Why is hemp illegal?
Simon Frew
Hemp is one of the world's most useful plants. Its uses range from paper to fuel, and it could replace many environmentally destructive products.
For thousands of years hemp has been used as a food, to make clothing, as a medicine and as a drug. It can be turned into plastics and made into petroleum without producing sulphur, thus reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. Until 1883, 75 to 90% of all paper in the world was made from hemp.
Due to difficulties harvesting it in large quantities, hemp fell out of favour as a profitable crop in the late 1800s, until an automated harvester was developed in the 1930s.
In the intervening years, many industries were developed to take over hemp's role in production: oil was drilled from the ground, trees were used for paper and new sources of cloth were developed. Many of the companies involved now had a vested interest in making hemp illegal.
The United States was the first country to introduce laws to destroy hemp plants, regardless of their intended use. That law was the result of political pressure exerted by the forestry industry and the Dupont corporation, which had just patented oil and coal based plastics production.
Dupont's chief financial backer, Andrew Mellon, was US President J. Edgar Hoover's secretary of the treasury. He appointed his nephew, Harry J. Anslinger, to a position in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/20329