William Randolph Hearst, media mogul, billionaire and real-life model for refer madness, His aggressive efforts to demonize cannabis were so effective, they continue to color popular opinion today.In the early 1930’s, Hearst owned a good deal of timber acreage. The threatened advent of mass hemp production proved a considerable threat to his massive paper-mill holdings — he stood to lose many, many millions of dollars to the lowly hemp plant. Hearst cleverly utilized his immense national network of newspapers and magazines to spread wildly inaccurate and sensational stories of the evils of cannabis or “marihuana,” a phrase brought into the common parlance, in part due to frequent mentions in his publications.
The sheer number of newspapers, tabloids, magazines and film reels that Hearst controlled enabled him to quickly and to effectively inundate American media with this propaganda. Hearst preyed on existing prejudices by associating cannabis with Mexican’s and Blacks stating that people were smoking it and blacks and mexicans were raping white women. The American people had already developed irrational hatred for these racial groups, and so readily accepted the ridiculous stories of their crazed crimes incited by marihuana use.
William Randolph Hearst also contributed to The Spanish-American War often referred to as the first “media war.” During the 1890s, journalism that sensationalized, and sometimes even made up—dramatic events was a powerful force that helped lead the United States into war with Spain. Led by newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, journalism of the 1890s used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of newspapers–a style that became known as yellow journalism.
Resources: Pasadena Weekly, Drug War Rant, Joe Rogan, PBS, Reefermadness