Did You Know That For Over 200 Years You Could Pay Your Taxes With Cannabis(aka Hemp, Marijuana)?
Where did the word ‘marijuana’ come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant…as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years:
Henry Ford’s first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONTRUCTED FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, ‘grown from the soil,’ had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel; Popular Mechanics, 1941.
Hemp called ‘Billion Dollar Crop.’ It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars; Popular Mechanics, Feb., 1938.
Mechanical Engineering Magazine (Feb. 1938) published an article entitled ‘The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop that Can be Grown.’ It stated that if hemp was cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
The following information comes directly from the United States Department of Agriculture’s 1942 14-minute film encouraging and instructing ‘patriotic American farmers’ to grow 350,000 acres of hemp each year for the war effort:
‘…When Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850, all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable…
…Now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese…American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our industries…
…The Navy’s rapidly dwindling reserves. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again; hemp for mooring ships; hemp for tow lines; hemp for tackle and gear; hemp for countless naval uses both on ship and shore. Just as in the days when Old Ironsides sailed the seas victorious with her hempen shrouds and hempen sails. Hemp for victory!’
All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s; Hemp Paper Reconsidered, Jack Frazier, 1974.
It was LEGAL TO PAY TAXES WITH HEMP in America from 1631 until the early 1900s; LA Times, August 12, 1981.
REFUSING TO GROW HEMP in America during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries WAS AGAINST THE LAW! You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769; Hemp in Colonial Virginia, G. M. Herdon.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers GREW HEMP; Washington and Jefferson Diaries. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America.
Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in A



So, were you looking for an answer?
The kind of hemp you are talking about here is called industrial hemp. It has a very low THC content (0.5 to 1%) when compared to marijuana (3% to 20%).
Hemp was not the only crop a person could use for paying taxes. Tobacco, cotton, lumber and alcohol have all been used as currency in the United States.
by reviews foam mattress
on 26. Nov, 2009
Marijuana is going to be rescheduled soon. That means it will be available for medical purposes on the federal level. It will be equal to asprin and OTC drugs but not totally legalized and sold in stores.
Check out “The Rescheduling of Marijuana – report by Jon Gettman” on youtube.
The government is actually working on it, but it’s a slow proccess.
by 02895745
on 26. Nov, 2009
Very interesting information that was totally new to me. When I was in college there was a saying people used in a joking manner. They said, “We buy you books & buy you books & send you to school & all you do is tear out the pages & eat them.” They were implying that we were not studying. Maybe we were getting more benefit from those books than at first met the eye.
by Danny
on 27. Nov, 2009
It’s still not marijuana.
by fallenaw
on 27. Nov, 2009