Reflections ►
We Don ’ t Need No Stinkin ’ Oil
We Can Grow It in Our Soil !
by Dolores Halbin , contributing writer
I am always impressed with the writers Bill and Victoria Cromwell have gathered to create The EVOLUTION Magazine . Along with the help of Clayton Stallings , they make a fantastic team , encouraging all of us to write more !
One of those impressive writers featured in January and February issues , contributing writer Karla Deel , wrote an amazing two-part series with a detailed history of hemp . In her first article ( January 2022 ), “ Wild Crop ’ s to Household Staple ; the Long and Winding Journey of Cannabis ,” Deel went back to the beginning of hemp , 28 million years ago !
Due to the recent study of ancient cannabis pollen , we can pinpoint that the plant first evolved 28 million years ago on the eastern Tibetan Plateau , nearly 10,000 feet above sea level in the heart of Asia . Ancient Tibet so valued the cannabis plant , its monastic texts were written on it .
Deel explains how Tibet is now under the control of China , which forbids cannabis use with strict penalties . The question to China is why ? I assume the answers are the same in China as they are here — Big Oil and Bigger Pharma . At last report , 97 % of our pharmaceutical drugs are manufactured in China . I ’ m guessing the other 3 % is the Oxycontin Purdue pharmacy manufacturing out of Canada . So obviously , cannabis medicine replacing big pharma would be bad for business between the U . S . and China .
In February , Deel wrote about the history of racism in the world of cannabis :
In a 1929 article , the Chicago Tribune traced early cultivation to Mexican immigrant communities , which it claims brought cannabis seeds into the United States . The workers would plant tiny patches of marijuana near their boxcar homes , along the railways , in between rows of corn , and in window boxes of apartments .... They could sell three cigarettes for 25 cents .
The Tribune concluded that the Mexican “ loco weed ” spread across the Midwest due to immigrants and natural elements such as birds . However , the plant was accepted and not stigmatized more than any other racial differences in food , housing , or clothing . Amazingly , no one alive knew hemp , cannabis , and the up-andcoming new drug about to hit the marketplace , “ marijuana ,” were the same thing .
In Jack Herer ’ s book , The Emperor Wears No Clothes , he wrote in Chapter 1 facts we all should know .
The first marijuana laws were enacted in 1619 on what would become U . S . soil , but at the time was the Jamestown colony of Virginia . The law ordered all farmers to “ make tryal of ” ( grow )
Indian hempseed , making it mandatory to grow hemp . Cannabis hemp was legal tender ( money ) in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s .
For 200 years we could pay our taxes with cannabis .
Jefferson and Washington were both cannabis farmers . Thomas Jefferson even smuggled hempseed into Turkey from China . China valued their hempseed so much exporting it was a capital offense that carried with it the death penalty .
On Page 43 , Herer has a picture of the February 1938 headlines from Popular Mechanics Magazine , “ New Billion-Dollar Crop .”
Inventor George Schlichten had produced the revolutionary decorticator , the hemp harvester . The decorticator would revolutionize the amount of hemp grown and manufactured . Up to this point in history , immigrant workers harvested hemp . The work was slow and labor-intensive . Schlichten ’ s friend and fellow inventor Henry Ford built the first automobile to run on bio-fuel . Ford ’ s first car ran on a combination of hemp and corn oil and a few other plants .
But in a parallel dark universe , businessmen and entrepreneurs William Randolph Hearst and Charles DuPont were developing the fossil fuel industry to replace hemp products . Their argument , “ Hemp could not keep up with demand ” was about to crash and burn with the decorticator . The great deception of marijuana was the brainchild given birth to in a smoky back room during a brainstorming session in 1937 between lobbyist Harry Anslinger , Hearst , and DuPont .
These two industrial giants were making everything from oil previously made from hemp . They could make plastic , explosives , nylon rope , and clothing , even lipstick , all previously made from labor intensive hemp . Hearst , a newspaperman , had learned to make paper from whole trees , starting mass deforestation a hundred years ago .
For a minute , their environmentally disastrous products were cheaper , but just for a minute . Schlichten ’ s hemp harvester changed everything , making all their fossil fuel and tree-based products obsolete just as they hit the market .
My dad invented the cathoid ray tube that went up on the first space shuttle . Then , by the time the second space shuttle took off , technology advanced straight over his invention to circuit boards . It happens . My dad did not develop a maniacal plot to destroy Silicon Valley . He licked his wounds and did something else . Not DuPont and Hearst . Instead , they went crying to their friend Harry Anslinger .
Anslinger was hired to find a way to destroy the hemp industry . He had a reputation for his ruthless work against bootleggers during alcohol prohibition . It was Anslinger who played the race card that night . He