On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:26 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 4/20/2014 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 19 Apr 2014, at 20:50, meekerdb wrote: > > On 4/19/2014 12:37 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > Then, the cultivation of industrial help -- which is not psychoactive -- > was also made illegal. Industrial has a wide range of applications: paper, > fabric, building material and cheap protein source, to name a few. It > threatens several industries and it is not a narcotic. How do you explain > that? > > > How do you explain that growth of industrial hemp was encouraged by the > government up through World War 2? Did it not pose the same threats then? > > > Good question, but it seems to go in Telmo's direction. It shows that > the banning of hemp was indeed purely irrational, and motivated by making > easy money based on lies. it was only a way to impose oil and forest > against a natural efficacious sustainable competitor. > > It can't be both. > Wasn't hemp production temporarily encouraged by the government in the context of the second world war with the "Hemp for Victory" video? https://archive.org/details/Hemp_for_victory_1942 The video says at some point: "Careful with your seeds. To grow help legally you must have a federal registration and tax stamp". This appear to be a reference to the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, that allowed the government to issue "tax stamps", which is to say "licenses to grow hemp" at it's discretion. In fact, Wikipedia mentions: "After the Philippines fell to Japanese forces in 1942, the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Army urged farmers to grow fiber hemp<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp>. Tax stamps for cultivation of fiber hemp began to be issued to farmers. Without any change in the marijuana Tax Act, 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) were cultivated with hemp between 1942 and 1945. The last commercial hemp fields were planted in Wisconsin in 1957." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#Operation_of_the_Act This seems to suggest that industrial hemp regulation introduced inefficiencies in the industrial system, and that these inefficiencies could not be tolerated in the context of the war effort. When it's just the citizen's welfare that is at stake, then lobby interests win. I have no doubt that religious and fearful ladies campaigned for banning cannabis, purely because they believed it was an evil substance. My point is: misguided people campaign for misguided things all the time. Sometimes they are useful idiots, because their demands are coincidentally aligned with the interests of some more powerful group. Still according to Wikipedia, but with citations: "Some parties have argued that the aim of the Act was to reduce the size of the hemp industry[7]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-nafta-neocolonialism-129-7> [8] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-8>[9]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-under-influence-55-9> largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Mellon> , Randolph Hearst <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Hearst>, and the Du Pont family <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Pont_family>.[7]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-nafta-neocolonialism-129-7> [9]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-under-influence-55-9> The same parties have argued that with the invention of the decorticator<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorticator>, hemp had become a very cheap substitute for the paper pulp<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_pulp> that was used in the newspaper industry.[7]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-nafta-neocolonialism-129-7> [10] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-10> These parties argue that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_the_Treasury> and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the Du Pont family's new synthetic fiber, nylon <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon>, a fiber that was competing with hemp.[7]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_Tax_Act_of_1937#cite_note-nafta-neocolonialism-129-7> " Telmo. Making easy money is quite rational. But I don't know who you think led > the campaign to ban marijuana. It's my impression that it was a lot of > self-righteous and fearful conservative Christians who did not stand to > gain anything monetarily - anymore than they now stand to gain by > preventing gay marriage. I don't see that going hemp was any threat to the > oil industry or lumber? > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
