by Zvi Baranoff
Jack Herer wrote and published the first edition of The Emperor Wears No Clothes in 1985. The book went through multiple editions over the years, improved in style, layout and depth of historical information. It is an incredible phenomenon of a book covering damn near everything about cannabis.
Of course, writing about weed by 1985 was nothing new. Lots of materials were widely available long before then. The Emperor Wears No Clothes, besides the depth and expansiveness of the information is groundbreaking from an analytical perspective.
What Jack Herer brought to the table was a new way of understanding cannabis prohibition. Jack connected the dots to why marijuana was criminalized in 1937. He flipped the standard understanding over and revealed a far more logical analysis.
The standard understanding of marijuana prohibition - and the way most people still perceive it to be - is that it started as a misplaced social programming aimed at correcting some perceived social problem. Additionally, prohibition served as a mechanism of social control. We believed that hemp had been outlawed as an unfortunate collateral damage in the war on pot. We had it all backwards. It was a war on hemp!
Marijuana prohibition really had nothing to do with reefer. In 1937 hardly anyone smoked the stuff. There was no reefer problem. The reefer “crisis” was manufactured to bring about the conditions to suppress and displace the hemp industry.
Marijuana prohibition was an economic coup d'état, an orchestrated governmental manipulation of the markets by the interests of the wood pulp industry, nylon and petroleum. The result of this criminal conspiracy was to further consolidate wealth while doing ongoing damage to the health of the planet.
The displacement of hemp allowed a handful of very greedy and cutthroat robber barons to hijack the economy in their interests at the detriment of the economy and ecology of the whole. Prohibition is a criminal conspiracy. The criminal enterprises that orchestrated the coup need to be brought to justice, their assets should be seized to make reparations for the damage done.
