Why then has marijuana been banned throughout the world for so many years?

As they say in Hollywood movies, “Nothing personal – just business.” In the 30s of the last century, hemp was a serious competitor to the already formed alcohol, tobacco, cellulose, textile businesses.

In 1916, the US Parliament expressed the opinion that by 1940, all paper products would be made from hemp, therefore tree cutting would no longer be necessary, as 1 hectare of hemp is equivalent to 4 hectares of forest in terms of productivity. Such news could not please billionaires who grew rich in deforestation and paper production from wood. But there were much more powerful forces.

At that time, DuPont’s heirs patented a series of manufacturing processes that signified the entrance and the birth of the Fossil Energy Era.

In the annual report, the chairman urged shareholders (we will discuss about them a little later) to invest all available funds in the new petrochemicals division. They decided to produce synthetic materials, such as plastics, cellophane, celluloid, methanol, nylon, viscose, from oil, gas and other hydrocarbons. Industrialization in agriculture and innovations in the production of hemp would destroy the lion’s share, more than 80% of DuPont’s business.

And now about the shareholders. During those years, a certain Andrew Mellon became Secretary of the Treasury Department and the main investor of DuPont company. But this artful man was also the owner of the country’s 6th largest bank and the largest shareholder in Gulf Oil, which in turn was one of the Seven Sisters – a conglomerate of oil companies that held the lion’s share of world oil reserves.

Andrew Mellon appointed his nephew, Harry Anslinger, as Head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. It is known that a number of confidential meetings were held by this moneyed pack. The American media magnate William Hurst, who bought paper for his newspapers from DuPont, produced wood pulp, and invested his money in DuPont enterprises too, connected the criminal gang.

They together organized a black PR campaign: formally – against marijuana, but in fact – against hemp competitors. 
The main thesis was that the use of cannabis was a major drug problem and that marijuana caused extreme violence in people.
The magnates were able to pass a bill on Marijuana Tax in the US Congress. This bill prohibited even the medical use of marijuana, and it forced the industrialists to pay such exorbitant taxes that they just had to close their unprofitable enterprises.

Then, above mentioned Harry Anslinger, the head of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, wearing a mask of rabid dogmatist and racist, declared cannabis a “communist weapon”, and did everything so that the nations of the world would ban the hemp cultivation – all its varieties, including the industrial. 
Now it is fashionable to call such an influence “lobbying”, but if put it more bluntly, several rich conspirators, behind the scenes banned the whole world from using one of the main and beneficial plants on the planet.

Thus, on March 30, 1961, in New York, most of the UN member states signed the “Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs”, which, in particular, prescribed the strictest control over the cultivation of dangerous narcotic plants – opium poppy, coca and cannabis. By the way, what is interesting is that cannabis, being a universal remedy, was included in the list of “drugs with no medical use”, unlike opiates, which are still widely used in medicine. We discussed this in all the details in “The Greatest Mistakes in History” article.