The plant we refer to has Marijuana is actually hemp. Most accurately, hemp that is composed of less than .3% THC is considered non-remedial hemp. Hemp that contains more than .3% THC is considered remedial hemp. This is the type many call Marijuana. Right off the top, Hemp looks very much like marijuana as it technically is the same plant. But unlike marijuana, it does not contain anywhere near the amount of THC needed for someone to get high if they tried to smoke it. Funny thing is, in the United States, Hemp is just as illegal to grow as Marijuana is.

Hemp used to be used for many things: clothes, cars, plastics, building materials, rope, paper, linens, food, medicine and so on. In fact, it used to be mandatory in the United States for farmers to grow hemp if they had the land.

The fact is Hemp was very popular throughout the 1800’s and 1900’ since it was incredibly useful for so many reasons. But one day that all changed, and now it is illegal.

What happened

During Hoover’s presidency, Andrew Mellon became Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury and Dupont’s primary investor. He appointed his future nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Secret meetings were held by these financial tycoons. Hemp was declared dangerous and a threat to their billion dollar enterprises. Hemp had to go. They take an obscure Mexican slang word: ‘marihuana’ and push it into the consciousness of America. They changed the name because they knew that they would never be able to get away with banning hemp, because at that time it was something good!

After that, in the late 1920s and 1930s, the media began a blitz of yellow journalism. Many newspapers were pumping stories emphasizing the horrors and dangers of marihuana. The “menace” of marihuana made headlines everywhere. Readers learned that it was responsible for everything from car accidents to losing morality and it wasn’t long before public opinion started to shape.

Next came several films like “Reefer Madness” (1936), “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth” (1935) and “Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed” (1936), which were all propaganda films designed by these industrialists to create an enemy out of marihuana.

”Reefer Madness” was possibly the most interesting of the films as it depicted a man going crazy from smoking marijuana and then murdering his family with an ax. Unlike most films with a simple ending, “Reefer Madness” ended with bold words on the screen: TELL YOUR CHILDREN.

On April 14, 1937, the Prohibitive Marihuana Tax Law or the bill that outlawed hemp was directly brought to the House Ways and Means Committee. Simply put, this committee is the only one that could introduce a bill to the House floor without it being debated by other committees. At the time, the Chairman of the Ways and Means was Robert Doughton who was a Dupont supporter. With vested interest, he insured that the bill would pass Congress.

In an attempt to stop the bill from being passed, Dr. James Woodward, a physician and attorney, attempted to testify on behalf of the American Medical Association. He mentioned that the reason the AMA had not denounced the Marihuana Tax Law sooner was that the Association had just discovered that marihuana was hemp. Or at least a strain of it. Hemp and Marijuana are both varieties of Cannabis sativa, but this distinction was purposely not made well known to the public. Since the law was not so much focused on banning one or the other, both found their way into the ban.

The AMA recognized cannabis/marihuana as a medicine found in numerous healing products sold and used for quite some time. The AMA like many other’s did not realize that the deadly menace they had been reading about in the media was in fact hemp.

In September of 1937, hemp prohibition began. Arguably the most useful plant known to man has become illegal to grow and use both in its non THC strain and THC strain called marihuana. To this day, this plant is still illegal to grow in the United States.

To the public, Congress banned hemp because it was said to be a violent and dangerous drug. In reality, Hemp does nothing more than act as an amazing resource to virtually any industry and any product. As you can imagine, this was also a big reason for the ban of Hemp as it was a serious threat to many of the big industries out there. At the time it was mainly plastics, oil and paper.

Source: collective-evolution.com