Hemp farming has had a long history in the United States. In fact, seven different presidents were known to have farmed hemp: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, to name a few. Hemp has been used extensively as recently as World War II, when it was cultivated in Kentucky and midwestern states to make uniforms, canvas, and rope. Up until the 1930’s, hemp was a very powerful “cash crop” in America.

In the year 1937, hemp underwent a massive rejection due to the greed of three of the richest Americans in history who spent millions of dollars to ban hemp from everyday citizens through political means. Publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, and an industrialist from Dupont along with U.S. Secretary of treasury Andrew Mellon joined together to make hemp illegal. Why? Dupont was working on a new process to make paper from wood and meanwhile Hearst was the largest owner of forests in the U.S. and paper is of course made from wood. Additionally, both Hearst and DuPont had financial interests in synthetic fiber and petroleum which competed directly against hemp paper and other natural hemp products. They pressured Andrew Mellon and the government to make the possession of transfer and hemp in the United States illegal without a permit. They made sure that permits were very hard to find. Everyday Americans went along with this because Hearst and Dupont associated hemp with marijuana even though the two are entirely different. For the next 70 plus years, hemp was shut off from everyday Americans.