An acre of hemp will produce from four to ten times as much paper pulp as will an acre of trees, over the period of time it takes pulp trees to grow to maturity, and hemp can be used to make paper more durable and environmentally friendly than wood. Changing to hemp-based paper could reduce deforestation by half. Hemp paper lasts hundreds of years longer than paper made from trees and doesn't require toxic bleaching chemicals.

While forty percent of all trees are cut down just to make paper, New Billion Dollar Crop, (Popular Mechanics, February 1938) stated that "Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great tensile strength and durability. It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products, ranging from rope to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining after the fiber has been removed contain more than seventy-seven percent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane."

Some studies indicate that an acre of hemp, in addition to its fiber production, will produce 300 gallons of oil that can be used for either food or fuel, plus more than three tons of residual presscake, (Notre Dame 1975) containing substantial nutritional value, including protein. The same acre of hemp will also produce bast fiber, for canvas, rope, lace and linen, and the hurd fiber for paper and building materials.

With new technologies, the cost of hemp had dropped a hundredfold, from $0.50 per ton down to $0.005 per ton, much the way cotton had after the invention of the cotton gin. The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a study in 1916, Bulletin 404, called "Hemp Hurds as a Papermaking Material", which said that hemp hurds made the best grade of paper and produced more than four times as much paper as trees. Hemp hurds are the waste material from producing hemp bast fiber for canvas, rope, lace and linen from the stalks of the marijuana plant. Those stalks produce roughly 15 percent to 30 percent bast fiber, with the remainder being hurd fiber.

With these new developments, the petrochemical industry foresaw the competition took steps to prohibit hemp.

The petrochemical and wood-based paper industries are capital intensive. It takes hundreds of millions of dollars to cut down forests and process them into paper. It takes billions of dollars to drill the earth for petroleum and to process crude oil into fuel, plastics and chemicals. These industries realize that the capital-intensive nature of their endeavors blocks entry and competition. They want this monopoly and they want all the money and power they can get from it.