[geeks] oh, my freaking head!

[John Duksta]

At 12:29 AM 12/21/2001 +0000, Kris Kirby wrote:
>On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Andrew Weiss wrote:
> > > My father told me at one point that the big push behind pot being
> > > illegal was the alcohol manufacturers after prohibition was repealed.
>
> > I heard it was merely the paper manufacturers trying to ban hemp paper.
>
>Didn't somebody say it was to get rid of the cheap hemp rope?

No, as a matter of fact, during WWII the prohibition was
lifted (sort of) in order to produce hemp for rope. Before WWII,
our main source for hemp rope was the Phillipines, but due to
the Japanese occupation thereof, we weren't getting the rope
we needed for the war effort.

Thus, the USDA produced a film called Hemp for Victory (1942) [1]
and licensed farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. The licenses
were strickly controlled and the farmers crops were monitored.

Funny part of all of this, the record of Hemp for Victory having
ever been produced has been expunged from the official record.
Both the USDA and the Library of Congress deny that this film
was ever made. Ahhh... revisionist history, ain't it great?

[1] http://www.norml.org/hemp/victory.shtml

-john