Anslinger continued his public scare by the use of yellow journalism and sending what people called reefer madness all around. When he proposed the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, he had no factual evidence of why the plant should be illegal. The court told him that he was lacking any factual information, but when they reviewed the public opinion on the matter, they decided that for the public’s safety, the drug needed to be outlawed (Guither). So in 1937, the plant hemp and any relative of it were classified as a Level 1 felony drug, meaning that the government felt the drug had no medical use what so ever and was not to be grown.
Hemp itself is such a great crop though. It’s first known use was to make fabric to weave clothing, which was estimated back to about 8000 – 7000 B.C (Guither). Hemp fibers are strong, fulfill multiple universal needs to create products, and are biodegradable (Herer ch 1). This last key detail is what gives it so much more credit today and makes it such a necessary product to help keep our environment cleaner. Its fibers can be strung together to create paper, potentially eliminating deforestation as a whole if the crop were domesticated globally. The forest is only one small area that the plant helps preserve in our environment. Hemp fibers were used for everything from making clothes, rope, and ship sails. Its durability is well greater than any other material that can be compared to it. It was discovered in the early 1900’s that hemp fibers, pressed with other plant fibers, could be made into a substitute for wooden lumber to build structures. It can be made into a stronger concrete that, when manufactured with lime, it crystallizes solid. From an environmentalist’s point of view, hemp would be the ideal way to push a more eco-friendly world simply because of two things: food and oil.
