Pharmaceutical giants that have the most to loose from legalization and actively supported criminalization for decades now exposed as criminals themselves
THE 5TH ESTATE
By Dr. Stuart Jeanne
Bramhall
10/15/2013
"When the people lead, the leaders will follow..." - Ghandi
The recent resurgence
of hemp cultivation – after a 5 ½ decade ban in the U.S. and its allies – is the most stunning
example of this Ghandian pearl. Genetically related to marijuana, hemp contains
only trace amounts of THC, the compound that gets weed users high. At the time
former Congressman Ron Paul introduced his 2011
Industrial Hemp Farming Act Bill, five states (North
Dakota, Hawaii, Kentucky,
Maine, Oregon,
California, Montana,
West Virginia and Vermont) had enacted laws authorizing
industrial hemp cultivation. The U.S. is the world’s largest
importer of hemp, for use in construction, clothing, paper, rope, pressed oil,
and cooking. China is the world’s largest hemp producer, followed by France and Chile.
 |
Medicinal hemp now being legalized worldwide |
Despite the support of progressive
Democrats, without Obama’s support, Paul’s bill died in committee. Fast forward
to November 2012, when Colorado
voters passed Amendment 64 to legalize hemp cultivation. Last week the Denver
Post reported on the Colorado farmer who
made history by harvesting the first commercial hemp crop in the US in
56 years.
Technically growing hemp is still illegal under the 1970 federal
Controlled Substances Act. However given Obama’s response back in August to the
34 states that have decriminalized marijuana use, he’s not expected to go after
Colorado hemp
farmers.
On August 29, 2013, the Obama administration notified 94
US attorneys that states with recreational and medical marijuana (and hemp)
laws can now let people use it, grow it under license, and purchase it from
retail facilities — so long as possession by minors is prohibited and it
doesn’t end up on federal property or in the hands of gangs and criminal
enterprises.
 |
John
Earney speaking to Prince Charles during a visit to NZ
|
Growing Hemp in New Zealand
In New Zealand, hemp cultivation has been
legal, under license, since 2006. We have two hemp farms here in Taranaki.
I serve
as secretary of the Douglas farm, run by John
Earney, owner of Avonstour Rare Breeds organic farm. It’s the goal of New Plymouth businessman
Greg Flavall to create the word’s first hemp
industrial village here in Taranaki. It would center around a $500,000 hemp
processing facility that would use a decorticator and process hemp from all
over New Zealand.
Flavell envisions hemp as a major export industry to meet growing world demand.
Once the long fibers are extracted the rest of the plant can be used for
pressed oil, flour, animal bedding, garden mulch, paper making, and food.
Hemp’s 12,000 Year History
Hemp, first used in
10,000 BC Taiwan,
is one of the most versatile plants known to man. Hemp fiber is used in the
production of paper, textiles, rope, sails, clothing, plastics, insulation, dry
wall, fiber board, and other construction materials; while hempseed oil is used
as a lubricant and base for paints and varnishes, as well as in cooking and
beauty products. Hemp is also carbon neutral. Hemp-based paper, textiles, rope,
construction materials, and even plastics are the tried and true low tech
alternative to modern synthetics based on fossil fuels.
 |
Cannabis plant was primarily used for rheumatism, gout, malaria |
At the time of the
industrial revolution, most textiles, clothing, canvas (the Dutch word for
cannabis), rope, and paper were made from hemp.
It was only with the industrial
revolution and the proliferation of machinery run on cheap fossil fuels that
more sophisticated alternatives, such as cotton, wood-based paper, and
eventually petroleum-based plastics became cheaper alternatives. Before the
cotton gin was invented in the 1820s, 80% of the world’s textiles, fabrics, and
clothing were made of hemp.
By 1883, hemp was still the primary source of 75%
of the world’s paper. Up until 1937, when the US government passed a crippling
hemp tax, most bank notes and archival papers were made of hemp (owing to its
greater durability) and most paints and varnishes were made from hempseed oil.
Hemp has always been such a vital community resource that a
long series of laws, dating back to Henry VIII (1535) required farmers to grow
hemp or be fined. In 1619 Jamestown
Virginia enacted a law requiring
residents to plant hemp. Massachusetts and Connecticut passed
similar laws in 1631 and 1632. Betsy Ross’s flag was made of hemp. The
Declaration and Independence
and Emancipation Proclamation are printed on it.
Henry Ford Grew Hemp
Hemp first began losing ground in 1850 to
cheaper substitutes made of cotton, jute, sisal, and petroleum.
Prior to the
1920s, hemp had to be processed by hand, involving huge labor costs
incompatible with mass commercial production. Henry Ford, one of the first
modern conservationists, remained a strong hemp advocate and had his own hemp
plantation on his estate in Dearborn
Michigan.
After George W
Schlicten automated hemp processing in 1917 with a new machine called the hemp
decorticator, Ford set up the first biomass fuel production plant in Iron Mountain, Michigan.
Ford ran the first Model T on corn-based ethanol (alcohol), but was quick to
recognize hemp as a cheaper and more efficient fuel source.
His engineers in Iron Mountain
developed processes to extract ethanol from hemp, as well as charcoal and other
industrial chemicals, including tar, ethyl acetate and creosote.
"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest an mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?" - Henry Ford
The Corporate Conspiracy to End Hemp Cultivation
All this was happening at the precise moment that the
munitions company DuPont was patenting synthetic fibers (nylon, rayon, Dacron,
etc) and plastics derived from petroleum. Schlicten’s hemp decoricator and
automated hemp processing, posed a major threat to DuPont’s ability to market
their new synthetic fibers.
 |
Clifford Dupont |
DuPont also had a commercial interest in promoting
wood-based paper production (they held the patent on the sulfates and sulfites
used to produce paper pulp and gasoline). As well as the patent on tetraethyl
lead, which allowed gasoline to burn more smoothly in the engine Ford
intended to run on ethanol.
The main co-conspirators in the plot to
kill hemp included DuPont, William Randolph Hearst (who owned a logging
company and paper manufacturing plant in addition to his American newspaper
empire), and Andrew Mellon, president of Mellon Bank and DuPont’s major
financier.
In 1930, Mellon, as US Secretary of the Treasury, created the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics and appointed his nephew Henry Anslinger to run it.
Between 1935 and 1937, Anslinger and a handful of DuPont’s congressional cronies
secretly wrote a bill to tax hemp production. Meanwhile Anslinger and Hearst
orchestrated a massive media campaign demonizing a dangerous new drug called
marihuana that supposedly turned Mexicans and black jazz musicians into crazed
killers. Congress was deliberately tricked into believing marihuana was a
totally new drug.
 |
Racist nutcase Harry J. Asslinger |
The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was rushed through on a Friday
afternoon before lawmakers had a chance to read it. Only a handful realized marihuana was the same as hemp,
which was still viewed as an essential crop and vital to the paint and varnish
industry.
Overseas Bans on Hemp Cultivation
Strongly influenced by DuPont, Mellon, and
Hearst, in 1925 the League of Nations passed
the Geneva International Convention on Narcotics Control. The British passed a
law outlawing marijuana and hemp cultivation the same year. New Zealand banned it in 1927 under
the Dangerous Drugs Act.
 |
Dr. Stuart Jeanne
Bramhall |
Dr. Stuart Jeanne
Bramhall is a 65 year old American psychiatrist, activist, and author who
closed her 25-year Seattle practice to emigrate
to New Zealand.
This followed 15 years of government harassment for her political activities.
She writes about her experiences in her 2010 memoir The Most Revolutionary
Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.