Reviews

Hemp Museum

31-39 Redchurch Street, London E2

Squall 13, Summer 1996, pg. 61.

Drugs, Shock, Horror, Probe. Under new laws Queen Elizabeth fines farmer for not growing cannabis hemp.

The shape of the future? Or limited only to Queen Elizabeth 1st and her orders that anyone farming over 60 acres of land had to devote at least one acre to cannabis hemp cultivation for the national good.

Britain’s first museum dedicated to the hemp plant opened in Shoreditch, East London on April 10th. Its existence is a testament to the increase in grass roots activism aimed at rehabilitating the much maligned and under utilised weed.

A visit to the Museum will undoubtedly increase your knowledge of the multifarious uses of the noble weed, prehaps even more than the 1994 Criminal Justice Act increased the maximum fine for possession of cannabis (five fold). The museum details the facts about the suppression of cannabis and hemp.

The main reason for cannabis hemp becoming illegal in the first place was, surprise surprise, economic presssure. In the 1930s, machinery became available which meant that farmers’ profits from hemp cultivation would increase. At the same time Dupont chemicals patented a chemical process for pulping wood into paper.

As a result of an unholy alliance between the Hearst media and timber empire and Harry Anslinger (Chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and brother in law of Dupont’s main financial backer), a ‘reefer madness’ frenzy was orchestrated, resulting in the Marijuana Tax Law of 1937. This was highly convenient for the petrochemical and timber industries which dominate the market to this day, but not so convenient for the farming families forced to sell up or change crops (many to tobacco). Neither of course is it convenient for all those people labelled criminal for smoking the weed.

The Cannabis museum is a mine of information. I was shocked at the prison sentences and tactics used by American authorities, amazed by the amount of medical, fuel and industrial uses, and convinced that this is a plant which could solve so many of our environmental, social and economic problems. It was also heartening to see evidence a-plenty of the growing number of switched on hemp activists.

The Museum is run by the Cannabis Hemp Information Club (CHIC), and shares space with the House of Hemp, who sell a big range of hemp products.

For membership of CHIC and/or information write to them at 1st Floor, 31-39 Redchurch Street, London E2 or better still visit the museum which presently opens once a week at the same address on Wednesday between 11am and 7pm.

Shane Collins