Folks, I'm going to move this thread over to Tacitus' Realm, if it's allright w/ ya'll.
Pubdate: Fri, 30 Jul 2004
Source: Chicago Reader (IL)
Contact:
http://www.chicagoreader.comTHE COLONEL'S WEED
Tribune Boss Robert McCormick Had A Farm, And On
That Farm He Grew Some Hemp.
As crops throughout the midwest withered during
the drought of 1936, the Chicago Tribune reported
on one plant untroubled by the lack of water.
"When we stopped to look at the test plot where
the hemp is growing, we wanted to doff our straw
hat and give this plant a little applause," wrote
reporter Robert Becker. "It has grown remarkably
in spite of intense heat and drouth [sic]. In
fact, one of the boys was saying that during the
week of the most severe heat the hemp kept
pushing its head to the blazing sun."
Becker's report showed up in a regular Tribune
feature called "Day by Day Story of the
Experimental Farms." This space kept readers
up-to-date on two farms in the western suburbs
that had been started ( and publicized ) by the
Tribune in hopes of bringing innovation to the
desperate farming industry.
Hemp, traditionally used to make products like
rope, paper, and birdseed, was an obvious choice
for the experimental farms. Though it had been
cultivated in the U.S. since colonial times by
the likes of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, Americans weren't growing much hemp in
the 1930s. But new technological advances, as
well as its natural resistance to drought, made
hemp potentially attractive to struggling
farmers.
Less than a year after Tribune employees reported
on the impressive properties of hemp, the drug
czar of that day published an influential article
in American Magazine. The story by Harry
Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, began: "The sprawled body of a young
girl lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day
after a plunge from the fifth story of a Chicago
apartment house. Everyone called it suicide, but
actually it was murder. The killer was a
narcotic known to America as marihuana."
It wasn't long before the Chicago Tribune's hemp
crop was the focus of a federal drug
investigation.
*
Nearly 70 years later, the old argument
continues: Are hemp and marijuana synonymous or
only distantly related?
Donald Briskin, a professor in the Department of
Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at
the University of Illinois in Urbana, says hemp
and marijuana differ substantially, thanks to the
way they've been bred over the centuries. Hemp
has been selected for length and minimal
branching, to maximize the recovery of the fiber
along its main stem. Marijuana has been selected
for elevated THC, the molecule in marijuana
flowers most responsible for getting smokers
high.
"Some plant scientists consider hemp and
marijuana to even be different species," says
Briskin. "For instance, another classification
is to consider hemp as Cannabis sativa and
marijuana as Cannabis indica. There isn't
complete agreement on the classification of these
plants."
THC has been virtually bred out of industrial
hemp. In Canada, for example, the legal
difference between hemp and marijuana is a THC
content that is either below or above 0.3 percent
of the plant, measured by dry weight. But the
THC content of common marijuana ranges from 3 to
7 percent. The flowers of industrial hemp may
bear some physical resemblance to marijuana, but
ingesting even massive amounts won't get a normal
human high.
Though 33 states had outlawed marijuana by 1937,
its use as an intoxicant was relatively uncommon
in the U.S. Marijuana became illegal in Illinois
in 1931 after local media, including the Tribune,
campaigned against the drug. The logic of
prohibition was explained in "New Giggle Drug
Puts Discord in City Orchestras," a 1928 Tribune
article about marijuana's growing popularity
among local musicians. The story explained that
marijuana "is an old drug but was generally
introduced into the country only a few years ago
by the Mexicans. It is like cocaine. In the
long run, it bends and cripples its victims. A
sort of creeping paralysis results from long
use."
State laws against marijuana didn't impact hemp.
It had been grown in the United States since
before the revolution, but the labor-intensive
processing of the plant made it less attractive
to American farmers, and by the time the Tribune
started experimenting with it most hemp products
in the U.S. were imported. Technological
innovations that reduced the costs of processing
hemp might have been what caught the eye of
Colonel Robert McCormick, the Tribune's publisher
and editor.
McCormick was an agricultural enthusiast. His
great-uncle Cyrus revolutionized farming by
inventing the mechanical reaper, and McCormick
farmed Cantigny, his estate in Wheaton. In the
mid-1930s, when he wasn't busy bashing FDR and
the New Deal in the pages of the Tribune,
McCormick operated the "experimental farms" on
his estate. Frank Ridgway, the Tribune's
agricultural editor and usual author of "Day by
Day Story of the Experimental Farms," also served
as supervisor for the farms. Ridgway described
them as "practical laboratories for trying out
new discoveries, theories and practices."
According to one biographer, McCormick personally
chose the crops. Along with exotic strains of
soybeans and alfalfa, he grew hemp.
A small test crop of hemp was planted in 1934,
and in '36 a three-acre hemp plot was sown. By
harvest time, the plants had grown to 13 feet.
Reaping proved difficult. The towering stalks
overwhelmed the machines, and part of the crop
had to be cut by hand. The farmers learned as
they went along. "Much progress has been made in
the manufacturing of fibers, paper and other
products on a small laboratory scale," Ridgway
wrote after the 1936 harvest. "The next step is
to manufacture the hemp products on a commercial
scale. When that is accomplished, farmers should
find a profitable outlet for hemp plants."
To accompany Ridgway's column, the Tribune
published a photograph of farmworkers attempting
to harvest the massive plants. At least one
person was troubled by what he saw.
*
A few days after the photograph appeared, the
Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
received a letter from Washington. Anslinger
wanted a "full report" on the Tribune's hemp.
Elizabeth Bass, the bureau's supervisor in
Chicago, made some phone calls and then visited
Cantigny. Farm operators answered questions and
sent Bass on her way with a pound of hemp to take
back to the office. Bass told Anslinger the
plants were strictly for industrial use.
She wrote that Ridgway "knew nothing of Marihuana
and had only vaguely heard that cigarettes were
made from some variety of Cannabis or hemp. His
sole knowledge and interest was confined to the
dried stalks."
The visit might have left the farmers scratching
their heads. There was nothing secret about
their crop. It had been written about repeatedly
in the Tribune, and the farm was open to
visitors--some 23,000 stopped by in 1935 alone.
What's more, at the time there were no federal
laws addressing either hemp or marijuana.
Anslinger wanted more information. Bass pressed
Ridgway, who referred her to H.W. Bellrose,
president of the World Fibre Corporation, an
Illinois firm that processed the hemp produced by
the Tribune farms.
Bellrose responded to the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics with evangelical enthusiasm. He
described a machine called a hemp decorticator
that he said could revitalize the American hemp
industry. The decorticator, Bellrose explained,
reduced the labor needed to process hemp. He
tried to place the machine in historical
perspective.
"The World Fibre Decorticating machine represents
to the fibre industry what the Eli Cotton Gin was
to the cotton industry," Bellrose wrote, adding
that the machine could eliminate the country's
need for imported hemp. And he suggested a
reason for McCormick's interest in hemp.
"In the paper pulp industry alone, we are
importing 80% of all paper as paper stock, and
this industry runs well over one billion dollars
per annum," Bellrose wrote. Biographers of
McCormick have noted that he kept ahead of
William Randolph Hearst in the midwest by
maintaining a cheaper supply of paper than his
rival publisher.
But Bellrose saw more than paper coming from
hemp. It promised salvation. "The growing of
hemp by the American farmer means the growing of
a crop that goes into industry and into the human
stomach, and therefore, constitutes the only
resolution of the present day agricultural
problem," he wrote.
Apparently Anslinger was not impressed. In 1937,
at his insistent urging, Congress passed the
Marihuana Tax Act. Though it didn't outlaw
marijuana or cannabis, it imposed a tax so high
that legal production became economically
impossible. Anslinger vowed that hemp farmers
would not be impacted by the new law.
"I would say that they are not only amply
protected under this act, but they can go ahead
and raise hemp just as they have always done,"
Anslinger stated during congressional hearings.
It wasn't true. Hemp farmers, including those at
the experimental farms, were about to learn that
they'd been regulated out of legal existence.
*
In the spring of 1937, before the tax act was
even debated, farmers at McCormick's estate
planted another hemp crop. It was a denser crop
than the earlier ones, and harvesting would begin
earlier in the season. The goal was to limit the
size of the plants to make for an easier harvest.
On September 29, Ridgway reported on the harvest
in the Tribune. The hemp being dried for
processing, he wrote, was superior to the crop
that had been grown the previous year. Three
days later, the Marihuana Tax Act went into
effect. Within two weeks, federal agents visited
the experimental farms and told the operators
that they were subject to the tax act no matter
what they intended to do with the hemp crop.
Ridgway explained the dilemma of the hemp farmers
in his October 11 column. The tax act applied to
the flowers of hemp, whether or not they were
smokable. A tax of $1 an ounce was imposed on
growers who'd registered with the government, of
$100 an ounce on those who hadn't. Ridgway
expected the hemp to sell for about $15 a ton.
Even at the lower tax, the farm faced a loss of
roughly $31,985 on each ton of hemp harvested.
The only way for a grower to avoid the tax would
be to remove every flower before selling the
stalks. Such a process would cost more than the
crop was worth. As a final insult, federal
officials told Ridgway the hemp had to be guarded
24 hours a day during the drying process.
"If these requirements are rigidly adhered to by
the administrators of the marihuana law," Ridgway
wrote, "the farm manager likely would decide that
the best way out would be to burn the entire crop
harvested from the fifteen acres this year and
discontinue his efforts to aid in the development
of hemp as a commercial cash crop for farmers in
this country."
Ridgway managed to end his gloomy report on a
somewhat hopeful note. Elizabeth Bass had told
him that "officials responsible for the
administration of the law...are making a careful
study of the act and its regulations to see what
can be done to cooperate with hemp for useful and
harmless purposes."
They've yet to make a suggestion.
*
The Colonel Robert R. McCormick Research Center
stands near land once used for the experimental
farms of Cantigny. The center's archives contain
only one document relating to the experimental
farms--a book adapted from the "Day by Day"
columns. Officials of the center say they can't
be sure when the last experimental crops were
abandoned.
A more important question goes unanswered too:
why would federal officials so promptly target a
relatively small hemp crop like McCormick's?
Maybe because it was McCormick's. He despised
President Roosevelt, his onetime Groton
schoolmate. McCormick's Tribune trafficked in
page-one headlines such as "Moscow Orders Reds in
U.S. to Back Roosevelt," which ran before the
1936 elections with nothing to back it up. The
Tribune hailed that year's bumper crop of
sunflowers as "Landon buttons...nodding their
approval" of the Kansas governor whom the
Republicans nominated for president. FDR
couldn't have minded watching Anslinger tramp
through the colonel's gardens.
Hemp historians offer another reason. On its
surface, the ongoing hemp ban looks like
collateral damage from the war on marijuana, but
some theorize that hemp was a target all along.
The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a book by Jack
Herer, is sometimes referred to as the hemp
bible. Revised over several editions since it
was first published in 1985, the book claims to
uncover the "hemp and marijuana conspiracy."
Like more academic examinations of marijuana
prohibition, Herer's book takes up the idea that
cannabis was first outlawed for reasons of race
and culture. The first state marijuana laws were
imposed in places with significant immigrant
Mexican populations. It's commonly argued that
these laws, like most drug prohibitions, were
intended to discipline a minority by restricting
a drug popular with it.
But Herer goes further, suggesting that the 1937
federal marijuana law was specifically designed
to stifle a resurgent domestic hemp industry.
Herer identifies two central players: supernarc
Anslinger and newspaper baron William Randolph
Hearst. Anslinger wrote outrageous stories about
the allegedly deadly effects of marijuana, and
Hearst ran them in his newspapers. Anslinger had
ties to the Du Pont family, which was
revolutionizing the fiber market with
petrochemical-based synthetics like nylon.
Hearst controlled vast timber reserves that would
have lost much of their value, Herer suggests, if
a cheap and renewable source of paper had become
available.
The story of McCormick's hemp crop, which isn't
mentioned in Herer's book, both supports and
contradicts his thesis. The tax act did indeed
end McCormick's attempt to promote industrial
hemp. However, McCormick controlled even more
timberland than Hearst.
McCormick apparently made one last attempt to
grow hemp at his estate. According to Poor
Little Rich Boy, a biography by Gwen Morgan and
Arthur Veysey, when Japan cut off hemp supplies
from the Philippines during World War II,
McCormick planted new hemp seeds and encouraged
other farmers to do the same. He hoped to supply
the raw material for the rope needed by the navy.
Washington's Hemp for Victory campaign allowed
some farmers to grow hemp for the war effort.
But according to Morgan and Veysey, federal
narcotics officials raided Cantigny before the
harvest and ripped the hemp plants out of the
ground.
*
Rigid hemp laws remain in place today and are
vigilantly enforced. The descendant of
Anslinger's bureau is the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, which in 2001 unilaterally banned
hemp food products--such as hemp milk, hemp
energy bars, hemp tortilla chips, and hemp
pasta--though they have no psychoactive
qualities. The ban was overturned this year in
court, but the DEA can still appeal.
In 2000 and again in 2001, DEA agents raided a
supposedly sovereign Lakota Indian reservation in
South Dakota and destroyed acres of industrial
hemp growing there, even though tribal leaders
had approved the crop.
Arguments against hemp have grown neither in
sophistication nor in logic since Anslinger's
day. Here in Illinois, a bill that would have
allowed the study of industrial hemp at the
University of Illinois was vetoed by Governor
Ryan in 2001, despite strong bipartisan support
in both legislative houses.
"I cannot ignore the concerns of the drug
prevention and treatment groups that the ultimate
commercial cultivation and availability of a
product that contains a potentially mind-altering
substance would leave open the prospect of
substance abuse," said Ryan. A pharmacist before
turning to politics, he should have known better.
Yet benefits suggested by hemp proponents in the
1930s that might have seemed wildly optimistic
then have become reality. Hemp is being used for
textiles, food, and building materials. A car
that runs on hemp oil has been developed. And
hemp is of great interest to environmentalists
because it's a crop that requires little or no
pesticide. Hemp products continue to sell in the
U.S., even though the hemp itself is always
imported.
Hemp still grows in Illinois. The Tribune
reported in 1998 that $450,000 had been spent by
state police the previous year to destroy roughly
ten million uncultivated hemp plants, many
descended from the Hemp for Victory effort in
World War II. If ingested, none of those plants
would have given anyone a buzz. In 2002 another
633,000 wild hemp plants were obliterated.
The numbers vary from year to year, but the
battle continues. It may be possible to
willfully ignore hemp's virtues, but its
essential nature makes it difficult to eradicate.
It is, after all, a weed. Only months after
it's slashed and burned, hemp sprouts again,
pushing its head to the sun.
Drug War tells us everyone's body is common property
to be managed by the central government for our own
good, even if it kills us. This is Communism!
Drug Policy Foundation of Texas
--Bob Ramsey
