We live in a world
That runs on gas,
and gas comes from oil--
Live stuff in the past.
A Past longer ago
than people on the earth
and as oil gets scarce,
it goes up in worth.
When oil is burned,
it pollutes the air.
If breathing is hard,
You'd better care.
But we've got to keep going,
that's what they say,
We can't stop burning,
Fuel is our way.
Ford made the first car,
it was a Model T,
He didn't use gas,
that stuff's too dirty.
Then what did he use?
You'd better know,
His fuel came from hemp,
that's a plant quick to grow.
In a few months it grows
Twenty feet tall,
to the earth it does
Nothing bad at all.
It was the first plant
that people grew,
For rope, food, fuel, medicine,
that's all they knew.
Later folks wanted
to write stuff down,
Hemp made good paper
that's what they found.
Now we make paper
from slow growing trees,
When I tell you the reason
you'll sink to your knees.
A man owned a forest
named William R. Hearst.
He owned a newspaper,
one of the worst.
If he sold his trees,
He made lots of money,
But when trees make paper,
the results aren't funny.
The water gets polluted,
We get acid rain.
Hearst didn't care
He had money to gain.
Hearst knew competition
the paper mill could not stand,
So his newspapers told a story
to get hemp banned.
In the 1930's
racism was worse.
A fact to be used
by William R. Hearst.
His yellow press claimed
Negroes are wild,
Hemp smoke made them
act real riled.
A White woman, it seems,
with a Black man had sex,
Hearst's paper screamed,
"Hemp smoke is the hex."
This drug's danger
we all had to know.
No White woman on her own,
would sink so low.
But he didn't call it hemp
Hearst was too smart,
He used a Spanish word
to set the plant apart.
So Marijuana was the name
plain old hemp was given,
Fear and loathing were the thoughts
upon which law was written.
Now alcohol destroys the liver
and that prohibition failed,
No one dares grow hemp
fearing they'll be jailed.
Yet if it were to be allowed,
Hemp could clean the air,
Save the trees, provide food,
It grows where land is bare.
Save the planet, change the law,
We haven't got much time.
Don't let greedy oil and paper barons
Scam another dime.