hempmuseum.org
Robert MacDonald had a farm...

And on that farm he grew some hemp, e-i-e-i-o. He used that hemp to print a newspaper. e-i-e-i-o.

Stephen Young has me singing this morning. He kindly sent over a link to his article, The Colonel's Weed tracing the history of the Chicago Tribune's foray into farming in the 1930s.

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..

A year later, then drug czar Harry Anslinger declared war on the "killer weed", marijuana. No matter that hemp and marijuana are two completely different flora, the imminently useful hemp plant was demonized right along with the smokeable variety and the Tribune came under a federal investigation.

Young develops the story right through the present day looking at the political skullduggery that contributed to making this nonsensical ban a reality.

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.

McCormick bravely persisted and although his efforts came to naught, the benefits of hemp are still apparent today.

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.

Ironically, the descendants of this industrial workhorse of a weed continue to fuel today's war on some drugs with billions being spent on a futile attempt to eradicate a plant whose cultivation was once encouraged during WWII's Hemp for Victory campaign.

It's a long article, but well worth reading in full. For more on this story and hemp in general, check out the Vice Squad's coverage as well.