Dupont vs The AMA and the American People
The 1930s saw Ford and other companies promising to make every product from cannabis that was then being made from petroleum hydrocarbons. In response to this competitive threat, Lammot DuPont, the majority shareholders in GM and owner of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, commonly known as Dupont, one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world, allegedly lobbied the chief counsel of the Treasury Department, Herman Oliphant, for a law prohibiting hemp. DuPont allegedly assured Oliphant that synthetic petrochemicals (such as urethane) could replace hemp seed oil in the marketplace.22
In 1916 George Schlichtin had patented a labor efficient hemp decorticator that the USDA said in Bulletin 404 would revolutionize the hemp industry and once again make it a top commercial crop in the United States. Schlichtin died in 1924 without being able to capitalize on his invention. In the mid 1930s, when Schlichten’s patent ran out, several other inventors came out with similar, even better, more effective decorticators. Presumably they were building on the original design of his decorticator, but except for their use in the Hemp for Victory campaign in WWII, it was to no avail in saving the hemp and cannabis industry.23
There was good reason for Lammot DuPont to be concerned about competition from hemp. Oil, paper and fabric were all important to generating profits for DuPont. DuPont’s stake in the oil business is traced to the company’s development and patenting of fuel additives such as tetraethyl lead in the 1920’s and 30s. In 1937 Dupont developed the sulfate and sulfite processes for manufacture of pulp paper. They also created other new synthetic products such as nylon, cellophane, and other plastics. In the 30s they purchased the rights to produce rayon from the munitions maker I.M. Farben of Germany.24 At the same time some of their competitor companies were developing synthetic products from renewable biological resources—especially hemp.
The DuPont Company predicted that the sulfate and sulfite used in the manufacture of the synthetic products nylon and cellophane, as well as in the manufacture of wood-pulp paper25 would be one of its main sources of income in the years ahead. Cannabis was seen as a threat because of its magnificent fiber durability and the ability to make synthetic fiber, which would compete against nylon. Its inner hurd could more safely and efficiently be used in the manufacture of paper and simple plastics. If you had fuel from hemp you didn’t need the tetra ethyl lead, a standard gasoline additive until the 1990s.
According to Herer, Booth and several other secondary sources,26, 27 Lammot DuPont had been lobbying Thomas Oliphant, the top attorney for the Treasury Department, from 1935-1937, to create and pass what eventually came to be known as the Marijuana Tax Act. This allegation is consistent with the testimony of the AMA before the House Ways & Means Committee. Dr. William Woodward, representing the AMA, accused Congress of secretly working on this legislation for two years without contacting the AMA.
The Marijuana Tax Act was patterned after the 1934 National Firearms Act. Under the Firearms Act, individuals were allowed to purchase machine guns, but they had to pay a transfer tax of $200 and fill out an order form for their purchase. In 1937, with this 1934 federal tax on machine guns being blessed by the Supreme Court as Constitutional, Oliphant was free to submit the Marijuana Tax Act to Congress.28 Which he, of course, did. The Act was rushed through Congress. There were bird seed, varnish and agricultural interests who opposed the bill. The most reveling testimony was given by the American Medical Association.
There testimony nails that this law had everything to do with hemp and nothing to do with marijuana. The AMA’s spokesperson, Dr. William Woodward, accused the administration of crafting the law in secret over a two year period. In that period Dr. Woodward was in the offices of the Bureau of Narcotics more than ten times and never once did they mention it to him. One would think if this were a health measure that a draft of the run would at least be run by the AMA. It wasn’t.
But Woodward wasn’t done with his damning House subcommittee testimony,.Dr. Woodward pointed out that Anslinger obtained no data from any government agency, bureau or department to support his outrageous allegations. In preparing his testimony, Dr. Woodward had contacted the Bureau of Prisons, the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Education, the Division of Mental Health of the U.S. Public Health Service (previously called the Division of Narcotics and the Bureau of Narcotics). None of them had any information to support Anslinger’s wild charges. Woodward testified that Anslinger’s charges were unsubstantiated by any official government data.64 (It should be noted that latter research into Anslinger’s testimony/allegations demonstrate the truth of Dr. Woodward’s testimony.)
The essence of Woodward’s testimony was that the entire fabric of federal testimony was woven out of tabloid sensationalism. Woodward said “Inquiry into the Office of Education – and they certainly should know something of the prevalence of the habit among the school children of the country, if there is a prevalent habit – indicates that they have had no occasion to investigate and know nothing of it.”65
Woodward further testified that, “Informal inquiry by me indicates that they (the Division of Mental Health), have had no record of any marihuana or Cannabis addicts who have ever been committed” to the Division of Mental Hygiene Narcotic Farms66 (from the testimony of Dr. William Woodward, AMA spokesperson, before House Ways & Means Committee 1937.67 He continued his critique: “The bureau of Public Health Service has also a division of pharmacology. If you desire evidence as to the pharmacology of cannabis, that obviously is the place where you can get direct and primary evidence, rather than the indirect hearsay evidence.”68
All Anslinger had were a bunch of newspaper clippings. Woodward testified that there was no hard data to support the need for the law: “We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marijuana addiction. We are told that the use of marijuana causes crime. Yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marijuana habit. An informal inquiry (Author’s note: The inquiry had been made by Woodward) shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point.”69
Dr. David Bearman, contributing Writer for The Cannabis Times
