The Evils of Marijuana Exposed by The American Medical Association - 1937

The Evils of Marijuana Exposed by The AMS Video 1936 - 1938: William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire fuels a tabloid journalism propaganda campaign against marijuana. Articles with headlines such as Marihuana Makes Fiends of Boys in 30 Days; Hasheesh Goads Users to Blood-Lust create terror of the killer weed from Mexico. Through his relentless misinformation campaign, Hearst is credited with bringing the word marijuana into the English language. In addition to fueling racist attitudes toward Hispanics, Hearst papers run articles about marijuana-crazed negroes raping white women and playing voodoo-satanic jazz music. Driven insane by marijuana, these blacks -- according to accounts in Hearst-owned newspapers -- dared to step on white men's shadows, look white people directly in the eye for more than three seconds, and even laugh out loud at white people. For shame! 1936: DuPont obtains a patent license to manufacture synthetic plastic fibers from German industrial giant I.G. Farben Corporation. The patent license is obtained as part Germany's reparation payments to the United States after World War I. A few years later, I.G. Farben manufactures deadly Zyklon-B gas, used in Nazi death camps to murder millions of Jews (along with many homosexuals and drug users). DuPont owned and financed approximately 30% of Hitler's I.G. Corps, the military-industrial backbone of the fascist Third Reich. 1937: The year the federal government outlawed cannabis. -- DuPont patents petrochemical manufacturing processes for making plastics, as well as pollution-heavy sulfate/sulfite processes for producing wood pulp. For the next 50 years, these processes are responsible for 80% of DuPont's industrial output. --In its 1937 Annual Report, DuPont informs stockholders that the company anticipates radical changes from the revenue raising power of government... converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization. March 29, 1937: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upholds the National Firearms Act. April 14, 1937: The Treasury Department secretly introduces its marihuana tax bill through the House Ways and Means Committee, bypassing more appropriate venues. Committee chairman Robert L. Doughton, a key Congressional ally of DuPont, rubber-stamps the bill. Spring 1937: Congress holds hearings on the Marijuana Tax Act. Dr. James Woodward, representing the American Medical Association, testifies that the law could deny the world a potential medicine. Cannabis was already prescribed for dozens of common ailments, and medical researchers were just beginning to explore the therapeutic benefits of the numerous active ingredients in marijuana. Woodward said that AMA doctors were wholly unaware that the killer weed from Mexico was actually cannabis. We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared, Woodward testifies. FBN commissioner Harry Anslinger and the Ways and Means Committee quickly denounce Woodward and the AMA, which already had an adversarial relationship with the Roosevelt administration. December 1937: The Marijuana Tax Act is signed into law, initiating 60 years of cannabis prohibition and annihilating a multi-billion dollar industry. DuPont and other synthetic materials manufacturers reap vast profits by filling the void conveniently left by the criminalization of industrial hemp. 1937 - 1939: Under Harry Anslinger, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics prosecutes 3,000 doctors for illegally prescribing cannabis-derived medications. In 1939, the American Medical Association reached an agreement with Anslinger, and over the following decade, only three doctors are prosecuted. February 1938: Popular Mechanics describes hemp as the new billion dollar crop. The article was actually written in the spring of 1937, before cannabis was criminalized. Also in February 1938, Mechanical Engineering calls hemp the most profitable and desirable crop that can be grown.