Dupont Chemicals was, and still is, one of the largest petro-chemical manufacturers in America. It's multi-national tentacles stretch far. You can see advertisements for their products on government buses here in Australia.

Around 1935 Dupont had patented a new synthetic fibre called Nylon, and a great deal of money was invested in an extensive campaign to market Nylon to the public. Hemp at this stage was still a legal crop, and though its natural attributes were many, it's labour intensive production process made it very expensive in comparison with cotton and the new, chemically-produced Nylon.

However, a machine which had been invented in the early 1900's and perfected around 1937 was set to revolutionise the Hemp industry. The decorticator would separate the hurds from the stalks, leaving the long fibres ready to be put into bails. What the "cotton gin" did for the cotton industry, the decorticator was about to do for the manufacturing of a wide variety of hemp products, especially paper-making, rope-making and as a raw material for clothing manufacture. Dupont stood to lose millions.

Banker to the Dupont empire at this time was a certain Andrew Mellon, who also happened to be a Congressman and Secretary to the Treasury. Included in Mellon's portfolio was responsiblity for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Mellon appointed his nephew-in-law, Harry Anslinger to head the Bureau. Collusion cannot be proved, but Anslingers activities in this role had a huge indirect impact on American agricultural and manufacturing processes, and of course Mellon's business interests.

In December 1937 Anslinger introduced the Marijuana Tax Bill, an event which proved to be the beginning of the era of Prohibition of Cannabis.

Simultaneously, a fear campaign of anti-Marijuana propaganda was run as front page "news" stories by one of America's most powerful newspaper proprietors, Randolf Hearst. By coincidence Hearst had begun using wood-pulp for paper and invested heavily in its production. The chemicals used to make the wood-pulp suitable for news-print were supplied by Dupont Chemicals. Hemp's fate was sealed.

Few of the congressmen who voted in favour of this Bill realised that they were in effect making all strains of Hemp illegal, subsequently wiping out the industrial hemp industry. In an age when environmental awareness was still dismally limited, fewer of these law-makers could have imagined the future ramifications in terms of environmental degradation which would result from this conspiracy to remove hemp, the strongest, most ecologically sustainable and least pollutant of fibres, from the available range of raw materials suitable for manufacture of paper, rope and cloth fabric.

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