It's nearly impossible to make that kind of attribution for folk knowledge, and its arguable that there's so much of an interdependent feedback loop between cal

It's nearly impossible to make that kind of attribution for folk knowledge, and its arguable that there's so much of an interdependent feedback loop between calculating aristocrats and public opinion that neither is meaningfully causal or original. Tracking down the source of widespread folk ideas about marijuana is like trying to figure out who invented "the floor is lava". If you're very very lucky, you might be able to find a political source that predates your earliest known popular mention, but that's still not very authoritative. And if you can't trace some plausible epidemic-like spread over time and geography, which you almost certainly can't, you really just can't make a strong causal determination. Even with Hearst (or Murdoch, or any other media titan), you can easily paint them as savvy amplifiers, cranking up the volume of existing rumors to the benefit of their own vision.