The US government asks farmers to grow hemp for the war

In 1942 the United States government made a film urging farmers to grow the plant it had spent the previous five years taxing out of legal trade.

The law it sat beside

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 did not ban cannabis outright. It taxed and registered every transaction so heavily that legal supply became impractical.

Why the government changed its mind

Industrial fibres, many of them imported, ran short during the war. After Japan took the Philippines the supply was cut off, and the navy needed rope. The Department of Agriculture and the army urged farmers to plant hemp. Tax stamps were issued under the 1937 Act, which was eased for the purpose but never amended, and about 400,000 acres were grown between 1942 and 1945.

The film

The USDA National Agricultural Library catalogues Hemp For Victory as a black-and-white sound film of 14 minutes and 13 seconds, dated circa 1942. It describes hemp growing and harvesting, and the manufacture of fibre and coarse cloth for military applications. This official record establishes the film’s existence and subject.

Herer’s account of its disappearance

Herer reproduces the film’s narration in Chapter 9 and describes its disappearance from official records elsewhere in the book. Wikipedia recounts copies reaching the Library of Congress in 1989 and a National Archives recovery in 1990. The USDA catalogue does not establish those later events or explain why earlier researchers reportedly could not locate the film. They should remain a separately sourced rediscovery account, not proof of deliberate suppression.

The episode moved no score for the United States: encouraging licensed fibre production did not give adults permission to grow recreational cannabis.^[1][2][3][4]