🌾 Part 1: The Betrayal Years

How hemp went from trusted crop to outlawed plant—and how farmers, doctors, and truth got left behind.

🧠 Ask Yourself These Questions

What do you do for a living?

How does that job support you—month after month?
Does it pay your rent? Feed your kids? Give you purpose?

Now imagine waking up tomorrow and hearing:
“Your job is now illegal.”

Not because it hurt anyone. Not because it failed.
But because someone in power said it had to go.

No warning. No backup plan. No second chance.

That’s what happened to hemp workers.
To farmers. To processors. To entire communities who built their lives around a plant that once served this country—and suddenly got erased from it.

It didn’t happen by accident. It happened by design.
And that’s what this series will uncover.

🔨 Section 1: The Setup — How Fear and Greed Killed Hemp

In 1933, the U.S. ended Prohibition, bringing alcohol back into legal circulation. It was framed as a return to common sense.

But behind the scenes, powerful people were searching for a new threat.
They found it in cannabis—and lumped hemp in with it.

Enter Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. With his department’s funding on the line, he launched a nationwide campaign to paint marijuana—and hemp—as dangerous.

He didn’t rely on science. He relied on fear.

Anslinger’s speeches linked cannabis to insanity, violence, and racial prejudice. He called it a “gateway to destruction” and referred to users as “degenerates.” Jazz musicians, immigrants, and people of color were all targeted in his narrative.

Want more? Watch for our mini-series The Hands That Buried Hemp, starting with the man who led the charge: Anslinger.

Anslinger had help:

• William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper mogul, ran stories blaming marijuana for crimes that never happened. He feared hemp would replace the paper made from his timber empire.
• DuPont had just patented nylon. Hemp threatened their bottom line.
• Andrew Mellon, U.S. Treasury Secretary, was a DuPont investor and also Anslinger’s uncle by marriage.

Together, they passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. It didn’t criminalize hemp directly—it just made it nearly impossible to grow, sell, or process without heavy fees and scrutiny.

And that was enough to kill the industry.

Want proof? Meet the first person arrested under the Tax Act.

🚗 What They Were Afraid Of

Just as hemp was being pushed out, it was on the brink of a renaissance.

In 1941, Henry Ford built a prototype car using hemp-based plastic panels. It was stronger than steel and designed to run on hemp ethanol instead of gasoline.

Ford wasn’t guessing—he was proving that plants could power the future.

But big oil, big media, and big chemical companies weren’t interested in innovation they couldn’t control.

Ford’s vision was shelved. And soon after, so was hemp.

🧱 Beliefs That Didn’t Age Well

In the 1930s, the following were considered normal:

• Blaming entire races for social problems
• Printing false crime stories to stir public fear
• Ignoring science in favor of headlines
• Letting personal profits shape national policy

What was called “drug policy” was often just power politics dressed up in fear.

The language and logic that buried hemp wouldn’t pass today—but their effects are still with us.
It’s time we uncover what was hidden, and remember what was erased.