Propaganda behind hemp absurd
I contend that it is a waste of time and money for word “marijuana” to be changed to the word “cannabis” in all Hawaii state documents, merely because someone fears that the word marijuana has racial implications.
If it really does have racial implications, I believe that it is due to the fact that in the 1930s,William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper mogul living in Southern California, knew there was sentiment against Mexicans (a culture, not a race), probably due to job competition. At the time, Hearst had huge forests that he wanted to cut down to make paper for his newspaper empire and to sell.
In order to eliminate competition from hemp paper, I understand that Hearst colluded with DuPont to persuade the U.S. Congress to pass the anti-hemp law of 1937. What was DuPont’s skin-in-the-game? His company had just perfected a chlorine-based, wood-pulp process for making paper, and he also did not want the competition from hemp paper. It did not seem to matter to DuPont that the chlorine process produced a by-product chemical called dioxin, one of the most-toxic, non-radioactive molecules on planet Earth.
In order to get the general public to agree to outlawing one of the most important products in the nation, Hearst used his newspaper empire to publish inflammatory stories about Mexicans “crazed on marijuana” and committing crimes. In addition, he purportedly funded the now-laughable propaganda film “Reefer Madness,” further molding public sentiment.
Having received such generous contributions (bribes, in my book) from Hearst and DuPont, the U.S. Congress ignored both testimony from physicians (who said this plant made important medicines) and the fact that hemp for rope and cloth was so important that American Revolution-era farmers were required to grow it.
Why should we pay for having this word changed in documents, websites, etc? Is this some form of legitimizing the fact that the “bad guy marijuana dealers” are being replaced by government-controlled cannabis dispensaries? Little did we know as children that the people our parents and teachers warned us about would turn out to be our elected officials.
Don’t we have better use for our Hawaii taxpayers’ money?
James Donovan
Waikoloa