Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1106839 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Deitch's hemp-centric tour of American history cultivates two aspects of the plant: the economic, in which hemp was used to produce rope, sails, paper and a multitude of other products, and the psychoactive, i.e., marijuana. Citing Carl Sagan, Deitch suggests that "civilization may well have started with the cultivation of Cannabis." And if he prudently casts hemp's role in the founding of civilization as speculative, he confidently attributes the colonization of America, not to Puritan religious disaffection but to the needs of Britain's "domestic hemp-based industry, the lifeblood of the economy, [that] separately needed a stable, reliable, and relatively cheap source of raw hemp." On the lighter side, Deitch opines that as the evidence of apple orchards planted by the legendary Johnny Appleseed are slight, "Chances are, it wasn't apple seeds Johnny was planting, but intoxicating Cannabis seeds." While hemp's role in history is Deitch's focal point, he offers a substantial discussion of the temperance movement and Prohibition, which, in a contrarian mode, he suggests, caused the Great Depression. Deitch's treatment of the economics of hemp is original, or at least imaginative. Less original is his argument that it is folly to prohibit the recreational and medical use of marijuana. His account features familiar villains: Harry Anslinger, the notorious Federal Bureau of Narcotics anti-marijuana zealot, and various other militants in the government's war on drugs, who Deitch says have distorted and misrepresented facts in imposing a fatally flawed marijuana policy. Deitch is an L.A.-based writer and activist for medical marijuana. His passion for his subject and the radical version of its history, despite its excesses and idiosyncrasies, is also entertaining.
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Customer Reviews

Politics of Pot
If you groaned through history class in school this may not be the book for you. If on the other hand, you want an insightful overview of the history of cannabis in America, Hemp - American History Revisited is the perfect introduction to one of the most bizarre smear campaigns in mankind's history. With great detail, Deitch examines the happy prospects of a vibrant natural resource in our budding nation and reveals our founding father's thoughtful attention to their own "budding" interests. He details the failure of the great social experiment, prohibition, and cleverly demonstrates how this mammoth failure in American policy set the stage for the annihilation of the most harmless of home remedies. We learn how the personal interests of a few overshadowed the practical interests of the many; how the timber, petroleum and pharmaceutical power houses covertly manipulated the legislative process monopolize the "legal" resources of a growing industrial nation. The most enlightening aspect of this book is Deitch's straight-on analysis of the economic functions of hemp in our society and the social calamity that ensues when government tampers with free enterprise system. I found this book at the library, but will purchase a copy for my personal collection as I am sure to refer to it often as cannabis war continues.

American History Divided - Hemp
The word "hemp" should be part of the subtitle rather than the title of this book. Although Deitch follows the history of hemp from our colonization through its industrialization to its politicization, he also spends a large portion of this book discussing agriculture, economics and politics in America through this time making this book an excellent history text along the lines of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present" and Daniel Yergin's "Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power".