Of course, a part of the original rational for criminalizing marijuana was greed, pure and simple.

You see the Navy was buying lines (i.e. ropes) for their ships made from hemp, like they had done for nearly two hundred years, but DuPont wanted to sell them lines made from a more modern material, like Nylon. However, the Navy wasn't interested, perhaps out of tradition as much as anything, but they were holding firm. Then about that same time someone got the bright idea to make the production and use of marijuana a federal crime, and with a bit of lobbying help by DuPont, they expanded this to include hemp production, a genetically related plant that contained very little THC, but since it was biologically related, that was good enough (BTW, despite the low levels of THC, this is still where the expression to 'smoke a rope' came from). Anyway, once the production of hemp was made illegal, along with marijuana itself, the Navy had no choice but to seek an alternative for hemp lines and there was DuPont, waiting with their coils of Nylon rope, just ready to do business.

OCU