There are a lot of websites out there today dedicated to cannabis activism, given the US's shifts in legalization in the last 20 years. Many contain rumors related to cannabis prohibition origins that I cannot seem to source back to any original, primary sourcing, yet the rumor is available on so many websites and in so many books at this point it's practically cited as fact amongst "ganja-prenuers" and even reputable publications and US Congressmen. A commonly cited book amongst cannabis activists is Jack Herer's 1973, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", which I have found many unsourced "facts" in. Some examples:
1.) The US Constitution and Declaration of Independence were "drafted on hemp paper" (The US Constitution Center leaves the draft question open without an answer. Montibello.org claims the Library of Congress implies the draft is flax, LOC has not yet answered my inquiry. Here's an interesting article w/ a paper trail w/ various department's answers, no conclusions)
2.) The Betsey Ross flag was made of hemp (Reached out to the Official Betsey Ross House, they deny. Of course there's the caveat that she probably didn't make the first flag. A few colonial vexillologists I reached out to say it wasn't. Even US Congressmen and Wash Po / ABC News have cited this one, of course without sourcing)
3.) The biggest conspiracy I often see is that William Randolph Hearst and the DuPont chemical family joined forces with politician Harry Anslinger to kill hemp in the early to mid 1930s, in order to keep their vested interests in the paper and nylon businesses thriving as monopolies. Hemp was "so versatile" and of huge competition to them, they conspired to kill it. This one is commonly cited amongst cannabis activists and from what I can tell is not backed up at all. In fact, drug policy expert Dr. David Musto (adviser to Jimmy Carter) denies the Hearst paper conspiracy in this interview.
Sure, Hearst's papers printed anti-cannabis propaganda as with many other newspapers of the time, but there's nothing backing up that it was a larger conspiracy. However, is that one of those topics that cannot be proven and (as it likely wasn't written down by the parties involved) and could still exist as a theory given the propaganda? Or is that being a bad historian?
While there's a lot of unsourced information in the Herer book, there's also quite a bit of stuff that checks out, making the book quite fascinating (especially considering it's year of publication). However, it has lead me on a maddening quest while studying this topic to only believe primary sources which is obviously not always possible. Cannabis prohibition seems like it's such a niche topic to find legit sourcing on, and I'm fascinated to get the real truth on some of these questions. I'd be very curious if any scholars on r/askhistorians have studied these topics of early drug policy, specifically cannabis, in the US and can shed any insight on the examples above, and on a #meta note, as to why there has been so little done as far as credible research. I even see scholars quoting the Herer book!
Thanks!
I can't address those numbered claims specifically, but hemp was a fairly common fabric, being an equivalent to linen - in part because it required many of the same processes (the stem around the long fibers inside had to be carefully and laboriously removed, and the fibers processed and spun into thread), and because its structure and properties were so similar. Textile historians sometimes can't tell the two apart, even under a microscope. As a result, while we (and I include myself in this) usually identify individual shifts or shirts from the early modern period as linen and talk about the use of linen for undergarments in general, this has a lot to do with tradition and habit and our not thinking of hemp today as a fabric: there's no reason not to always include an "or hemp".
I don't know of any scholarly books that really deal with hemp's place in the ancient world, the middle ages, and the early modern period, but it comes up time and time again when it comes to discussing the imports, exports, and products of various countries in more industrial/economic histories. The Reverend Andrew Burnaby traveled to the American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, and noted in Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North America that Pennsylvania exported "provisions of all kinds, lumber, hemp, flax, flax-seed, iron, furs, and deer-skins," while New Jersey produced "vast quantities of grain, besides hemp, flax, hay, Indian corn, and other articles." Hemp was a major product of eastern Belarus, and the powerful Radziwiłł family of Lithuania controlled the export of both hemp and linen through a class of middlemen who purchased as much as possibly from the peasantry. Russia also exported huge amounts of hemp (it was the main producer of sailcloth used by the British in the early eighteenth century), as well as hemp seed and hempseed oil, and colonial authorities in Ireland and Australia were keen to set up hemp cultivation in order to end Britain's dependence on them. In my translation of the later eighteenth century "Art of the Linen-Seamstress", you can see how many of the listed fabrics are based on hemp.
I can't really speak to its use in paper, but in fabric it was certainly on the way out well before the 1930s. The production of cotton in the New World and the East Indies gradually drove both linen and hemp out of favor as it was so much simpler to process and spin; through the second quarter of the nineteenth century, cotton became the common "undergarment/utility fabric", and by the end of the century hemp was pretty much synonymous with "rope" or "rattan".
I understand but still don't quite get why cannabis activists would bother trying to prove that hemp was used for this or that important thing. If the original American flag were made of hemp, it wouldn't be because its maker deeply believed that it was better than linen because it contained THC - it would probably have to do with which fabric was available more easily or more cheaply. And if the flag were made of hemp, what would that prove about its theoretical use today or in the future?