JACK HERER

The best selling underground book of the last decade has been Jack Herer's THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHS. This is the authoritative historical record of the cannabis plant, marijuana prohibition, and how hemp can still save the world. Brilliantly researched, this book provides startling revelations certain to anger not only pot smokers, but environmentalists, consumers, tax payers and proponents of economic justice and fair play.

With 65% of all murders being committed on alcohol, 50% of all highway deaths, 400,000 medical premature deaths--- legal alcohol is clearly the "killer drug". In all of human history there has never been a marijuana overdose death. So why all the government vehemence being directed against what should be considered a harmless weed?? Herer has disturbing answers.

Throughout the entirety human history, up until the advent of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, hemp had been the number one cash crop in the world!! Hemp fiber had provided the basis for all canvas sails, ropes and rigging as well as 90% of all clothing. The hemp fiber is ten times stronger than cotton and is softer to the touch. Clothing made from hemp will not wear out. Herer provides the historical context in which hemp was made illegal in what he describes as "economic foul play" by the highly polluting petrochemical/synthetic fiber monopolists and the forest products monopolists.

Hemp will grow 4 times the pulp for paper as the same acreages of forests. It requires only 1/10 the caustic chemicals (dioxin) to process hemp paper. The paper and pulp industry now demand legalization. Half of all the pesticides in the world are used on cotton crops. Hemp grows with no pesticides. So, if the medical effects of hemp as a recreational drug are so minor, and the polluting effects of natural fiber substitutes are so horrendous --- why are we polluting the planet?

Going back to 1937, when hemp was criminalized, Herer points to some very neferious business interests involed in the process. Randolph Hearst needed to protect his forest products monopoly and DuPont had just patented two synthetic fibers - nylon and rayon. Throughout its history DuPont borrowed from only one source --- the robber baron Andrew Mellon. As Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon appointed his nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, who citing almost exclusively the yellow journalism of the Hearst newspaper chains, pounded the marijuana law through Congress.

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