Why was hemp banned?
Why was hemp banned?
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wavess
Hemp was a popular crop grown on farms in the 1930s. In fact, it was so popular that it was in direct competition with other big-name industries such as cotton and new inventions. Rumors and lies about hemp circulated in the media, comparing it to marijuana and eventually leading to its prohibition (or banning).
It’s crazy that it wasn’t until the Farm Bill of 2018 that hemp was decriminalized.
CrayM
It was banned for many reasons, as mentioned above, the “reefer madness” campaign of the 1930s had a huge impact on the banning of it but there are other reasons as well. The timber industry had a big play in this as hemp could be used for paper. Hemp can be used for a variety of things including paper and textiles so when it started to encroach on the profits of these industries, such as the timber industry, the money of big business helped push the 1930s campaign for banning.
Hempmaster3000
Hemp was originally banned for two reasons in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
1. Economic competition with Cotton, Timber and Synthetic Plastics
2. 1930’s anti-hemp propaganda caused a moral panic, persuading Americans to believe Hemp and Marijuana were the same and would both lower the moral values of American culture.
amanda.tolar
Depends on who you ask. There’s a lot of conspiracies floating around, and personally, I think many of them make sense, especially when you look at all of the corruption and back-scratching that has gone on historically with legislature. The simple answer is, the government didn’t need it any more. Or at least said they didn’t. Hemp posed threats to the automotive industry, textile industry, paper industry, and fuel industry–to name a few. It thrives in areas that are more plagued with poverty, and allows a degree of self-sufficiency… I honestly think the government was afraid of that–and that there was a lot of back-scratching among government officials and the big players in the aforementioned industries. There’s an episode of Stuff You Should Know about “Reefer Madness”–it’s more about the war on marijuana, but hemp gets tied into it, too.