Transcript of Hugh Downs commentary on hemp, for ABC News, NY, 11/90:
Voters in the state of Alaska recently made marijuana illegal again
for the first time in 15 years. If Alaska turns out to be like the
other 49 states, the law will do little to curb use or production.
Even the drug czar himself, William Bennett, has abandoned the drug war
now that his "test case" of Washington, D.C., continues to see rising
crime figures connected with the drug industry.
Despite the legal trend against marijuana, many Americans continue
to buck the trend. Some pro-marijuana organizations in fact tell us
that marijuana, also known as hemp, could, as a raw material, save the
U.S. economy. That's some statement. Not by smoking it--that's a minor
issue. Would you believe that marijuana could replace most oil and
energy needs? That marijuana could revolutionize the textile industry
and stop foreign imports? Those are the claims.
Some people think marijuana, or hemp, may be the epitome of yankee
ingenuity. Mr. Jack Herer, for example, is the national director and
founder of an organization called HEMP (that's an acronym for "Help End
Marijuana Prohibition") located in Van Nuys, California. Mr. Herer is
the author of a remarkable little book called, "The Emperor Wears No
Clothes," wherein, not surprisingly, Mr. Herer urges the repeal of
marijuana prohibition.
Mr. Herer is not alone. Throughout the war on drugs, several
organizations have consistently urged the legalization of marijuana.
"High Times" magazine for example, The National Organization to Reform
Marijuana Laws or NORML for short, and an organization called BACH--the
Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp.
But the reason the pro-marijuana lobby want marijuana legal has little
to do with getting high, and a great deal to do with fighting oil
giants like Saddam Hussein, Exxon and Iran. The pro-marijuana groups
claim that hemp is such a versatile raw material, that its products not
only compete with petroleum, but with coal, natural gas, nuclear
energy, pharmaceutical, timber and textile companies.[1]
It is estimated that methane and methanol production alone from hemp
grown as biomass could replace 90% of the world's energy needs.[2] If
they are right, this is not good news for oil interests and could
account for the continuation of marijuana prohibition. The claim is
that the threat hemp posed to natural resource companies back in the
thirties accounts for its original ban.
At one time marijuana seemed to have a promising future as a
cornerstone of industry. When Rudolph Diesel produced his famous
engine in 1896, he assumed that the diesel engine would be powered by a
variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils. Rudolph Diesel,
like most engineers then, believed vegetable fuels were superior to
petroleum. Hemp is the most efficient vegetable.
In the 1930s the Ford Motor Company also saw a future in biomass fuels.
Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant, that included
hemp, at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers
extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl-acetate and
creosote. All fundamental ingredients for modern industry and now
supplied by oil-related industries.[2]
The difference is that the vegetable source is renewable, cheap and
clean, and the petroleum or coal sources are limited, expensive and
dirty. By volume, 30% of the hemp seed contains oil suitable for
high-grade diesel fuel as well as aircraft engine and precision machine
oil.
Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily
renewable fuel. And if you think methanol means compromise, you should
know that many modern race cars run on methanol.
About the time Ford was making biomass methanol, a mechanical device[3]
to strip the outer fibers of the hemp plant appeared on the market.
These machines could turn hemp into paper and fabrics[4] quickly and
cheaply. Hemp paper is superior to wood paper. The first two drafts
of the U.S. constitution were written on hemp paper. The final draft
is on animal skin. Hemp paper contains no dioxin, or other toxic
residue, and a single acre of hemp can produce the same amount of paper
as four acres of trees.[5] The trees take 20 years to harvest and hemp
takes a single season. In warm climates hemp can be harvested two even
three times a year. It also grows in bad soil and restores the
nutrients.
Hemp fiber-stripping machines were bad news to the Hearst paper
manufacturing division, and a host of other natural resource firms.
Coincidentally, the DuPont Chemical Company had, in 1937, been granted
a patent on a sulfuric acid process to make paper from wood pulp. At
the time DuPont predicted their sulfuric acid process would account for
80% of their business for the next 50 years.
Hemp, once the mainstay of American agriculture, became a threat to
a handful of corporate giants. To stifle the commercial threat that
hemp posed to timber interests, William Randolph Hearst began referring
to hemp in his newspapers, by its Spanish name, "marijuana." This did
two things: it associated the plant with Mexicans and played on racist
fears, and it misled the public into thinking that marijuana and hemp
were different plants.
Nobody was afraid of hemp--it had been cultivated and processed into
usable goods, and consumed as medicine, and burned in oil lamps, for
hundreds of years. But after a campaign to discredit hemp in the
Hearst newspapers, Americans became afraid of something called
marijuana.
By 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed which marked the beginning
of the end of the hemp industry. In 1938, "Popular Mechanics" ran an
article about marijuana called, "New Billion Dollar Crop."[6] It was
the first time the words "billion dollar" were used to describe a U.S.
agricultural product. "Popular Mechanics" said,
. . . a machine has been invented which solves a problem more
than 6,000 years old. . . .
The machine . . . is designed for removing the fiber-
bearing cortex from the rest of the stalk, making hemp fiber
available for use without a prohibitive amount of human labor.
Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great
tensile strength and durability. It is used to produce more
than 5,000 textile products ranging from rope, to fine laces,
and the woody "hurds" remaining after the fiber has been
removed, contain more than seventy-seven per cent cellulose,
and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products ranging
from dynamite to cellophane.
Well since the "Popular Mechanics" article appeared over half a century
ago, many more applications have come to light. Back in 1935, more
than 58,000 tons of marijuana seed were used just to make paint and
varnish (all non-toxic, by the way). When marijuana was banned, these
safe paints and varnishes were replaced by paints made with toxic
petro-chemicals. In the 1930s no one knew about poisoned rivers or
deadly land-fills or children dying from chemicals in house paint.
People did know something about hemp back then, because the plant and
its products were so common.
All ships lines were made from hemp and much of the sail canvas.
(In fact the word "canvas" is the Dutch pronunciation of the Greek word
for hemp, "cannabis.") All ropes, hawsers and lines aboard ship,
all rigging, nets, flags and pennants were also made from marijuana
stalks. And so were all charts, logs and bibles.
Today many of these items are made, in whole or in part, with synthetic
petro-chemicals and wood. All oil lamps used to burn hemp- seed oil
until the whale oil edged it out of first place in the mid- nineteenth
century. And then, when all the whales were dead, lamplights were
fueled by petroleum, and coal, and recently radioactive energy.[7]
This may be hard to believe in the middle of a war on drugs, but the
first law concerning marijuana in the colonies at Jamestown in 1619,
ordered farmers to grow Indian hemp. Massachussetts passed a
compulsory grow law in 1631. Connecticut followed in 1632. The
Chesapeake colonies ordered their farmers, by law, to grow marijuana in
the mid-eighteenth century. Names like Hempstead or Hemphill dot the
American landscape and reflect areas of intense marijuana cultivation.
During World War II, domestic hemp production became crucial when the
Japanese cut off Asian supplies to the U.S. American farmers (and even
their sons), who grew marijuana, were exempt from military duty during
World War II. A 1942 U.S. Department of Agriculture film called "Hemp
For Victory" extolled the agricultural might of marijuana and called
for hundreds of thousands of acres to be planted.[8] Despite a rather
vigorous drug crackdown, 4-H clubs were asked by the government to grow
marijuana for seed supply. Ironically, war plunged the government into
a sober reality about marijuana and that is that it's very valuable.
In today's anti-drug climate, people don't want to hear about the
commercial potential of marijuana. The reason is that the flowering
top of a female hemp plant contains a drug. But from 1842 through the
1890s a powerful concentrated extract of marijuana was the second most
prescribed drug in the United States. In all that time the medical
literature didn't list any of the ill effects claimed by today's drug
warriors.[9]
Today, there are anywhere from 25 to 30 million Americans who smoke
marijuana regularly. As an industry, marijuana clears well more than
$4 billion a year. [This must have been a misreading of his notes--for
1990, the minimum figure would have been at least $40 billion for the
entire nation. (phone interview with Jack Herer)] Obviously, as an
illegal business, none of that money goes to taxes. But the modern
marijuana trade only sells one product, a drug. Hemp could be worth
considerably more than $4 [$40] billion a year, if it were legally
supplying the 50,000 safe products the proponents claim it can.
If hemp could supply the energy needs of the United States, its value
would be inestimable. Now that the drug czar is in final retreat,
America has an opportunity to, once and for all, say farewell to the
Exxon Valdez, Saddam Hussein and a prohibitively expensive brinkmanship
in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia.
This is Hugh Downs, ABC News, New York.
Humanity has been held to a limited and distorted view of itself,
from its interpretation of the most intimate emotions to its
grandest visions of human possibilities, by virtue of its
subordination of women.
Until recently, "mankind's" understandings have been the only
understandings generally available to us. As other perceptions
arise--precisely those perceptions that men, because of their
dominant position could not perceive--the total vision of human
possibilities enlarges and is transformed.
-- Jean Baker Miller,
"Toward a New Psychology of Women" (1976)
Footnotes:
[1] If you are unfamiliar with the facts about hemp, the world's
premier renewable natural resource, a great place to start is Jack
Herer's information-compressed, "Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy:
The Emperor Wears No Clothes," (c) 1985, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1992,
available in many bookstores, or from H.E.M.P., 5632 Van Nuys Blvd.,
Suite 210, Van Nuys, CA 91401. From the Introduction:
The purpose of this book is to revive the authoritative historical,
social and economic perspective needed to ensure comprehensive legal
reforms, abolish cannabis hemp/marijuana prohibition laws, and save
the Earth's life systems.
Another book going to press at this time is "Hemp: Lifeline To The
Future, Unexpected Answers To Our Environment And Economic Crises,"
written by Chris Conrad, the founder and international director of
BACH, the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp, Box 71093, LA, CA
90071-0093, 213/288-4152.
Home
Introduction
Products
Information
Gallery
Links
Forum
Search
Email