Why Congress Outlawed the Hemp Plant
On a hot Friday afternoon,
Farmers who wished to continue growing hemp
soon discovered the Treasury Department would not issue a license. In effect,
this new tax law had outlawed hemp.
The cannabis/hemp plant came in two
versions. The first version was hemp, an industrial crop with a long history of
use, and a very low THC content. The second version was marijuana, the same
plant with a higher THC content. THC is the ingredient found in the blossoms
and upper leaves and used throughout history as an intoxicant, and to treat a
variety of medical problems.
Drug Commissioner Harry J.
Anslinger, head of the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) first introduced the
bill into committee hearings for review. The hearings, which should have gone
on for days, lasted two hours.
Anslinger told the committee, "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in
its users, insanity, criminality, and death." Anslinger chose the Mexican word
"marihuana," because the committee did not know marihuana was the
same cannabis/hemp plant grown in this country for more than three centuries
and prescribed by doctors as a medicine.
The first testimony came from a
pharmacologist who had injected himself and 300 dogs with what he called the
"active ingredient" in marihuana. Two of the dogs died from the
injection of the substance into their brains. The testimony raised eyebrows
because the active ingredient, THC would not undergo extraction until years
later, in
After the pharmacologist completed his
testimony, Dr. William C. Woodward, a lawyer and chief counsel for the American
Medical Association testified, "The
American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous
drug."
This statement prompted one of the
committee members to remark, "Doctor, if you can't say something good
about what we are trying to do, why don't you go home?"
Another member added, "Doctor,
if you haven't got something better to say than that, we are sick of hearing
you."
These words reveal a pre-existing
hostility between the AMA and
The bill to outlaw the cannabis
plant passed easily in the committee and moved on to the House of
Representatives (Congress). It landed on the Speakers Platform and a limited
number of Congressional Representatives listened in the stifling heat to Sam Rayburn
call for a debate. The debate consisted of a single man, a Republican from
Speaker Rayburn replied, "I don't know. It has something to do with
something called marihuana. I think it's a narcotic of some kind."
The same man asked if the AMA
supported the bill.
In response to the question, a
member of the committee that had criticized Dr.Woodward and sent the bill to
Congress leaped to his feet and shouted, "Their
Doctor Wentworth came down here. They supported this bill 100 percent!"
This false statement ended the
questions, and the vote began. There was no recorded vote on the bill; instead,
legislators walked past this point or that point on the floor to indicate a yes
or no vote.
Based on Anslinger's blatant lies
and the false statement from the hostile committee member, Congress passed the
bill with no debate. The bill was on the floor for a
remarkable 92 seconds before it became Federal Law. This
new prohibition against cannabis happened just four years after Congress
repealed alcohol prohibition.
The new law came under the
jurisdiction of the Treasury Department as a
tax issue because the
Justice Department declined to persecute pot smokers.
The FBN and later its predecessor,
the DEA, received the authority from Congress to arrest over ninety million Americans over the next seventy years. Twenty million went to prison.
In 1972, a paranoid Richard Nixon
dismissed his own panel of experts, the Shafer Commission, (which recommended
immediate decriminalization of marijuana) and declared war on pot smokers. He
convinced Congress to authorize the building of the largest prison system in
the world.
Today the hemp plant remains at the top of the
DEA’s list of dangerous addictive drugs, next to heroin.
For more information or to help
change the law, visit www.leap.com (Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition).
Source: "History of the Non-Medical Use of
Drugs in the
Schaffer Library www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/white1.htm
James Wiley
415-453-8715
Updated May 2009