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George Washington: America's First Stoner

OUR FOUNDING FATHERS GREW MARIJUANA AND SMOKED IT. SO LEGALIZE IT ALREADY!

GEORGE WASHINGTON, AMERICA’S FIRST PRESIDENT, raised hemp and almost certainly smoked it. Likewise, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and virtually every other American farmer back when we beat the British.

On August 7, 1765, Washington lamented in one of his Farm Journals: “I began to separate (sic) the Male from the Female Hemp…rather too late.” This is something he wouldn’t have been doing if he wasn’t smoking the females.

Much like today’s pot connoisseurs, who buy high-priced seeds from places like Amsterdam’s Cannabis Cup competition, Washington raved (in his collected writings, volume 35, page 72) about Indian hemp and “a stock of seed sufficient for my own purposes” that was “more valuable than the common hemp.” Like a true enthusiast, he urged his compatriots to “sow it everywhere.”

Washington’s fellow farming fanatic Thomas Jefferson apparently wrote that “some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” Although widely circulated, that quote is disputed by some.

What’s not disputed is Jefferson’s recommendation in his Garden Book that “an acre of the best ground…is to be selected and…kept for a permanent hemp patch.” Jefferson warned in his Farm Journal on March 16, 1791, that tobacco was “impolitic” and “pernicious” because “this plant greatly exhausts the
soil” by demanding “much manure.” Tobacco was “never useful,” while hemp “is of the first necessity to the commerce and marine, in other words to the wealth and protection of the country.” Would Jefferson have compared hemp to tobacco if he wasn’t smoking it?

No tobacco smoker, Abe Lincoln might have joined Jefferson with a toke or two had they been contemporaries: “Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch,
smoking a pipe of sweet hemp and playing my Hohner harmonica.” Widely attributed to Lincoln, that quote is believed to have appeared in a museum devoted to Hohner harmonicas.

Jefferson drafted his Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. His Virginia neighbor James Madison did the same for the Bill of Rights—and is alleged to have smoked
the stuff to gain inspiration for it. Ben Franklin, America’s leading publisher, owned a paper mill that processed hemp. His very prosperous newspaper and magazine trade was based largely on hemp paper, which was (and still is) far cheaper and more durable than paper made from trees.

Many of the aforementioned quotes may be disputed, but it’s inconceivable that this ubiquitous herb was not widely smoked. Its medicinal properties were known to the ancient Chinese and Egyptians, as well as to Arab and other traders throughout the centuries. America’s worldly, well-read revolutionaries had every reason to embrace its properties.

All the Founding Fathers profited gleefully from the sale of their hemp crops, which flourished year after year without chemical pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. If you
walked into the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and told the Founders that in this new country they were creating it would be illegal to raise and smoke hemp, they would have laughed you out of the room.

More recently, George W. Bush is widely believed to have been a major toker in college and possibly beyond. Bill Clinton says he smoked but “did not inhale,” probably the
dumbest line ever delivered by a sitting President. Barack Obama not only admitted to inhaling, but also added, “That was the point, wasn’t it?”

True to form, Obama’s actions on marijuana have been mixed. He has refused to seriously discuss nationwide legalization and even mocked the large numbers of citizens who inquired about it in an online forum the President held early in his term.

But Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, quickly announced he would not prosecute pot smokers in the 14 states— including California—where it has been legalized for medical purposes. Under Bush, federal agents regularly busted pot smokers despite vehement protests from those states’ governments.

The Bushies even grabbed Ed Rosenthal, who had been hired by the city of Oakland, California, to grow marijuana for AIDS and chemotherapy patients. Rosenthal was convicted of a federal felony because the jury was not told he was actually working for the government. Upon learning the truth, the enraged jurors demanded a retrial. Rosenthal’s conviction was later overturned.

As you read this, the voters in California and Washington State are deciding whether to let its citizens do what all those early patriotic heroes did: grow one of the greatest industrial crops in the history of the world and also smoke one of the greatest medicines humankind has ever known.

California now has tens of thousands of prisoners whose only crime was possessing marijuana, something the Governator himself smoked back in his days as a pumped-up
bodybuilder. At roughly $49,000 per year for each prisoner, California is spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually just to keep people locked up for this victimless “crime.” In times of shrinking income and serious budget cuts, the impact is enormous.

Thanks largely to the utterly failed War on Drugs, the United States has the largest prison population in the history of the world, both by percentage of population and absolute numbers. China, with four times the population of the U.S., has fewer people in prison than we do. Of our 2.3 million citizens behind bars, 60,000 or more, by various estimates, are there for smoking or possessing a crop treasured by our Founders.

For the rest of the article pick up a copy of the December 2010 issue of Hustler Magazine!

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