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 DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR |
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(The Untold Story)
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CHAPTER 1 - EXPLORING SOME NEEDED CONCEPTS:
QUESTION: WHY HEMP FOR VICTORY?
Or maybe a better question would be; “What was so important about Hemp? In other words, why (in a time of war) was our government forced to do such a flip-flop? Literally going from Reefer Madness to “Hemp for Victory” almost overnight. - - - While the answer is simple, its reasoning is somewhat complex, requiring us to first go over a few concepts.
1.1 - LIVING IN FEAR:
It has been said that there are many who would willingly trade in some or even all of their liberties in exchange for security. It has also been said that; “Those who give up their liberties in exchange for security deserve nether.” But no matter, the only point being made here is that “Fear” of-and-by-itself brings about changes. Changes both in personal lives as well as those of whole communities. And in America's case, although few are willing to openly admit it, upon those opening days after Pearl Harbor, as a nation there was great fear.
Since the mid-1930’s, American newspapers had been carrying reports particularly about Germany’s growing military might. Soon, there was conflict throughout the globe with Italy invading Ethiopia, Japan invaded China and a massive civil war began to play itself in front of everyone in Spain. In all cases the role of the airplane became more pronounced, and the fear of poison gas bombs being dropped on highly populated cities (among other things), during a major war, also became a major concern. Thus, when the war actually started in Europe, Americans in large numbers simply wanted to stay out, no matter what.
But be that as it may, after Pearl Harbor, America was in the war irregardless, and our worse case fears now were being realized. While no gas bombs were being dropped, military wise we simply weren’t doing so well; --- Hell we were being clobbered.
Thus the importance (conceptually) of asking the readers to put themselves into the mindset of “FEAR.” What was going to happen to us if the Axis started bombing us? Or better yet; If the Axis won, then what was going to happen to us period.
1.2 - BLIND FORESIGHT:
It has been said that hindsight (looking at the past)has clear twenty-twenty vision, yet foresight (looking into the future) is blind. And indeed that seems to be true. If a stockbroker had known what a particular stock was going to do ahead of time, it is obvious what their actions would have been. The same can be said just about all past events. However, the same can’t be said about future events, simply put, "Foresight is Blind." Thus (conceptually) we must ignore what we know about history, and place ourselves in the shoes of any American in those first opening months. The fact that we would WIN THE WAR in a matter of less then four years was a total unknown. The following paragraph (taken from the book) "Franklin and Winston", an intimate portrait of an epic friendship" by Jon Meacham, so well puts it:
“. . . the ‘winter of disaster,’ It had begun, really, more than a month before, when the Japanese sank the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. Many of the sailors who had prayed with Churchill and Roosevelt were killed. ("Nearly half those who sang," Churchill wrote in his recollection of the church parade, "were soon to die.") Pearl Harbor had been another dark chapter. January and February brought more horror. "The underrated Japanese forces shattered all previous Allied appraisals and calculations, and did so with such bewildering speed that the pins on the walls of the map rooms in Washington and London were usually far out of date," Sherwood wrote. The war in North Africa was troubling, too. The German commander, Erwin Rommel, was successfully driving east toward Tobruk. This was the world Roosevelt and Churchill were confronting, and Roosevelt was drawing on his mysterious supply of confidence and courage to face it. . . . “And this was the world that the average Joe out on the street was also in. Simply put; No one back in Feb of 1942 knew how long the war was going to last. Would it be over in a matter of a year, or would it be more like decades? No one even knew if we could win a war against such formidable foes. Thus the reader is asked to place themselves, not only in a mindset of “FEAR,” but also of great UNCERTAINTY”.
1.3 - A BRIEF (Very Brief) HISTORY OF REEFER MADNESS:
[ SiouxCityJournal1924-10-26p40 ]
Beginning in the 1890’s, wire press reports began coming out of Mexico City (where a revolution was occurring at the time) about a strange new drug. One which according to the governmental official’s there at the time, was being used by the rebels to both intoxicate as well as fortify them before their attacks, etc. This new drug, which was termed “Maria-Junnita” or “Marigona” was also said to turn its users into debauched insensitive brutes of the lowest kind.
And while one may or may not choose to accept these reports as being factual, by the early 1900’s, the damage they created had already been done. This “Mexican Opium” or “Marihuana” as it was now being termed; ---Despite the fact that it had been grown in this county (under the name Hemp) since colonial days and was readily available (under the name Cannabis) in just about every drugstore in the country. Still a public perception in the negative about Marihuana “the Mexican Opium” had now been created. Soon, what we today would term “Science Fiction” or “Detective Fictional” writers seemed to have taken up the call to demonize the plant. In serialized novels meant mostly for newspaper publication, as was typical back then, the negative stereotype of the marihuana using Mexican bandito (or occasionally the hashish using Mohammedan) was solidified. Thus by the time the Reefer Madness hysteria campaign came along, a lot of the groundwork had already been done.
However, it wasn’t until the mid-1920’s that internally generated (appearing mostly in American newspapers in states in the southwest) began to come into being. These articles mostly followed the fictional story lines, such as:
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Mexican marihuana user ravished young American girl . . . Claims that he was under the influence of marihuana . . . Remembers nothing of what happen . . . Thus your honor, he wasn’t the real culprit . . . It was that Marihuana pusher, . . etc.
was all to typical of what had started long before ]
It should then come as no surprise that a small but growing public clamor to outlaw this mysterious Mexican drug came into being. The fact that this very same substance (but labeled as Cannabis, not Marihuana) could be found in thousands of standard off the shelf medicines didn’t seem to occur to anyone. The myth had begun to take on a life of its own.
And the fact that its alleged use lead to both temporary insanity as well as amnesia quickly brought it into popular use by defense attorneys throughout. As district attorney of New Orleans, Eugene Stanley, stated in 1931: [1]
“Many prosecuting attorneys in the South and Southwest have been confronted with the defense that, at the time of the commission of the Criminal act, the defendant was irresponsible, because of being under the influence of Marihuana to such a degree he was unable to appreciate the difference between right and wrong, and was therefore legally insane. A great deal of difficulty has been experienced in rebutting this defense with the testimony of psychiatrists, for, while some of these experts are conversant with the nature and effect of this drug, it has been the experience of the author that many of them are without any information on the subject. This is probably due to the fact that this drug has come into wide use in certain parts of the South only within the last ten years. “Thus no wonder many border States started outlawing the use of “marihuana” (but not Medical Cannabis), during the 1920’s. I myself am of the opinion that the conspirators (and a conspiracy there was), who came to orchestrate the Reefer Madness hysteria campaign, did not of-and-by-themselves create it, but only took over what was already there and simply magnified it.
This is not to minimize the work of Harry Anslinger (America’s first drug czar), not at all. Without his energy and skill the “War on Blacks” as we know it today would never have been. If ever there was a man who could do instead of just talk, he was that man. Soon through clever use of the same propaganda techniques first used to create alcohol prohibition and then used to remove it, he had America believe that Marihuana truly was the “Killer Drug” and “The Weed of Madness”. To quote an encyclopedia at the time: [2]
"MARIJUANA . . . Narcotic officials named it 'The Assassin of Youth,' and state that it is as dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake. . . . An addict was hanged in Baltimore in 1937 for a criminal assault on a ten-year-old girl. In Fla. a crazed youth killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. In more than 30 cases of murder or degenerate sex crimes in 1937, marijuana proved to be a contributing cause.”We could go on and on about the campaign, but we feel our website; [ http://ReeferMadnessMuseum.org ]
does a pretty good job at that. Here for our purposes, all that is needed is for the reader to understand the basic concept of what the hysteria campaign was all about. Or simpler still, just the fact that very, very negative stories were being circulated about marijuana intoxication as the cause of murders, bank robberies, sex crimes, young girls jumping out of fifth story windows, etc. And just look at where this was all being said:
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Not to mention local talks given by ministers, public officials plus local, state and even federal narcotics officials; HELL, who wasn’t going to believe that it was all a lie? After all would all those people (ALL OF THEM) be lying to us? Thus (in the public's mind just before the war), Marijuana did turn you into a cold-blooded monster . . .
1.4 -CHAPTER SUMMARY:
Even before our entry into the war, many American’s were already fearful of what was to come. War was no longer a matter of many months or even years at a fixed front line, but instead was more akin to a fast moving wave. A German word “Blitz-Creag,” or "lightning war" had even made its way into our vocabulary. And Americans who has long relied on Mr. Atlantic and Mr. Pacific for protection were no long so certain. Technology was changing and changing fast. It was more than possible for an airplane to fly non-stop from a European base, drop poison gas bombs on one of our cities and then fly home again.
Thus there was every right to be both fearful and uncertain about our future. Especially during the opening days of the war, when territory after territory fell and the Axis enemy seemed all but unstoppable.
BUT, some of the readers might be asking themselves; ---what does all this have to do with begging farmers to start growing extremely large amounts of Marihuana? Something, they’ve been told for years and years now was a very dangerous drug that turned its users into cold blooded murderers. And this during a time of war when all our energies should have been concentrated on war production. As radio talk host Phil Grande would say; “WHAT ARE YOU NUTS?”
But obviously there was a reason, one so important that it required our government to flip-flop literally overnight and again virtually beg our farmers to grow.
WHY HEMP FOR VICTORY? The simple answer is as follows:
Due to climate/labor/machining (not to mention the Reefer Madness hysteria campaign) much of our raw cordage materials were imported from abroad. However, soon after our entry into the war, MOST of those imported sources were under Axis control, meaning our raw cordage materials had now been cut off.
And as a people, many of us were very fearful and full of uncertainty; all we knew then was that we needed to build up an army and fast. That we needed war materials to supply them with and as the reader will soon find out, Industrial Hemp was a very, very critical war material. As President Roosevelt (didn’t but) might have put it;
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