A Discussion of Medical Marijuana, the Iraqi War and Hemp

There is more than a casual connection between the war in Iraq and the Medical Marijuana problem. They are both the result of some of the most successful PR and propaganda programs in our country’s short history. It should be patently obvious to any one who will accept facts that reasons given for going to war in Iraq have no basis. Yet there are thousands of people who will swear that the planning for the destruction of the Twin Towers came from Iraq. This all but unshakeable belief is the result of a massive and highly successful marketing campaign put on by the Bush team.

In the late1930’s there were a couple of strong forces at play that had a lasting and, it could be said, deleterious affect upon the American public. Prohibition had come to an end and the bootleggers were involved in upgrading to the more lucrative professions of being mobsters and narcotic dealers. The free training period for these professions was thanks to prohibition. The Christian Right had lost a main whipping boy, whiskey, and was on the lookout for a good replacement. The publishing and paper printing business was kicking in full steam and beginning to eat up paper at an ever-increasing rate. Savvy industrial barons were buying up massive plots of acreage for pulp supplies.

Plastics, more or less in their infancy at that time, were being produced from organic compounds primarily from plant life. In the later 1930’s Henry Ford built a car that had most of its main parts, other than running gear and the like, made from hemp… fenders, seats, windows etc. Mr. Ford was certainly not being main stream at this time since hemp, once the largest agricultural crop in the world, had fallen out of favor and general use by the thirties for a couple of significant reasons. Sailing ships, once a major consumer of hemp products, were no longer around, paper was being made from wood pulp due to new methods of easy processing with chemicals and, a few years back the cotton gin was invented which put hemp out of competition in the world of fabrics. Hemp was still being processed by hand and was yet to have a machine that could work with the tough fibers even though it could produce the finest papers and cloth.

Now two more things happened about the late thirties to cause a serious friction between hemp and the industrial powers. These two things were the invention of the Decorticator and the invention or the acquisition of the process of petro chemical based plastics. The decorticator was a mechanical machine that was capable of processing hemp in a very competitive manner, placing its product cost in line with cotton and pulp. It so happens that the zany inventor of the Decorticator was invited to come to California and offered a large farm to further develop and refine his machine. He went out there and as of this day, we still do not know what happened to him or his machine. Apparently enough was known about the various properties of hemp to consider it a threat to the petro chemical process of plastic production, the patents for which had just been acquired by Mr. Dupont from his friends in Germany.

So now with the mechanical hemp process broken open and facing a plant that could out produce trees about four to one, there was a double threat on the horizon to some powerful businessmen. The viability of vast forest holdings and profitability of chemical patents were at stake. Something needed to be done to derail this threat to profit. It is not know whether or not a marketing group of sorts was hired, if such were available, but there certainly was a propaganda program developed and sponsored by, it is rumored, mainly three men of substantial means: Hearst, a very powerful and wealthy publisher (who very much wanted to be president and almost made it) … J. P. Morgan of financial fame and Mr. Dupont well noted for his acquisition of the petro plastics formulas. Exactly how the great coup came about is not well know but we need to go back to the notion of a lack of a cause or whipping boy for the rabid right. There seems to be some thread of evidence here that the uneducated rabid right was used by the powerful to further profiteering.

Marijuana at the time was well smoked in dives, juke joints and on many a front porch throughout rural America. There seemed to be no need to condemn or codify the use of this mild recreational drug. On the other hand, the demon Rum was still a great threat to the morals and highly controlled by our government, and narcotics running was the basis for many a movie. Hemp, a distant cousin to the marijuana plant, was the furthermost thing from the mind of Mr. And Mrs. Joe American. What did hemp have to do with their life anyway? Hemp is the natural enemy of marijuana and the two if grown together in the same area, ruin each other’s product. They are not now and never will be the same thing. The nightshade plant can kill us but it is a cousin to the tomato, which we consume with abandon. Even though our founding fathers demanded that hemp be grown as a patriotic American act, this request was totally ignored by the 1930’s.

Now come our holy trinity and step into this somewhat balanced world of rum runners, narcotics smugglers and mobsters. People were soon to find out that marijuana was not the benign weed that they knew and loved, or knew nothing about. It was going to become national public knowledge that this drug was none other than the “Devil’s Weed” and would drive you crazy, cause you to do unnatural acts, make body parts shrivel and eventually put you in the nut house. This was done by the production of the movie, “Marijuana Madness” which was shone nation wide, believed by most who viewed it and caused, in short order, marijuana to be declared an illegal drug. Nothing was said in this production about hemp. But as in all things Washingtonian, there was an add-on to the illegal edict that included hemp in the wording. If you are a little person, you can be locked up for a long time for growing hemp, a very beneficial and economically productive plant that has no narcotic quality at all. Woody Harrelson grew hemp on his front porch and asked to be locked up. The DEA was smart enough not to bring the case to trial. Marijuana was made illegal in order to stop the production of hemp. Not because it was a threat to society.

Let us now go back and ask the question, “What do the Twin Towers, the subsequent Iraqi war, and Medical Marijuana have to do with each other?” The first thing is that John Q. Public, in both cases, has been subject to a massive and highly successful marketing propaganda program. Next both campaigns have been intentional and highly organized. Then both campaigns have been directed at the true believing and relatively unaware masses headed up by right wing conservatives. And most damning of all, they both have been for the self-serving benefit of a few powerful individuals.

It can be factually substantiated that the American public has been lied to and hoodwinked in regards to Marijuana, Medical Marijuana, Hemp, the Trade Center Bombing and the War in Iraq. One might look back some seventy years or so and give a chuckle or a ho hum about what happened then in regards to the country being duped by a poorly done film, but it is no laughing matter. Right now we are in a medical drug crisis and an environmental alternative crisis and on both fronts progress is being blocked by a mental mindset that is based on sheer misinformation. This is not to mention the economics of this absurd belief situation, which is a matter for another discussion.

Recently in the business section of the paper there was a large lead article regarding the problems the plastics industry was having with the increase in cost of the basic raw material… oil. There was no mention of the car produced by Henry Ford some seventy or so years ago. In some circles, hemp is regarded as a quite viable alternative to the petro-based plastics products. In some cases it may well be superior such as in the developing field of composites and could be a strong contender for the replacement in many cases of nylon fiber. Due to the illegal status of hemp cutting off its economic viability, there has been little contemporary work done on the infinite possibilities in such things as the reconstituting of the hemp into many new products.

So we have two great myths, created by intentional propaganda, that in one case is taking many lives and much useful money and raw materials and in the other depriving our culture of perhaps, a bit of pain relief and most certainly a great and needed supply for new industrial raw material. The question lies now as to what one can do to perhaps debunk these myths and open our lives to more opportunity of caring for our planet?



Wade Swicord