A little Cannabis History...
Because it’s a fast-growing plant that’s easy to cultivate and has many uses, hemp was widely grown throughout colonial America and at Spanish missions in the Southwest. In the early 1600s, the Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies required farmers to grow hemp.
Many experts consider hemp as the “ultimate cash crop.” It can potentially be the world’s most efficient source of fiber, food, and oil. These facts make hemp an economically significant commodity.
Hemp fiber has been found to be very cost-effective, with high strength and can be used as an excellent reinforcement fiber for replacing glass fiber, at a much lower price. Aside from its high strength, hemp has been recognized for its elasticity, ease of processing and recycling. By the seventeenth century, Russia, Latvia, and other countries around the Baltic Sea were the major producers of hemp. It was from these areas Britain obtained its supply. However, during periods of military hostilities, the English had trouble acquiring enough hemp.
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Throughout his lifetime, George Washington cultivated hemp at Mount Vernon for industrial uses. The fibers from hemp held excellent properties for making rope and sail canvas. In addition, hemp fibers could be spun into thread for clothing or, as indicated in Mount Vernon records, used in repairing the large seine nets Washington used in his fishing operation along the Potomac. At one point in the 1760’s Washington considered whether hemp would be a more lucrative cash crop than tobacco but determined wheat was a better alternative.
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Since the spring of 2018, Mount Vernon has planted an industrial cultivar of hemp on the four-acre Farm site. Under the 2015 Industrial Hemp Law enacted by the Virginia General Assembly and working with the industrial hemp research program of the University of Virginia, Mount Vernon planted hemp to expand its interpretation of George Washington’s role as an enterprising farmer. As the first historic home of the founding fathers to plant hemp, Mount Vernon will use the plant as an interpretative tool to help better tell the story of Washington’s role as a farmer.
1781. Virginia hemp. Acnida cannabina. ... Tobacco, hemp, flax, and cotton, are staple commodities. ... During this time [the Revolutionary War] we have manufactured within our families the most necessary articles of cloathing. Those of cotton will bear some comparison with the same kinds of manufacture in Europe; but those of wool, flax and hemp are very coarse, unsightly, and unpleasant .... Besides these [Arabian horses] there will be other valuable substitutes when the cultivation of tobacco shall be discontinued, such as cotton in the eastern parts of the state, and hemp and flax in the western.
1821 February 15. (Isaac A. Coles to Thomas Jefferson). "I send you enclosed a specimen of wild Hemp which I find in great abundance on many parts of my Land [Clarksville, Pike County, Missouri]. We have collected a sufficient quantity of it for all our purposes, and find that it makes a much stronger rope than the Hemp of Virginia—the stem is generally of the size of ones finger, and from 5 to 10 feet in height—it is a perennial Plant, delights in low, moist, rich land, and yields fully as well (I think) as the common hemp—The seeds are small, resembling very much the seed of the Yellow Jessamine but larger and , Start insertion,more, End, full, and are contained in pods on the top of the Plant. as these burst open in the early part of winter, I have not been able to procure any of the seed to send you—The Specimen enclosed was [taken] from a Stalk which I yesterday cut in the woods, and prepared as you see it, by merely rubbing it between my fingers, & then combing it straight with my pocket comb. It has stood out exposed in the woods the whole winter—As there is now nothing remaining of this Plant, but the naked stem and the roots (which are exceedingly numerous) it will be difficult to class it, but it does not appear to me to resemble a tall either Hemp or flax.—Whatever it may be, it must, I think, prove a Plant of great value—the strength, delicacy, softness & whiteness of the fibre, will no doubt be greatly improved by being cut on the proper time, & heated in a proper manner & being perennial, when once sowed it will last for ages, and, may be cut with as little trouble as a timothy meadow—I do not despair still of being able to prepare a few of the seed, and if I succeed, they shall be forwarded to you. an Inch or two of the top of the Plant, with 2 pods are also inclosed."
Presidents James Monroe, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce smoked cannabis and referred to its benefits in writing. Monroe began smoking the plant prior to his presidency, while serving as the ambassador to France. Madison once remarked that hemp gave him insight to create a new and democratic nation.
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Some presidents used cannabis for its medical benefits, while others used it purely for pleasure. Jackson, Taylor and Pierce shared cannabis with their troops. In a letter to his family as a general in the Mexican-American War, Pierce wrote that cannabis was “about the only good thing” in the war.
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In the 1830s, Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, an Irish doctor studying in India, found that cannabis extracts could help lessen stomach pain and vomiting in people suffering from cholera.
By the late 1800s, cannabis extracts were sold in pharmacies and doctors’ offices throughout Europe and the United States to treat stomach problems and other ailments.
In 1937, all forms of cannabis, including hemp, were made federally illegal under the Marihuana Tax Act. Drafted by Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the US Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Marihuana Tax Act essentially ended the maturation of a promising industry and complicated the relationships presidents had with the plant — either you were distinctly for or against it, depending on your political leanings.
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Growing hemp remained illegal and was widely unseen until World War II. The federal government then cultivated hemp for military uniforms, canvas, rope and other products, as soon as hemp imports from the Philippines and Indonesia were cut off by the Japanese military.
The government then called on all “patriotic” farmers to grow hemp, promoting the effort through a Hemp for Victory campaign. Under the newly formed War Hemp Industries Department, the government subsidized the cultivation of the much-needed plant.
It was President Richard Nixon who launched the war on drugs. Part of this aggressive stance, the Controlled Substances Act, placed cannabis into Schedule I, along with heroin and LSD, more due to Nixon’s animus toward the counterculture with which he associated marijuana than to scientific, medical or legal opinion.
Fifty-eight-year-old farmer Samuel Caldwell (above) was the first person prosecuted under the Act. He was arrested for selling marijuana on October 2, 1937, just one day after the Act’s passage. Caldwell was sentenced to four years of hard labor.
According to the ACLU’s original analysis, marijuana arrests now account for over half of all drug arrests in the United States. Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana. According to data available in the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer – an interactive portal for exploring crime statistics through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program – state and local law enforcement agencies reported 170,856 arrests for marijuana possession in 2021, down from over 226,000 in 2020. Arrests don’t always lead to convictions or prison sentences.
"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. We can, and should, continue to discourage the use of marijuana, but this can be done without defining the smoker as a criminal."~Jimmy Carter