Cannabis prohibition: who benefits?
Long authorized, hemp cultivation disappeared during the 20th century. But who profited from the crime? Synthesis of the clues concerning the confiscation of a raw material dedicated to mankind.
Have we forgotten that, for centuries, hemp (Cannabis sativa) was the lifeblood of our European societies? Marine ropes and sails, made specifically from the filamentous bark of its stalk, were at the origin of the great discoveries made by Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gamma, Fernand de Magellan, and the rise of international maritime trade. Hemp fibers are considered to be the most resistant (even to sea salt and humidity) in the plant kingdom, and they once replaced the plastic we can’t get rid of today. This raw material also made up the basic textiles of our countryside (swaddling clothes, sheets, tablecloths, clothing, handkerchiefs, shrouds, etc.). ” It’s well known that a bag is a kind of pouch, larger or smaller depending on its intended use, that it’s made from a strong canvas of hemp thread, and that it requires two seams to form it. “wrote one society of scholars and artists “In 1831, in his Dictionnaire technologique ou Nouveau Dictionnaire universel des arts et métiers et de l’économie industrielle et commerciale.
Hemp seeds were fed to our chickens and pigeons, and used as bait for fish, without any THC control. An indispensable traditional crop for the first American settlers, it was even forbidden to refuse to grow hemp for the state, from 1763 to 1769, in Virginia, on pain of imprisonment! The invention of the steam engine and wire rope around 1850, the importation of cotton, then the arrival of kerosene and plastics around 1950, gradually pushed our beautiful plant into oblivion. And yet, in 1938, an article in Popular Mechanics magazine explained that hemp generated over 25,000 products (from dynamite to Cellophane) and that its cultivation promised to become America’s leading industry. This was not to be, as hemp was unable to fight off the various forms of lobbying.
Chemistry: hemp is soluble in DuPont de Nemours
On August 2, 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act was signed into law. With its prohibitive tax, it was the brainchild of the Finance Committee, the only institution authorized to send bills directly to Congress without prior debate. Congress was chaired by Robert L. Doughton, a Democrat with close ties to chemical giant DuPont de Nemours, 60% of whose sales came from hemp. Prohibition took the form of a two-headed conspiracy: Andrew W. Mellon (head of the CIA, right-hand man to U.S. President Herbert Hoover and owner of the Gulf Oil company) was DuPont de Nemours’ main investor and banker; Harry J. Anslinger, appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930 by the same Andrew Mellon (whose niece he married), was responsible for presenting the law to Congress.
With the Marijuana Tax Act cutting hemp to the bone, the way is clear for DuPont de Nemours, which is chaining patents together:
- patent for the chemical reduction of wood in 1937 to make paper with sulphur dioxide;
- Nylon was patented in 1938, while hemp had long been used by farming families to make their own clothes;
- Teflon was patented in 1938, while its direct competitor in plumbing and fountains is still hemp or flax filament;
- patents of the first cannabis detection tests in 1938, sold under license ;
- pesticide patents in 1970 (including Benlate DF (Benomyl), which had such harmful effects on the testicles and prostate glands of animals that it was thought to be used as a sterilizer in humans), while hemp is a versatile crop that cleans the soil and requires no chemical fertilizers.
If hemp hadn’t been taxed as a deterrent, and then outlawed, DuPont de Nemours’ business would never have prospered in the way it did. The American anti-hemp law of 1937 evolved, after the Second World War, into a total worldwide ban on this crop following the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs ratified by the UN in 1961, under the leadership of… Harry J. Anslinger, who had meanwhile become head of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
Prohibition: cannabis vs pastis
In 1933, after thirteen years of failure, alcohol prohibition in the United States was repealed by the 21st Amendment. The alcohol industry wanted to regain its lost market, but faced a new competitor: cannabis, whose consumption had grown in their absence. This is where we find the aforementioned Harry J. Anslinger. Initially indifferent to cannabis, he suddenly became its fiercest opponent after 1933. Why the change of heart? Because the alcohol lobby, along with the tobacco and paper industries, took a dim view of the expansion of hemp and its derivatives. Anslinger, close to these industrial circles, orchestrated a vast campaign to demonize cannabis.
In 1937, behind the Marijuana Tax Act was powerful lobbying by the alcohol industry. Their objective? Eliminate an alternative perceived as too competitive. Archives show that players in the alcohol industry supported this law, notably through contributions to the campaigns of senators in favor of cannabis prohibition. Economist Richard J. Bonnie and historian Charles H. Whitebread, in their study The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States (1974), explain how the alcohol industry influenced these political decisions by supporting the campaigns of Anslinger and the cannabis prohibitionists. The result was immediate: while alcohol regained its legality and its market, cannabis was relegated to the status of a criminal drug.
Hemp paper: the hangover
After four hundred years of hegemony for rag paper (hemp and linen), the invention of wood pulp in 1846 changed the standard for paper production. In 1916, however, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) published the results of new paper-making processes (Bulletin no. 404), demonstrating that, for the same surface area, hemp provides four times more pulp than wood, while consuming a quarter to a seventh of the chemicals (sulfur, chlorine) needed to treat wood fibers: “For the production of 25 tonnes of paper fibres per day, it is possible to use the production of 4,000 ha of hemp, instead of securing, conserving, reforesting and protecting 16,390 ha of wood for paper pulp”, it is reported. Why such a paradox?
During the Spanish-American War of 1898, half of Pancho Villa’s army was made up of Indians (mainly Yaquis), who were heavy marijuana smokers. When the big-hatted revolutionary and his soldiers seized 323,000 hectares of Mexican forest belonging to media magnate William Randolph Hearst, the latter saw red: these vast expanses were used to manufacture wood pulp to produce the paper needed for his media empire (28 newspapers, 18 magazines, radio stations and film companies). Hearst set up a marijuana bashing campaign in his popular newspapers (about “cannabis-crazed blacks raping white women while playing ‘satanic jazz voodoo’ music” and other horrors about Mexicans), which the U.S. Congress followed up with the Marijuana Tax Act. To drive the point home, he had the Mexican general’s grave opened after his death to steal his… head!
Big Pharma: “Pain is gain.”
First of all, a figure that raises questions. According to official data from Medicare (the U.S. government-run health insurance system), between 2010 and 2013, a doctor in a state where medical cannabis is authorized will prescribe 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers per year than his colleague who is not allowed to recommend that his patients smoke joints. It’s easy to see why pharmaceutical companies want to stifle the smoke.
In 2014, the American weekly The Nation revealed that funding for cannabis-opposition groups in the U.S. is mainly supported by the pharmaceutical industry, including Purdue Pharma, painkiller producers Abbott, Alkermes and Janssen, and opiate distributor Pfizer (which has invested 6.7 billion in 2024 to produce a cannabinoid-based anti-inflammatory). Yet cannabis first appeared in the official American pharmacopoeia a long time ago: in 1851 and up until the 1930s, it was commonly prescribed as an analgesic, sedative, antispasmodic or antiemitic (against nausea).
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