Jack Herer publishes The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Jack Herer describes completing the first Emperor in 1985, after gathering cannabis information since 1973 with encouragement from Ed Adair. His project joined the right to use cannabis to a campaign for industrial hemp.

One plant, several arguments

The book ranges across fibre, paper, food, fuel and medicine. Herer argues that a plant associated with intoxicating use had been denied an industrial and medical role, and that restoring those uses should accompany ending prohibition. His introduction openly presents the work as a campaign for reform.

This makes the book a source for the movement’s arguments as well as a guide to earlier documents. It does not make every claim in those arguments an established historical or scientific fact.

Following its references

Initial leads have separate entries in this index: the 1916 USDA paper study, the Siler report published in 1933 and the 1995 student-athlete testing ruling. Reading the original documents helps distinguish findings, recommendations and actual legal changes. Further checks cover Schlichten’s 1919 patent, the 1938 magazine article and the California panel’s report for 1989.

Chapter 4 also attributes prohibition to industrial interests associated with Hearst and DuPont. We retain that account as Herer’s thesis. This research pass did not establish it as the cause of the 1937 legislation.

Which edition?

The supplied EPUB has sixteen chapters and contains discussion of events in 1998 and 1999. Its metadata supplies no usable publication year, publisher or ISBN. We therefore cite chapter and section headings and identify the edition as unspecified. Statements in this later text must not automatically be attributed to the original 1985 edition.

Publication of the book is a debate entry. It does not itself change the United States score.^[1]