WI: Hearst's campaign against marijuana failed?

In honor of the holiday, exhales, let's make marijuana legal. Of course due do the restraints. Let's say only here in Alternate History. So what course of events could be taken to avert Mr. Hearst's wicked game. In the 20's and largely in 30's Hearst endorsed a national sensation to make marijuana illegal. This scam largely ran off overt racism towards African Americans and Hispanics. Newspapers printed articles about black men staring into white men's eyes and raping white women while high on the dangerous drug 'marihuana'. This drug was supposedly brought in by bands of Mexicans. Unknowingly to the American people marijuana was really the flowering bud off of a strain of the hemp plant. This bud had been smoked by Americans for centuries. But under the new law the hemp plant was also banned. The hemp plant was largely grown, well pretty much every where. For all kinds of uses ranging from building material to cosmetics to food. Really Hearst had eliminated his competition in the paper making business. The government cracked down and for the past 74 years. Has cracked down more and more on the plants. So, what could happen to avert this catastrophe.
 
I breiefly attended San Rafael High School. The site where that term was coined. Allegedly.

In order to pass a law, unless congress gets stampeded into pass something stupid like the patriot act, there have to be hearings. At some point during this process have Hearst's business dealings become the subject of debate. Possibly derailing the whole thing.
 
The American Medical Association was against it at the time, and if Hearst wasn't so fearful that legal weed would threaten his timber holdings, then he wouldn't have pushed so hard and the AMA could have blocked it. It'd say the best POD would be a personal one--make it so that Hearts somehow isn't so fearful of weed. Maybe he invests in it?
 

J.D.Ward

Donor
The Press Barons go to War?

Was there any rival American press baron at the time who could have been the front man for the pro-marijuana lobby, if only as an anti-Hearst publicity stunt?
 
Was there any rival American press baron at the time who could have been the front man for the pro-marijuana lobby, if only as an anti-Hearst publicity stunt?

That's the problem by the 1920s and 1930s Hearst and his papers were running 3rd place in circulation in most major cities (even his best papers were only second), most people at the time simply considered him a nut by this point that published opinion pieces. Quite simply the only reason politicians listened to him was because he had a high circulation, and this circulation tapered off around the early 20s.

If anything I think it was more the Duponts that led the charge against marijuana more than Hearst.
 
A stronger industry in hemp, and DuPont holding a bunch of patents on useful products from same? Also a false alarm or two politically well in advance of the big push against MJ alerting the industry that it needs to lawyer and lobbyist up to defend itself. An earlier end to prohibition after a recognition of the damage that it was doing to respect for the rule of law---perhaps a rash of heavily covered by the media jury nullifications (where the jury basically tells the judge and DA where they can go and hands down 'not guilty' irrespective of evidence) might also put serious headwinds into place for an effort to start prohibition II.
 
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