Why outlaw the most useful crop in the world, hemp, while outlawing marijuana? The so-called evils of marijuana were used to outlaw them both. Why?
In the 1930s the E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Company developed an improved process for making paper from trees using sulfuric acid with the chemicals produced by Du Pont. This quickly became a huge financial windfall for the company as all of the tree pulp companies used these chemicals, including the International Paper and Power Company, which was tied to one of the world’s richest men, J.P. Morgan.
With Du Pont’s invention, pulp from trees greatly increased in value as did the value of the Du Pont Company and its associates, and these would increase even more if hemp were to become illegal.
It is important to remember here that Hearst owned the government permit to “harvest” trees from millions of acres of U.S. forests.
Du Pont also developed a product made from petroleum. It’s called plastic, which can also be made from hemp derivatives.
Further tying Du Pont profits to the success of the petroleum industry was their patent on tetraethyl lead for use as a petrofuel additive. As mentioned earlier in the book, hemp can be used to make ethanol for gas engines, and hemp seed oil can be used to fuel diesel engines.
In 1935, Du Pont scientists also invented a way of making nylon from coal. Nylon can also be made from hemp.
Du Pont had lobbyists working to get the Treasury Department to place a prohibition on hemp. Lammont Du Pont also had a very good friend who had been head of the Treasury Department, which oversaw the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which worked to ruin the hemp farming industry by using lies and propaganda to force passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, covered in the following chapters.
The difference between nylon and plastic made from petroleum and the same products made from hemp is that hemp can be used to make much safer, biodegradable forms of the substances. Hemp also does not require the drilling or mining, processing, and environmental damage caused by the petroleum and coal industries.
Using hemp to make cellulosic ethanol also competed with petroleum. Petroleum was the type of fuel used with Du Pont’s petrofuel additive. The potential of hemp in that it could be used to make ethanol and hemp diesel fuel also posed a threat to the profits of the gasoline and diesel fuel industry, which was where many of the wealthy (read: friends of the politically connected) had their money invested. Many politicians owned land where oil wells were drilled, and they stood to make a lot of money if petroleum remained as the number one fuel for cars, trucks, planes, ships, and other vehicles.
Lammont Du Pont and his company knew the company inventions would be more valuable if competing materials could be eliminated from the marketplace. With hemp being a plant that could be used to make plastics, nylon, rope, fabric, military supplies, fuel, and paper, it is not hard to see why Du Pont, J.P. Morgan, Hearst, large paper companies, as well as certain other key business people, politicians, and government employees wanted hemp out of the picture as soon as possible. They lobbied Herman Oliphant, chief counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department, to devise a way to eliminate hemp from the marketplace, which would secure their financial interests.
Before we explain the twist, let’s talk about a machine.