3 posts from settembre 2008

Pot and the Threat of Peace However, from 1948 to 1950, Anslinger stopped feeding the press the story that marijuana was violence-causing and began "red baiting", typical of the McCarthy era. white widow Now the frightened American public was told that this was a much more dangerous drug than he originally thought. Testifying before a strongly anti-Communist Congress in 1948 - and thereafter continually to the press - Anslinger proclaimed that marijuana rendered its users not violent at all, but so peaceful - and pacifistic! - that the Communists could and would use marijuana to weaken our American fighting men's will to fight. 

Woodward told the committee that the only reason the AMA hadn't come out against the marijuana tax law sooner was that marijuana had been described in the press for 20 years as "killer weed from Mexico."The AMA doctors had just realized "two days before" cannabis seeds these spring 1937 hearings, that the plant Congress intended to outlaw was known medically as cannabis, the benign substance used in America with perfect safety in scores of illnesses for over one hundred years. "We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman," Woodward protested, "why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared." He and the AMA" were quickly denounced by Anslinger and the entire congressional committee, and curtly excused.

Machines now in service in Texas, Illinois, Minnesota and other states are producing fiber at a manufacturing cost of half a cent a pound, and are finding a profitable market for the rest of the stalk cannabis seeds. Machine operators are making a good profit in competition with coolie-produced foreign fiber while paying farmers fifteen dollars a tone for hemp as it comes from the field. From the farmers' point of view, hemp is an easy crop to grow and will yield from three to six tons per acre on any land that will grow corn, wheat, or oats. It has a short growing season, so that it can be planted after other crops are in.