THE RTE news called it “a major blow in the war against drugs,” and, presumably, there was no pun intended. Several million pounds worth of cannabis resin had been found by chance in the most unlikely place imaginable – on the seabed, sixty miles off the Cork coastline. A black day indeed (this time the pun is intended). The forces of law and order fished it up, weighed and measured it . . . and then destroyed the lot!

A criminal waste of a criminal substance.

Of course it wasn’t really any great victory. Sure, whoever was attempting to smuggle the blow lost a fortune and it may have made scoring that Christmas stash a tad more difficult but even the Gardai had to admit that this was only the tip of the iceberg. What was significant about the Cork find was that the volume demonstrated just how enormous the demand for the stuff is.

A recent survey in England showed that more people smoked cannabis on a regular basis than went to mass on Sundays. And while it’s unlikely that the figures are quite as high in Ireland, there’s certainly a significant number of regular tokers.

In America in 1988, after an intensive study, the DEA’s own administrative law judge concluded that “marijuana is one of the safest, therapeutically active substances known to man.” So why then, with such obvious demand and widespread availability, is it still illegal? Why has what should be an issue of personal choice become a criminal dilemma for otherwise (mostly) law abiding people? Before answering that, let’s first take a look at what exactly it is.

Cannabis, hash, dope, gear, blow, pot – call it what you like, they’re all basically the same thing and come from the Indian hemp plant. Cannabis was first classified in 1753 by the botanist Carolus Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum.

Linnaeus regarded all cannabis plants as members of a single genus but since then, three separate species have been identified – Cannabis Sativa (the most common type), Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Ruderalis. These differ in growth habit, leaf variety, chemical variation and seed type but all contain Tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC), the most psychoactive cannabinoid. The human brain (and the brains of other animals) contain sites that act as receptors for the absorption of THC. In short, all three species can get you stoned.

Cannabis in all its forms is a highly sophisticated plant. It is regarded as practically unique in its sexual characteristics (having male and female flowers on separate plants) and is almost abnormally efficient both in the speed of its growth and in its ability to flourish in a wide range of soils and climates. Once the plant is given plenty of light it can be grown practically anywhere from a South Circular Road bedsit to a Himalayan mountaintop. And while there’s more to life than getting out of your head, there’s also far more to cannabis than its ability to help you do so.

Throughout mankind’s history, cannabis has been grown to provide paper, sails, clothing, rope, food, medicine, shelter, armour and, of course, the odd spliff or two. The earliest known woven fabric was made of hemp, which (it is estimated) first came into use around 8,000–7,000 BC. Certainly it has an important mention in the earliest known herbal handbook, a Chinese work called the Pents ’Oa Ching (which was, of course, printed on hemp paper). A Hindu text, the Atharva-Veda, which dates back to 1,400 BC, lists it among the five sacred kingdoms of herbs and it has been central to Indian social and religious life ever since (literally translated, Bangladesh mans “Land of the Hemp People”).

Of course wherever hemp was grown for manufacture it tended to be smoked as well. Hemp and cannabis culture was everywhere, from Siberia to South Africa. The Celts of Ireland were grass smokers, if the bronze pipes to be found in their burial mounds are anything to go by. So were the Picts of Scotland with their practice of psychedelic body painting.

In the Christian era cannabis was often associated with old pagan religions and, although the Church usually turned a political blind eye, Pope Innocent VIII made a direct attack on cannabis, seeing the use of it as something akin to satanism. However, it wasn’t until the rise of Protestantism that recreational use of cannabis in Britain began to peter out (or at least to go underground).

In America there is plenty of evidence to suggest that cannabis was there before Columbus and was used both as a recreational and religious substance, as well as a source of fibre and clothing. Officially the date of its introduction to the continent is 1611, but the Florentine John De Verrazzano records its use by American Indians in 1524 and the explorer Jacques Cartier found hemp growing in Canada in 1535. And bringing us a little more up to date, the original drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper.

The fact is, that for many centuries, hemp was one of the world’s most important crops. As well as smoking the resin, hemp had essential applications in trade, transport – where it was used in the manufacture of sails – and warfare. It was also used in the 19th century as a sedative and analgesic, with western medics prescribing it for treatment of rheumatism, rabies, tetanus, gonorrhoea, migraines, gout, asthma and a host of other maladies.

By the end of the 19th century, cannabis had moved from being seen as a routine prescription (Queen Victoria used it for her period pains) to a stage where it was regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, following the introduction of the hypodermic syringe and water soluble drugs. Many of these drugs were opium-based and highly addictive, thus guaranteeing constant demand and bigger profits for the medical profession.

Thus, it can be argued that the rise of an international pharmaceutical industry eliminated cannabis from medical use, replacing it with opium, valium and other addictive substances. The big drug companies raked in enormous profits, reflecting scant regard for the adverse side effects of many of the drugs they were producing. After all, there was no money to be made in marketing a plant that just about anyone, anywhere, could grow in their own backyard. This was the first victory of capitalism over cannabis. But at least the plant – and the drug – were still legal.

Unsurprisingly the demonisation and out-lawing of cannabis that still prevails throughout most of the western world today originated in the United States, a country which has proven itself very good at generating moral panic and at banning things (look at the Prohibition). And it wasn’t out of a genuine fear for the public’s health that cannabis became the object of criminalisation. It had far more to do with hypocrisy and greed. And paper . . .

The hemp plant is one of the world’s most efficient producers of biomass and is therefore perfect for paper-making. Four months’ growth of cannabis will produce over ten tons of biomass per acre (even in a moderate climate such as ours) and this could be harvested two or three times a year. Trees, which take an average of twenty years to grow, yield only two tons of biomass per acre. And hemp produces a much longer-lasting and finer quality paper than wood-pulp does. Yet most paper made today is manufactured from wood pulp (including the paper used to make this issue of Hot Press), at great cost to both the consumer and the environment – why do you think they’re cutting down the rainforests?

A few western countries, including France and Britain, still grow a limited legal supply of low THC-content hemp for manufacturing purposes but, ironically, most of this winds up as cigarette papers. The highest quality paper it’s possible to produce and it’s made to be burnt. How’s that for economic efficiency! And why is it that an ecologically sound crop like hemp is banned, while a much more expensive and damaging product like wood-pulp is being used?

Basically we arrived at this sorry state of affairs because, in an unfortunate twist of fate, wood-pulp technology just happened to accelerate before the technology to process hemp did. In 1854 an American patent for a new wood-pulping process was granted. Twenty years later a new sulfite pulp process was developed and the vast American forestry reserves became the major potential source of paper (and a lot of profit). After all, the forests were already there and wouldn’t require the labour-intensive cultivation that a crop like hemp would. And aside from those pesky Indian tribes for whom the forests were home, who was going to object to people cutting them down?

This was the beginning of the era of throwaway newsprint, so paper quality wasn’t important and soon trees were the major constituent of all but the best quality grades. Massive investments were made in forest lands, machinery and infrastructure and a multi-national paper industry was born while the forests were stripped.

In 1916, with the war in Europe putting great pressure on American forestry reserves (30,000,000 feet of spruce alone was going into the war effort every month), U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists devised a method of making paper from hemp-pulp on the same scale as wood-pulp. This potentially much cheaper process posed a great threat to the vast U.S. paper industry.

The Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division was just one of the companies that stood to lose out if the proposed new hemp-based process was allowed to go ahead. W.R. Hearst, the owner of the company, in addition to being bigoted, racist and incredibly rich, was also a newspaper magnate and therefore in an ideal position to put a stop to the development of this new method.

Through his tabloid newspapers, Hearst introduced America to the infamous and entirely spurious concept of “Reefer Madness.” Throughout the country, the readers of Hearst’s newspapers – mainly white – were terrified daily by horror stories about this new drug marijuana (‘marijuana’ being the Mexican word for cannabis). They read about the black man and his ominous “jazz” music, they heard stories of white women being sold into slavery and prostitution after being doped by sex-crazed Orientals, of teenagers murdering their entire families after just one puff of a marijuana cigarette, of wild orgies and of insanity.

By 1931 America was in the middle of the Depression and it has since been argued that an expansion in the hemp industry might have saved the family farms. This wouldn’t have been in the interests of Hearst and various other companies however (hemp didn’t require any chemical fertilisers or expensive farm machinery to be cultivated so there was literally nothing in it for big business) and with Reefer Mania in full swing it wasn’t going to happen anyway. Just to be sure however, Hearst used his various high powered government connections to have one Harry J. Anslinger (a racist buddy of his) appointed to the supreme post in the Federal Bureau of Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs. Talk about having low friends in high places!

Harry J. Anslinger kept his job for 31 years (JFK finally sacked him in 1962 for unauthorised censorship of opposing viewpoints) and in this time he, along with other self-righteous anti-marijuana campaigners like Captain Richmond Pearson Hobson, did much damage to the hemp cause. In 1930, the US Government had ordered the Siler Commissions study of dope smoking by military personnel stationed in Panama. This was the first proper scientific investigation of dope smoking ever conducted and it gave the drug a clean bill of health.

Accordingly Anslinger and Hearst stepped up their campaign of scare-mongering through the media, with increasingly horrifying (and entirely fictional) dope tales. In 1937, Anslinger told American Congress that “marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” And so, on April 14th of that year, the Senior Treasury Official Herman Oliphant quietly introduced the ambiguously worded Marijuana Tax Bill which, by means of overtaxing and over-regulating, made dealing in hemp unprofitable. Hemp dealers were faced with the choice of breaking the law or going out of business. Most of them went out of business and the American paper companies breathed a sigh of relief.

Anslinger continued to peddle the line that marijuana causes violence up until 1948. By then, America was becoming totally obsessed with the threat of communism and so, Anslinger duly changed tack and informed Congress that marijuana was a Commie plot, designed to turn American soldiers into pacifists and leave the country’s defences wide open to the Red Threat. This was the last straw for the gullible congressmen and led to the 1956 Narcotic Control Act which is still in effect today.

But despite becoming a banned substance, marijuana remained the drug of choice for many Americans. The Beats celebrated its pleasures and as the ’50s gave way to the ’60s, drug experimentation became more widespread culminating with the rise of the hippie movement. Cannabis use was widespread during the late ’60s, with the forces of law and order mounting an increasingly expansive and increasingly futile war to eliminate it.

In the 1970s, the then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan told Americans that it had finally been scientifically proven that the drug destroyed your brain cells. That these “scientific tests” had involved forcing Rhesus monkeys to consume the equivalent of 63 Colombian joints in less than five minutes (thus causing them to die from oxygen deprivation and carbon monoxide poisoning) wasn’t made public at the time, although these pseudo tests were later discredited. Still, hemp was no longer a subject for rational discussion in the United States.

Predictably, the demonisation of the drug in the United States inspired a similar process in Europe and by the ’60s cannabis was a proscribed drug virtually everywhere. Rational discussion or debate on the issue was non-existent. Legislators were taken in by the tabloid tales of reefer madness and the anti-hemp propaganda of films like Marijuana: Assassin Of Youth, and repressive laws were enacted with a minimum of opposition.

One protest which did draw attention back to the hemp debate was the now infamous full page petition for the legalisation of cannabis, which appeared in Britain’s Times newspaper in 1967. Sponsored by a group called Release, the petition featured the signatures of over two hundred well known figures from the worlds of science and the arts. The ad caused an outrage in Parliament but it also inspired The Wootton Report, a social and scientific study of cannabis which was chaired by Baroness Wootton in 1969 and which (yet again) gave the drug a clean bill of health.

This wasn’t what the government wanted to hear however and the then Home Secretary James Callaghan denounced the report, and repressive legislation remained in place. In 1992, twenty-five years on, Release took another full page ad. Unfortunately, in these chemicrazy days of crack, cocaine and Ecstasy, the ad was regarded as little more than a curiosity and was quickly dismissed.

However, calls for new legislation still persist. In 1991, a European Parliament committee on organised crime and drug trafficking recommended that possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use should not be considered a criminal offence. Various police chiefs (including the head of Interpol) have also called for the decriminalisation of cannabis, mainly on the grounds that it is itself a criminal waste of State resources, pursuing people through the legal process for such an innocuous activity. They also pointed out that if the drug was legalised then it could be taxed and controlled. Rather than being part of a black market economy, let it make money for the government instead of costing the taxpayer.

Opponents of legalisation argue that while cannabis may in itself be relatively harmless, use of it will lead to harder substances such as heroin. There is, however, no evidence to substantiate this claim.

Up until the Industrial Revolution, cannabis was one of the world’s main crops. In the 10,000 years of recorded use of the drug there hasn’t been a single attributable fatality. While legal substances like tobacco and alcohol claim thousands of lives each year, the most harmless, useful and eco-friendly stimulant of all remains illegal. In fact, the only thing about cannabis likely to do the user any damage is the draconian law prohibiting its use. (Being busted for possession can result in a jail sentence, loss of your job, travel restrictions etc.)

In a better world, hemp might be reinstated as the number one crop again. However, this would affect the balance of economic power and so is not in the interests of the multi-national corporations (and therefore not in the interests of our governments). So don’t hold your breath for cannabis legislation: we’re probably going to have to wait until the last tree has been cut down.