Reefer Madness: The Emperor is Still Butt Naked
Over a century since the implementation of the Harrison’s Narcotics Act, many are still perplexed why cannabis was made illegal in the first place.
To this day, planet earth is still reeling from the tyrannical policies implemented by the 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Perhaps the most consequential, yet omitted, figure of the twentieth century, Wilson’s cabinet not only oversaw the founding of the Federal Reserve, but also developed America’s inaugural propaganda division, a subversive faction that changed the face of journalism forever. Rounding out the apparatchik trinity was his implementation of the Harrison Narcotics Act, a bill attributed to the goldbricking of the Big Pharma complex.
Actualised in 1914, and supported by Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona—states with expanding Latino populations—the bill called for nationwide bans on over-the-counter heroin and cocaine which were used to treat the common cold. Cannabis was also flagged for criminalisation, but despite numerous attempts to do so, it wasn't until 1937 that a nationwide ban on every part of the plant was passed.
With the lucrative merger of corporation and state in effect, the decision to recategorise certain consumer products as Class A substances was a profitable no-brainer. Du Pont (the nation’s premier paper manufacturer), Hearst (the principal owners of most major U.S. newspapers), and the Tatum Lumber Company (a logging conglomerate that supplied Du Pont with 100% of their pulp materials) all shared a vested interest in each other’s success. To prosper, hemp required eradication.
Prior to the Harrison Narcotics Act, Du Pont, Hearst, and the Tatum Lumber Company haemorrhaged money due to hemp’s ability to produce four times the pulp for paper manufacturing than one full-grown redwood. Especially concerned was Henry Du Pont, as he held the logging industry monopoly. Independent hemp farmers—many of Latin origin—reaped the profit that he believed was rightfully his. As such, the appropriate law makers were petitioned with ferocity.
Enter newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. His plan was simple—fool the public into thinking cannabis is detrimental to society. A primary trigger of Hearst’s fear-mongering was the publication of newspaper articles suggesting that ’coloured men’ were forcing white women to ’smoke dope’ in order to corrupt them for sexual purposes. Front pages were littered with congress-approved propaganda, promoting the notion that hemp was a noxious weed that ‘grows like dandelions’, that ‘dope-crazed foreigners’ were stealing America’s women, and for a nationwide ban to be effective the entire plant must be criminalised. The term marijuana—derived from Mexican slang—was inserted into the vernacular. Riding the hyperbole, Hearst’s publication sales soared as fear reached epidemic proportions.
A common trope is that three generations are required to pass before policy damage can be undone. And while the Harrison Narcotics Act has recently undergone reform, the war on drugs continues, with cannabis still ranked a Class A substance in many parts of the world. As for president Wilson, his legacy blossoms, with the Federal Reserve printing money at rates detrimental to the world economy, and government propaganda fed through corporation at an all-time high. And with Big Pharma now governing our lives at the point of a needle, it’s apparent that Wilson’s holy trinity of autocracy has manipulated humanity to the brink of no return. Thankfully, marijuana is bountiful, and the vegetative state of the majority continues to stimulate the status quo.
© Chuck Hagen
