To the editor:

Hemp/cannabis/marijuana was outlawed in 1937 because it threatened the corporate interests of William Randolph Hearst and DuPont. They had to get rid of the competition.

Hearst's yellow journalism newspaper chain wrote scathing stories about "marijuana" - a word he made up - because he knew no one would believe them about hemp. George Washington even grew hemp.

The decorticator, a state of the art hemp harvester, led Popular Mechanics to call hemp the New Billion Dollar Crop. (Because of printing and bindery lead time required for publication, this February 1938 article was actually prepared in the spring of 1937, when cannabis hemp was still legal to grow and was an incredibly fast-growing industry.) Newsprint could now be produced far more cheaply than any other method, and one acre of hemp could produce as much newsprint as four acres of trees.

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