Hemp´s real story

V.S. Opium in 19th century England

Cannabis was virtually irrelevant to 19th century England. The drug of the century was opium, freely available to the British population and so popular that the government went to war to prevent the prohibitionist Chinese disrupting the trade. Thomas De Quincy, in his 'Confessions of and English Opium Eater' gave the first popular account of the '...marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or pain'. He may have been the first glamouriser of the psychotropic effects of the drug, but, for most people opium was a friend and medicine as indispensable as aspirin or Valium in the 20th century. Godfrey's cordial, or chemists' home-brewed versions of popular patent medicines, were used to quiet children, while no home would be without laudanum (alcoholic tincture of opium). Opium was first used in the treatment of cholera in the epidemics of the early 19th century, and continued to be used for the treatment of diarrhoea and sickness, common complaints in the less than hygienic environment of the day. It was during the Crimean war that the analgesic effects were fully exploited, and it is certain that the widespread use of laudanum, Collis Browne's mixture or other opium-based medicines, available to the poor for a penny a bottle, enabled ordinary people to cope with the harsh realities of life in Dickensian England. From the government's point of view, it was no doubt preferable to have the poor in a state of comfortable stupor than rioting on the streets.

Opium and tea were the mainstays of the British East India Company, who had a monopoly on the opium produced in Bengal. In 1772 Warren Hastings, then chief executive of the company, realised the potential for foreign revenue in exporting Indian opium to China. Opium had been known in China for centuries, but imports bad been banned in 1729 by decree of the Emperor. An foreign trade was funneled through Canton, opium being smuggled with legitimate consignments in British ships, and sold through corrupt officials to an eager market Other traders smuggled opium to China overland, and the consumption spread to all levels of society, even to the personal retinue of the Emperor. Exports to China rose from 10,000 chests ill 1820 to 40,000 chests in 1840. China was determined to wipe out the opium trade by threatening the British merchants with the loss of the tea trade, and in 1839 forced them to surrender 20,000 chests of the drug. Captain Charles Elliot the British Chief Superintended, retaliated by ordering all British ships out of the Canton estuary, transferring the tea trade to American ships who would transport their cargoes to Hong Kong, an inconvenience, but not an obstacle, to the trade. Instead of using Canton, smugglers would take opium consignments ashore up and down the coast in sin all boats, fast enough to evade the Customs craft. The trade continued uninterrupted following the Chinese capitulation and the end of the first opium war in 1842. To the domestic audience in the UK, Palmerston, the Prime Minister, had portrayed the war as an attempt to force the Chinese to accept free trade. In reality, the only commodity directly involved was opium, the tax revenue from which was becoming increasingly important to the Indian Government. China was powerless to stop the trade following the treaty of Nanking, which ceded Hong Kong to Britain, allowing a bridgehead for further opium supplies. Lord Elgin was dispatched with an expeditionary force which burned down the Summer Palace in Peking to impress upon the Emperor the need to keep agreements. The main consequence of the Second Opium War was that China was forced to legalise the trade in opium, and were only permitted to tax the product at a level acceptable to the British. Consumption increased from 60,000 chests in 1860 to 105,000 by 1880. The international drugs trade was quite a different thing from home consumption; for example although the British Empire produced a great deal of the worlds' opiates, over 80% of the opium used in the UK was from Turkey and Persia.

The trade generated taxes to the British Indian Government equivalent to over half their total revenue, enough to cover the entire civil service and armed forces budgets. In this climate, financial expediency, as so often is the case, took precedence over the growing moral arguments against the drug trade. Before the development of the hypodermic syringe by Alexander Wood, the main concern about opium was not the threat of addiction, but the danger of poisoning. Only after the 1860s did the risk of dependency start to cause concern among the medical profession. The question of cannabis occasionally cropped up as an incidental issue in skirmishes during the long legislative battle against the opium business. MPs of both parties were particularly concerned about "an exhalation of the Hemp plant, easily collected at certain seasons, which is in every way more injurious than the use of the poppy.". This was another justification for the lucrative opium trade which flourished in a climate of official and unofficial governmental encouragement. The state of Bengal had been making an average 1 million rupees per year through the 1860's in tax on ganja shops and duty at government auctions, about £100,000 - tens of millions in today's money. At the end of the century cannabis tincture became popular again in England as a cure for cramps, migraine, opium addiction, withdrawal and insomnia, but the fashion faded. In the early 1900's a British Medical Association campaign against 'Secret Remedies' got most of the opiates, cocaine and cannabis out of tonics and non-prescription medicines. Doctors became responsible for most drug distribution as the consumer beverage trade grew.

Hemp in the new World

Cannabis hemp is, overall, the strongest, most-durable, longest-lasting natural soft-fiber on the planet. Botanically, hemp is a member of the most advanced plant family on Earth. It is a dioecious (having male, female and sometimes hermaphroditic, male and female on same plant), woody, herbaceous annual that uses the sun more efficiently than virtually any other plant on our planet, reaching a robust 12 to 20 feet or more in one short growing season.

Ultimately when the colonies (of England) were to become independent, hemp production was not curtailed, in many areas production increased, particularly in the United States, where the founding fathers were passionate hemp advocates. Benjamin Franklin, as the leading paper manufacturer in the colonies, noted the raising of it in his state, of which he was in support. Thomas Paine noted hemp as a strength of the colonies, citing it as evidence of self-reliance that made the revolution plausible. George Washington grew it on his estates, and took an interest in its uses stopping on one occasion to visit a hemp paper factory in Hempstead, N.Y. Thomas Jefferson even took a stand in favour of hemp versus a native plant, tobacco. He voices his opinion in "The Farm Journal" of March 16, 1791, stating that tobacco required much more manure, employed less people, and did not contribute to the wealth or defence of the state. He also compared hemp favourably to flax, and invented a method for breaking, which involved a thrashing machine moved by a horse; this was to be the new nation,s first patent. John Quincy Adams wrote of Russian hemp cultivation which was printed into government records. Little did he imagine the future governments anti-hemp activists would view these activities as subversive and un-American, or that the very substance of the paper on which the constitutions were written would be a matter of controversy. The first two drafts of the U.S. Constitution we written on hemp paper. The final draft is on animal skin. Abraham Lincoln responded to this kind of repressive mentality in December, 1840, when he said “Prohibition/goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

After independence, there was new pressure on the young nation to produce hemp, as the need for defence and trade fell solely on their shoulders. Ironically, while great amounts of hemp were grown, they were not water retted(rotted), and thus the United States, like other nations, sent to Russia for its supplies. North Americans tried to raise the best crops they could, and this meant constant revision and a willingness to try new methods. However, Russian, Italian, and Dutch hemp continued to be the most desirable, largely due to the centuries of experience that these nations possessed. The primary reason for the War of 1812 (fought by America against Great Britain) was access to Russian cannabis hemp. Russian hemp was also the principal reason that Napoleon (our 1812 ally) and his “Continental Systems” allies invaded Russia in 1812.

The American civil war caused great disruption; hemp growing came to a standstill and did not ever recover to its previous levels. One interesting use of hemp that the war occasioned was that of movable defences-Secessionist soldiers rolled wetted bundles of hemp towards the Union Army, thus able to fire upon their enemy from behind movable cover. By such means was the battle of Lexington, Missouri, decided. In the future, hemp was to decline and be revived in the 1930s, when Henry Ford was set to use hemp as a fuel for cars. Ford operated a successful bio-mass conversion plant that included hemp at their Iron Mountain Facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate and creosote...all fundamental ingredients for modern industry, and now supplied by oil related industries. When considered on a planet-wide, climate-wide, soil-wide basis, cannabis is at least four and possibly many more times richer in sustainable, renewable biomass/cellulose potential than its nearest rivals on the planet, cornstalks, sugarcane, etc. Other uses of hemp were discovered, and the American farmer was to find that he would be able to sell even the hemp wastes at a profit. However, special interest groups cut down this hope, and hemp was outlawed just as it was set to revive the US economy. Today many US businesses are selling hemp, although it can not be grown legally in the US; ironically, arrests are being made as farmers try to get their rights, and recently Woody Harrelson was arrested for sowing the seeds of hemp in his hope state, Kentucky.

Facts

This may be hard to believe in the middle of the war on drugs, but the first law concerning marijuana in the colonies at Jamestown in 1619 ordered farmers to grow indian hemp. Massachusetts passed a compulsory "grow law" in 1631. Connecticut followed in 1632. The Chesapeake Colonies ordered their farmers, by law, to grow marijuana in the mid-18th century. Names like "Hempstead", "Hemp Hill, North Carolina" or "Hempfield, Pennsylvania" dot the American landscape, and reflect areas of intense marijuana cultivation.

Hemp paper lasted 50 to 100 times longer than most preparations of papyrus, and was a hundred times easier and cheaper to make. What we and the rest of the world used to make all our paper from was the discarded sails and ropes sold by ship owners as scrap for recycling into paper. The rest of our paper came from our worn-out clothes, sheets, diapers, curtains and rags*, made primarily from hemp and sometimes flax, then sold to scrap dealers. Hence the term “rag paper.”

In the 19th century Australians survived two prolonged famines by using hemp seed for protein and leaves for roughage.

All oil lamps used to burn hemp seed oil until the whale oil edged it out of first place in the mid-nineteenth century. And then, when all the whales were dead, lamplights were fueled by petroleum/ kerosene.

Until the 1880s in America (and until the 20th century in most of the rest of the world), 80% of all textiles and fabrics used for clothing, tents, bed sheets and linens,* rugs, drapes, quilts, towels, diapers, etc., and even our flag, “Old Glory,” were principally made from fibers of cannabis.

It cost more for a ship’s hempen sails, ropes, etc. than it did to build the wooden parts.

From 1842 through the 1890's a powerful concentrated extract of marijuana was the second most prescribed drug in the United States. In all that time the medical literature didn't list any of the "ill effects" claimed by today's "anti-drug warriors".

In 1860 'Ganjah Wallah Hasheesh Candy Company' produces one of the most popular candies in the U.S. It is made from cannabis derivatives and maple sugar, sold over-the-counter, and in Sears-Roebuck catalogs. It retains its popularity as a totally harmless and fun candy for over forty years.

During the 1870's the popularity of smoking female cannabis tops, to ease the back-breaking labor of working sugar cane fields and tolerate the hot sun as well as to relax recreationally with no alcohol "hang-over", begins to spread in the West Indies with the immigration of Hindus who are imported to provide cheap labor. Gradually, this popularity makes its way into the United States through St. Louis.

By 1883 hashish smoking parlors have opened in every major American city, including an estimated 500 such establishments in New York City alone.

Hemp paper contains no dioxin, or other toxic residue...and a single acre of hemp can produce the same amount of paper as four acres of trees. The trees take 20 years to harvest, and hemp takes a single season. In warm climates hemp can be harvested two, even three times a year. It also grows in bad soil and restores the nutrients.

Back in 1935 more than 58,000 tons were used just to make paint and varnish...all non-toxic.

After the 1937 Marijuana Tax law, new DuPont “plastic fibers,” under license since 1936 from the German company I.G. Farben (patent surrenders were part of Germany’s World War I reparation payments to America), replaced natural hempen fibers. (Some 30% of I.G. Farben, under Hitler, was owned and financed by America’s DuPont.) DuPont also introduced Nylon (invented in 1935) to the market after they’d patented it in 1938.

Four million pounds of hempseed for songbirds were sold at retail in the U.S. in 1937. Birds will pick hempseeds out and eat them first from a pile of mixed seed.

As an idication of its importance to industry, during World War II domestic hemp production became crucial when the Japanese cut-off Asian supplies of hemp to the United States. The U.S. government overrided its own ban on hemp and distributed 400,000 pounds of hemp seed to U.S farmers. American farmers, and even their sons, who grew marijuana were exempt from military duty during World War II. In 1942 the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a film called "Hemp for Victory" extolling the agricultural might of marijuana, and called for 100's of thousands of acres to be planted. Despite a rather vigorous drug crack down, 4-H clubs were asked by the government to grow marijuana for seed supply.

In 1972 U.S.D.A. finds that hemp seed is lower in saturated fats than any other vegetable oil (including soybean and canola).

Ancient Timeline

2700: B.C. Cannabis, as hemp fabric and cordage, medicine, and food, has been incorporated into virtually all cultures of the Middle East, Asia Minor, India, China, Japan, and Africa.

2300: B.C. Nomadic tribes from the East migrate into the Mediterranean regions and eventually Europe, introducing hemp along the way.

2000: B.C. to 1883A.D. Hemp is the world's largest agricultural crop, providing materials to support civilization's most important industries, including fiber for fabric and rope, lamp oil for lighting, paper, medicine and food for both humans and domesticated animals.

Hemp Extracts are the #1, #2, and #3 most important and most frequently used medicine for two-thirds of the world's population.

1470's: Gutenberg Bible is printed on hemp paper.

1494: Hemp papermaking starts in England.

1535: Henry VIII passes an act stating that all landowners must sow 1/4 acre, or be fined.\

1537: Hemp receives the name Cannabis Sativa, the scientific name that stands today.

1563: Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with 60 acres or more must grow hemp or else face a £5 fine.

1564: King Philip of Spain mandated the cultivation of hemp for food, fiber and medicine throughout the Spanish territory in Central and South America.

1600: Rembrandt paints on hemp canvas.

1611: King James Bible is printed on hemp paper.

1619: America's first hemp law is enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, ordering all farmers to grow hemp.

1631: 'Must grow' hemp laws are enacted throughout Massachusetts.

1631: to early 1800's Hemp is 'legal tender' and taxes may be paid with hemp throughout most of the Americas.

1632 to mid `1700's: 'Must grow' hemp laws enacted in Connecticut and the Chesapeake Colonies.