With cannabis history still very much in the making, there are many chapters already written about the plant’s legal and social evolution. It is important to understand the living history of marijuana and hemp in the United States in order to make sense of where cannabis — and the commercial cannabis industry — is today. At this time of resurging American hemp business, this article focuses on the reasons why hemp was made “illegal” in the first place. In 2020 — the strangest of years — while the world around it falls apart, the cannabis industry thrives. Two years on from the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp is restored in its status as a legitimate agricultural commodity. And while legal questions remain (particularly with respect to consumer products containing hemp-derived cannabinoids), hemp is becoming more familiar to regulatory authorities and society more broadly. In this environment, it is easy to forget that we are only now escaping a prohibition on hemp that was imposed in 1937 — by way of the Marihuana Tax Act —and effectively maintained until the breakthroughs seen in recent years. For the record, hemp has deep historical roots in America long before 1937. American colonies encouraged — and in some cases, even mandated — that farmers grow hemp. President George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon. Cannabis, more generally, was widely utilized for medicinal purposes, and listed in the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850 through 1937.
