Virginia Hemp Farm Aid

For thousands of years before the twentieth century, the super plant hemp was cultivated by farmers in Asia, Europe and the Americas--serving as a valuable raw material for clothing, rope, sails, paper, medicines and food. Industrial hemp served as a primary crop and valuable source of commerce for settlers in the New World. In fact, King George mandated that each farm plant a tablespoon of hemp seeds and grow at least one acre to support British industry. Harvested hemp was even considered legal tender to barter and pay debts and taxes. Like nearly all Virginian producers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson harvested cannabis and extolled the virtues and value of this bountiful green blessing. All that ended abruptly and tragically in the twentieth century in the United States, when greedy and wealthy industrialists foisted the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 upon our duly-elected lawmakers, which made it criminal to grow marijuana, categorized hemp as marijuana, and rendered sustainab