Industrial Hemp Production and US Marijuana Prohibition
During the years 1916-1937, William Randolph Hearst created a yellow journalism campaign to associate hemp with marijuana. Even though smoking hemp, like most fibres, will just make you sick, Hearst, along with his friend Pierre Dupont, succeeded in outlawing hemp in America. They actually robbed the world of an environmental cash crop.
Why would they do such a thing? Because instead of using hemp for paper, clothing, fuel, oils, resins, medicines, and many other uses, we now use paper and synthetic petrochemicals. Hearst owned huge forests and interests in lumber mills. Dupont made synthetic fuels and fibres (nylon, rayon, plastics) from petroleum.
Police now claim that industrial hemp production should not be allowed because they can’t tell hemp from pot with their infrared scanners. In the January 7, 1998, Haleakala Times, an anonymous writer sums it up well:
In today’s world, intelligent people are beginning to realize that giving up the benefits of industrial hemp because of a few million pot smokers just doesn’t make good sense.
When I watch the “black snow” ashes from the burning sugar cane fall on my organic lawn, I think of the defoliant, the PVC irrigation pipes, and everything else they put or sprayed out there that goes up in smoke too. Is smoking marijuana actually worse than breathing that?
Legalizing industrial hemp production is a completely different issue than legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. Confusing these issues robs the farmers and consumers of this country of an extremely valuable cash crop that can do the environment and the economy a world of good.
In order to preserve our environment, reduce our dependence on sugar subsidies and tourism, and protect the health of the residents of the State of Hawaii, industrial hemp should be legalized and grown immediately.
Scott Supak
