The History of Cannabis in the US: Cannabis in the New World

This is part 1 of a 5-part series on the history of cannabis in the U.S.

Every American schoolchild knows the story by heart. After a treacherous journey at sea lasting several months, the first English settlers landed in the future Virginia colony to found the Jamestown settlement. And so began the long journey that would eventually lead to the formation of the United States of America.

What most schoolchildren (and some adults) don’t know is just how deeply intertwined cannabis is with the history of the United States. The plant, once cherished during the colonial era and then shunned at the dawn of the modern age, played a huge part in critical junctures of US history.

Join us as we trace the meandering role of cannabis and how it influenced the founding of the modern United States.

An Early Migrant

Cannabis as we know it today is not native to North America. In fact, genetic evidence suggests it originally came from Asia and was one of the earliest plants to be domesticated, starting during the Neolithic period 12,000 years ago.¹

Cannabis is thought to have arrived in the Americas via the migration of early humans in the Bering Strait. By the time of the Spanish conquistadors, the use of cannabis for recreational purposes was already established among the Mesoamerican people.

Almost a hundred years before the founding of Jamestown, a Spanish expedition to Florida in 1527 discovered the recreational use of cannabis by the natives. One of the expedition members chronicled how “They (the natives) would get inebriated by using a certain smoke, and will give everything they have in order to get it.”² Upon its discovery by the Spaniards, it was cultivated as a source of rope and textiles in Chile, beginning in 1545. From there, widespread cultivation of hemp in North America followed from the back of Spanish colonization.³

Cannabis Use by Native Americans

By the 1600s, hemp had made its way up from the Central Americas and into North America. When the Jamestown settlers made contact with the Powhatans, they found hemp to be one of the main crops cultivated by the tribe in what is now Richmond, Virginia.⁴ 

Native American tribes used hemp for practical, medicinal, and recreational purposes. Because of the plant’s strong fibers, it made for excellent cordage, as well as a source of textiles for clothing. It was even turned into hemp baskets, helpful in holding heavy loads of maize during harvest.

For its medicinal applications, the natives recognized its pharmacological uses. Hemp leaves were crushed to produce a topical ointment for skin issues, while various tribes used it to treat a whole host of ailments, from headaches to syphilis. 

Hemp is also deeply interwoven with tribal culture, being used in sacred ceremonies. Among the Cherokee, the plant is known as the Gatunlati, and legend says it came to Earth from “star people” who also seeded our planet with humanity. According to Cherokee belief, hemp is so important and crucial for the survival of our species.

While cannabis is chief among the “teaching plants” used by Native Americans, it is by no means the only one. In fact, just about every single ceremonial herb used by Indians has been deemed illegal at some point in US legal history, including mullen, peyote, and salvia.

Today, this long-standing relationship with cannabis means that some tribal areas are generally exempt from state jurisdiction, including marijuana taxation, except when Congress specifically authorizes such jurisdiction. 

The First Cannabis Laws: Not What You Think

In 1607, the Jamestown colony was established in what is now Virginia. It became America's first permanent English settlement and served as the colonial capital until 1699. Twelve years after its founding, the colony passed a law requiring all settlers to grow hemp.⁵ This was the first-ever cannabis legislation passed in the New World. In a twist of modern irony, the first-ever cannabis law in America actually required people to grow it.

As further settlements were established, more hemp cultivation laws were passed. In 1632, the Virginia Assembly decreed that “Every planter as soone as he may, provide seede of flaxe and hempe and sowe the same.” Farmers were mandated to grow hemp in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut in 1632, and in the burgeoning Chesapeake colonies by the middle of the 1700s. 

In contrast to today’s state laws on cannabis cultivation, in colonial America, you could actually be jailed for not growing hemp, especially during periods of severe shortage, such as what happened in the colony of Virginia from 1763-67.

Cannabis Among the Colonies

Hemp became an important part of the early colonial economy. It was considered legal tender starting in 1631 all the way to the early 1800s and was accepted as a tax payment for over 200 years. Hemp was recognized as legal tender in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland colonies.

Over time, the crop became the main export of some colonies. Hemp was the economic staple of Virginia,  bringing in 100,000 pounds in annual revenue. By the mid-1800s, Virginians had cultivated 12,000 acres of hemp, or 100x the size of Vatican City.

During this period, it was so valuable that some southern colonies were established to satisfy two major market demands of the time: tobacco and nautical supplies for the growing Royal Navy. In the Age of Sail, these naval needs consisted of cordage for ropes and lines, as well as textiles for sails and rough cloth. And, of course, the chief source for both was none other than hemp.

To answer the demand, some of the newly established colonies pivoted to growing acres of the plant. Shortly after the colony of Pennsylvania was founded in 1681, one of the first laws passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly was “An act for the encouraging of raising hemp in Pennsylvania.” The measure made the plant legal tender to kickstart local cultivation, with a value of four pence per pound. By 1685, founder William Penn famously declared that hemp was one of the rising colony’s trade staples.

It could therefore be said that some colonies and future US states owe part of their founding and success to cannabis.

Hemprising: Cannabis in the American Revolution

Despite the growing success of the New World, the nascent American colonies were still viewed as “backward” back in Europe. Full British citizenship was a sought-after prize and could, in fact, be bestowed by the Crown on American farmers and plantation owners who provided sufficient quantities of hemp.⁶

This was due to hemp’s vital contribution to the British war effort. As a major naval power, the United Kingdom’s fleet of ships needed vast acres of hemp for cordage and canvas (the very word canvas itself hails from cannabis, meaning “derived from hemp”).⁷ Hence, King George I required colonial farmers to cultivate hemp to feed the Royal Navy’s insatiable appetite. Hemp, along with timber, allowed the British to maintain the Empire by ensuring dominance of the seas.

Across the Atlantic, however, things were heating up. By the time of the American Revolution, the colonies had become self-sufficient for basic needs. In the eyes of the resentful colonists, it was now England that was draining the continent of resources without an equal share in the wealth and representation in Parliament. 

In this tumultuous environment, Thomas Paine published his famous Common Sense, calling for American independence. One passage argues how America has enough riches to break the ties and forge her own path:

“In almost every article of defense we abound. Hemp flourishes even to rankness, so that we need want cordage… Wherefore, what is it that we want? Why is it that we hesitate?”

Of course, as we all know, it wasn’t hemp that ignited the American Revolution, but tea. Otherwise, instead of the Boston Tea Party, we might have gotten the Richmond Weed Riots or the Philadelphia Hemprising. 

Yet hemp is still intimately tied with the American fight for independence. Time and again, the plant was brought up as one of the riches of the colonies and one that was vital to its future success as an independent nation.

Just before the outbreak of hostilities, a furious Benjamin Franklin thundered in his speech before the English Parliament: “Did ever any North American bring his hemp to England for these bounties? We have not yet enough for our own consumption!” 

Upon his return to America, he established one of the first cannabis paper mills to enable the colonies to have a free press that didn’t have to rely on England for paper and books.⁶ Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet was, in fact, printed on hemp paper. 

Another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, declared hemp to be the “first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country.” To improve continental hemp production, Jefferson invented his own threshing device to speed up the refinery process and in so doing, help kickstart the nascent US economy.⁸ He even went to great trouble to obtain hemp seed for domestic cultivation by smuggling it illegally from China (where hemp exportation was a capital offense at the time), coursing it through Turkey, and from there to America. 

Most famously, George Washington's Mount Vernon estate grew vast amounts of hemp at all of the five farms that made up the plantation. It may very well have saved him financially. In 1781, a British raiding party razed the plantation and made off with its livestock and most of the slaves. At this point, Washington had lost half of his net worth supporting the revolution since he refused to accept any pay as the Continental Army’s commander-in-chief. Thankfully, the hardy acres of hemp, clinging stubbornly to the Potomac’s fertile soil, survived the raid. 

Two hundred years later, hemp cultivation finally returned to Washington’s plantation. The passage of the Farm Bill in 2014 allowed Washington’s estate to grow hemp at Mount Vernon once again.⁹ This is a fitting tribute to the Founding Father, who exhorted early Americans to “Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere."¹⁰

George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate is a perfect example of not just how deeply ingrained cannabis is with our nationhood – it also reflects the changes in cannabis perception and policy over the course of our country’s history.

References

1. Ethan Russo (August 2007). "History of cannabis and its preparations in saga, science, and sobriquet". Chemistry & Biodiversity. 4 (8): 1614–1648. doi:10.1002/cbdv.200790144. PMID 17712811. S2CID 42480090

2. Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar; de Vaca, M. (1547). The Narrative of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. University of California Libraries. p. 84. Retrieved 30 April 2023.

3. Fike, J. 2016. “Industrial Hemp: Renewed Opportunities for an Ancient Crop.” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352689.2016.1257842. Accessed 18 Aug 2023.

4. Gabriel Archer, A Relatyon of the Discoverie of Our River..., printed in Archaeologia Americana 1860, p. 44. William Strachey (1612) records a native (Powhatan) name for hemp (weihkippeis).

5. Herndon, G. Melvin. “Hemp in Colonial Virginia.” Agricultural History, vol. 37, no. 2, 1963, pp. 86–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3740780. Accessed 19 Aug. 2023.

6. Herer, Jack. 2010. The Emperor Wears No Clothes. 12th ed. AH HA Publishing

7. Douglas-Harper Online Etymology Dictionary. 2019. https://www.etymonline.com/word/canvas. Accessed 21 Aug. 2023

8. “Thomas Jefferson to George Fleming, 29 December 1815“ https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-09-02-0193  Accessed 22 Aug 2023

9. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/23/640662989/after-centuries-hemp-makes-a-comeback-at-george-washingtons-home Accessed 21 Aug 2023

10. Thomas J. Ballanco, The Colorado Hemp Production Act of 1995: Farms and Forests Without Marijuana , 66 U. COLO. L. REV. 1165, 1165 & n.1 (1995) https://casetext.com/case/menominee-indian-tribe-of-wis-v-drug-enforcement-admin-us-dept-of-justice Accessed 25 Aug 2023

The information in this article and any included images or charts are for educational purposes only. This information is neither a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional legal advice or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about laws, regulations, or your health, you should always consult with an attorney, physician or other licensed professional.