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valarltd[Error: unknown template qotd]
The short answer: racism and greed.
Marijuana/hemp/cannibis has been used industrially, religiously and medicinally since 7000 BCE. It was legal in the US until 1937, except in states where it was restricted to prevent Mexicans from using it.
In 1619, the Jamestown colony MANDATED everyone grow it. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew it. In the 1850s, there were over 8000 hemp farms of over 2000 acres each. It was the cash crop of choice, used for everything from medicine to paper-making to cloth. The Declaration of Indpendence is written on hemp paper. Queen Victoria used it for her cycles.
Even during World War II, the government was encouraging farmers to grow it, because other industrial fibers were in short supply. See "Hemp for Victory." Henry Ford was making plastic out of it. He made a whole car that had been totally grown and ran on hemp biodiesel.
But Harry Anslinger, the head of the brand new Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was a very ambitious man. He wanted something as big as Prohibition to redound to his credit. So he went after marijuana.
He called it marijuana, all scary and foreign, instead of hemp. The AMA fought him all the way, but was not allowed to speak. He had John Paul Getty and William Randolph Hearst on his side and Hearst papers smeared the demon-weed, never mentioning its other uses, until public sentiment was against this evil thing that Mexican and Black and Assassins were using against decent white folks.
By the 1970s, no one remembered that marijuana had been legal, even encouraged as a crop, less than 40 years before.
Tobacco had better PR despite having fewer uses.
The short answer: racism and greed.
Marijuana/hemp/cannibis has been used industrially, religiously and medicinally since 7000 BCE. It was legal in the US until 1937, except in states where it was restricted to prevent Mexicans from using it.
In 1619, the Jamestown colony MANDATED everyone grow it. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew it. In the 1850s, there were over 8000 hemp farms of over 2000 acres each. It was the cash crop of choice, used for everything from medicine to paper-making to cloth. The Declaration of Indpendence is written on hemp paper. Queen Victoria used it for her cycles.
Even during World War II, the government was encouraging farmers to grow it, because other industrial fibers were in short supply. See "Hemp for Victory." Henry Ford was making plastic out of it. He made a whole car that had been totally grown and ran on hemp biodiesel.
But Harry Anslinger, the head of the brand new Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was a very ambitious man. He wanted something as big as Prohibition to redound to his credit. So he went after marijuana.
He called it marijuana, all scary and foreign, instead of hemp. The AMA fought him all the way, but was not allowed to speak. He had John Paul Getty and William Randolph Hearst on his side and Hearst papers smeared the demon-weed, never mentioning its other uses, until public sentiment was against this evil thing that Mexican and Black and Assassins were using against decent white folks.
By the 1970s, no one remembered that marijuana had been legal, even encouraged as a crop, less than 40 years before.
Tobacco had better PR despite having fewer uses.
