Hemp fibers were extremely prevalent, they were a primary fiber of civilization, and always in demand for shipbuilding, canvas, ropes, cloth, and recycled into paper. Up until the industrial revolution hemp was always encouraged to be grown. Hemp has the longest and strongest natural fibers, so it was always important. Cannabis Sativa was the name for hemp, and no one used it to get high.

Hemp was always in demand, the high quality stuff was all imported. The US Navy couldn't get enough of it, and wrote a few reports on it in the 1800s. The biggest US hemp industry was a slave based in Kentucky. All the hemp went for cotton binding and bagging, none for shipbuilding.

https://cannabisandthegoddess.com/the-surprising-story-of-hemp-slavery-in-america/

Cannabis drugs were common in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East since forever. They were called Cannabis Indica (from India) and have no fiber value. They came to the Americas in the 1800s, but they weren't smoked, they were mainly eaten. Cannabis drugs began being studied medically in the 1840s and entered the US pharmacopoeia in the 1850s. Hashish was openly advertised and sold through the 1800s in drugstores. Imports were unreliable so US pharma firms started growing their own around the turn of the century which they marketed as Cannabis Americana.

http://www.edwardtdodge.com/2016/10/25/testing-cannabis-medicines-the-old-fashioned-way/

George Washington may have imported the first Cannabis Indica seeds and grown them at Mount Vernon in the 1790s while he was President. No joke. He definitely grew hemp in the 1760s.

https://cannabisandthegoddess.com/george-washingtons-india-hemp/

Hash was sometimes mixed with tobacco and smoked. Rolling papers are a product of the industrial revolution and come on the scene in the 1880s. No one smoked joints before that.

A couple things happen in the 1910s. Opium addiction was a big problem in the US and in China in the 1800s, and there was a push to control sales and restrict the drug. The first international drug control agreements came around 1914. Cannabis would eventually be tacked onto opium prohibitions.

Pancho Villa and the Mexican revolution causes a wave of immigrants into the US in the 1910s. Mexico had marijuana for a long time. Mexican Catholic elite hated marijuana violently, but it was popular with the lower classes and natives. When the immigrants came to the USA they brought marijuana and their attitudes about it. Now people were smoking marijuana and it seemed like something different from the familiar cannabis indica drugs.

Black folks, especially in the south and musicians were smoking marijuana. It spread with the popularity of jazz music out from New Orleans across the country.

Combine racist Jim Crow law enforcement, anti-immigrant attitudes, and the rising tide of progressive government controlling all drugs, peaking in the New Deal, and you have the recipe for marijuana prohibition. Prohibition begins in El Paso, TX, New Orleans, and California around 1914-15, and goes national in 1937.

http://www.edwardtdodge.com/2018/05/11/why-was-marijuana-made-illegal-in-the-first-place-part-i/