Legalize It

A History of Hemp (and Marijuana)

When President Barack Obama signed the Farm Bill of 2013 on February 7, 2014, it was a small but significant step towards the legalization of hemp across the United States. The bill defined industrial hemp, excluding it from the definition of Marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act. It also allowed colleges and universities (in states where industrial hemp farming is already legal under state law) to grow hemp for academic and agricultural research purposes. For a plant that has been shrouded in confusion and controversy, its reintroduction in the United States is welcomed. I say reintroduction because hemp has had a long history of use in the United States.

Hemp was an important crop in Colonial times. American farmers were required by law to grow hemp in Virginia and other colonies. By the 1700’s, the colonies produced products like paper, cordage (rope), canvas and textiles. Hemp was used as legal tender in the Americas. Farmers even paid their taxes with hemp. This encouraged the American farmers to grow more hemp to ensure America’s independence. Our founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams grew hemp and praised its benefits. When the Committee of Five, ‘Roger Sherman’, ‘Benjamin Franklin’, ‘Thomas Jefferson’, ‘John Adams’, and ‘Robert Livingston’, penned the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, they did so on hemp fiber. Betsy Ross sewed the first American Flag out of hemp. By the 1850’s, the United States Census counted 8,327 hemp plantations growing hemp for cloth, canvas, and other necessities. So why did hemp become banned in the United States?

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937

In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Marijuana was in the crosshairs of the government and the media. Randolph Hearst’s newspapers put on a media blitz, running stories with headlines that emphasized the horrors of Marijuana.

Propaganda films like ‘Reefer Madness’ (1936), ‘Marihuana: Assassin of Youth’ (1935) and ‘Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed’ (1936) sprouted, warning the naive public that Marijuana was an evil enemy.

On April 14, 1937, The Marihuana Tax Act was drafted by Harry J. Anslinger, the first Commissioner of the U.S. Federal Bureau of narcotics, and introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina to the seventy-fifth Congress. It became law on August 2, 1937, making possession or transfer of Marijuana (and hemp) illegal throughout the United States under federal law.

Some scholars feel that the Act was passed in order to destroy the US hemp industry and protect the businesses of industrialists, William Randolph Hearst and the DuPont family, who stood to loose billions from a Hemp revolution.

On February 26, 1937, Mechanical Engineering published an article calling hemp ‘The Most Profitable And Desireable Crop That Can Be Grown’. In 1938, several months after hemp was banned, Popular Mechanics published an article calling hemp the ‘New Billion Dollar Crop’.

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