based on factual evidence. The bills being considered in those early days building up to marijuana prohibition were not based on scientific evidence or matters of health. They were based on prejudices and crooked politics, and they were especially rooted in corporate greed.
President Franklin Roosevelt signed The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 into law on August 2, 1937. It took effect October 1.
Andrew Mellon, perhaps the chief conspirator of this scenario, did not live to see this law enacted because he died on August 27.
The act placed extraordinarily high taxes on hemp and medicinal marijuana. It required that anyone who grew, transported, sold, or prescribed marijuana pay a tax of one hundred dollars per ounce on any exchange. Hemp was taxed at one dollar per ounce. Hemp farmers were also required to remove the foliage of the hemp stalks before transferring ownership of the hemp. As a tax law, not a narcotics law, it effectively made hemp too costly to farm, process, or sell.
“President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions.”
– The New York Times
So you see, the U.S. government hemp and marijuana laws were based on lies.