Hemp for Victory: The Forgotten WWII Chapter When America Begged Farmers to Grow Cannabis

Here is a story that sounds too absurd to be true: In 1942, five years after the United States government effectively outlawed cannabis with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, that same government produced a propaganda film urging American farmers to grow as much hemp as humanly possible. The film was called "Hemp for Victory," and it is one of the strangest, most contradictory chapters in the history of cannabis in America.

And then, for decades afterward, the government denied the film ever existed.

The story of Hemp for Victory is more than a historical curiosity. It is a window into the deeply pragmatic — and deeply hypocritical — relationship between the United States government and the cannabis plant. It is a reminder that the plant now classified alongside heroin and LSD on the federal Schedule I was once considered so essential to American interests that the government literally begged farmers to grow it during wartime.

Setting the Stage: Cannabis Before Prohibition

To appreciate the absurdity of Hemp for Victory, you need to understand what came before it. For most of American history, hemp was not just legal — it was patriotic.

In 1619, the Virginia colony passed a law requiring every farm to grow hemp. The plant was considered so valuable that it served as legal tender in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland for over a century. You could pay your taxes with hemp. George Washington grew it at Mount Vernon. Thomas Jefferson cultivated it at Monticello.

Hemp fiber was essential to the colonial and early American economy. It was used to make rope, sails, clothing, paper, and dozens of other products. The rigging and sails of virtually every ship in the American merchant fleet and Navy were made from hemp. The first drafts of the Declaration of Independence were reportedly written on hemp paper.

Throughout the 19th century, hemp remained a major agricultural commodity. By the 1850s, cannabis extracts were also being sold as medicine in pharmacies across the country, used to treat everything from pain to insomnia to appetite loss.

The Road to Prohibition

The shift began in the early 20th century, driven by a combination of economic interests, racial prejudice, and political ambition.

In the 1930s, several powerful interests converged against hemp. William Randolph Hearst, whose newspaper empire relied on wood pulp for paper production, saw hemp as a competitive threat to his timber holdings. DuPont had recently invested heavily in synthetic fibers like nylon and saw hemp as a rival material. Andrew Mellon, who had financial ties to DuPont and served as Secretary of the Treasury, appointed Harry Anslinger to head the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Anslinger became the architect of cannabis prohibition. He launched an aggressive public campaign demonizing marijuana, deliberately using the Spanish-sounding word "marihuana" instead of the familiar term "cannabis" to associate the plant with Mexican immigrants and Black jazz musicians. His campaign relied on racist stereotypes and sensationalized claims, including the assertion that marijuana caused insanity, violence, and moral degeneracy.

The propaganda worked. In 1937, Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act, which did not technically ban cannabis but imposed such prohibitive taxes and regulatory requirements that growing or selling it became practically impossible. The American Medical Association opposed the act, and hemp farmers protested, but their objections were steamrolled.

Within a few years, an agricultural crop that had been grown continuously in North America for over three centuries was effectively wiped out.

Pearl Harbor Changes Everything

Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The attack did more than draw America into World War II — it severed the supply lines for critical industrial materials. Japan quickly captured the Philippines, cutting off America's primary source of Manila hemp (abaca), which was used to make the high-strength rope essential for naval operations. Japan also controlled much of the Pacific, disrupting trade routes for jute from India and other fiber crops from Southeast Asia.

The U.S. military suddenly faced a critical shortage of the very material it needed to fight a war. Naval vessels required enormous quantities of rope and cordage. Parachute webbing, shoelaces for military boots, fire hoses, and dozens of other military applications depended on strong natural fiber.

The irony was not lost on anyone: the plant the government had just spent years demonizing and effectively banning was now desperately needed for national defense.

The Film

In 1942, the U.S. Department of Agriculture produced "Hemp for Victory," a 14-minute black-and-white film directed by Raymond Evans with narration by Lee D. Vickers. The film was a straightforward agricultural instructional piece, walking farmers through the history of hemp, the techniques for growing it, and the methods for harvesting and processing it into usable fiber.

The film's tone is striking for its matter-of-fact presentation of a plant that, just five years earlier, had been the subject of hysterical government propaganda. There are no warnings about the dangers of marijuana, no caveats about the psychoactive properties of cannabis. The film treats hemp as what it had always been before Anslinger's campaign: a useful, important, and entirely unremarkable crop.

The government temporarily lifted the restrictions of the Marihuana Tax Act for approved hemp farmers, providing seeds, equipment, and technical assistance. The goal was ambitious: increase American hemp production from 14,000 acres in 1942 to 300,000 acres by 1943.

Farmers in Kentucky, Wisconsin, Indiana, and other Midwestern states answered the call. At the peak of the wartime hemp program, approximately one million acres of hemp were under cultivation across the American heartland.

The Government's Convenient Amnesia

Here is where the story takes its most remarkable turn. After the war ended and the supply crisis passed, the hemp program was quietly shut down. The temporary lifting of the Marihuana Tax Act was reversed, and hemp farming once again became effectively illegal.

But it was not enough to simply end the program. For decades afterward, the U.S. government denied that Hemp for Victory had ever been made. The film was not listed in government archives, was not acknowledged in official records, and was not available through any government source.

When cannabis advocates and historians asked about the film, they were told no such film existed. The government's position was categorical: the USDA had never produced a film encouraging Americans to grow hemp.

This denial persisted until 1989, when two VHS copies of the film were recovered and donated to the Library of Congress. The donation was made on May 19, 1989 — exactly 37 years ago today — by activists including Jack Herer, the legendary cannabis advocate and author of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes."

The recovery of the film was a pivotal moment in the cannabis legalization movement. Here was physical proof that the same government criminalizing cannabis had once actively promoted its cultivation. The cognitive dissonance was impossible to ignore.

The Legacy

The story of Hemp for Victory resonates in 2026 for several reasons.

First, it is a powerful illustration of how cannabis policy in America has always been driven more by political and economic interests than by science or public health. The plant itself did not change between 1937 and 1942. What changed was whether powerful people needed it.

Second, the government's decades-long denial of the film's existence demonstrates a willingness to rewrite history when the truth becomes inconvenient. This pattern of denial and selective amnesia has characterized much of the official narrative around cannabis prohibition.

Third, the wartime hemp program proves that large-scale hemp cultivation is not only possible in the United States but was once actively encouraged by the federal government. The 2018 Farm Bill re-legalized hemp cultivation nationally, and the modern hemp industry is growing rapidly, but it is worth remembering that American farmers were growing hemp successfully long before anyone thought to ban it.

The Modern Hemp Renaissance

Today, hemp is experiencing a genuine renaissance. The 2018 Farm Bill defined hemp as cannabis containing less than 0.3% THC and removed it from the Controlled Substances Act, opening the door for legal cultivation across all 50 states.

The modern hemp industry looks different from the wartime program, with CBD extraction, fiber processing, grain production, and building materials all representing significant market segments. But the fundamental truth that the Hemp for Victory film illustrated — that cannabis is a remarkably versatile and valuable crop — remains as relevant as ever.

Kentucky, which was one of the primary states targeted by the wartime hemp program, has once again emerged as a leading hemp-producing state. Wisconsin, another major wartime hemp state, has also rebuilt its hemp agriculture sector. In a sense, these states are reconnecting with an agricultural tradition that stretches back centuries, interrupted by a few decades of politically motivated prohibition.

Why This Story Still Matters

The story of Hemp for Victory is not just history — it is context. Every time a politician argues that cannabis is too dangerous to be legal, every time a regulatory agency drags its feet on cannabis reform, every time someone suggests that cannabis has no legitimate use, the answer is sitting in the Library of Congress: a government-produced film proving that the United States once considered cannabis so valuable that it suspended its own prohibition laws to grow it.

The plant that was dangerous enough to ban in 1937 was essential enough to promote in 1942 and dangerous enough to re-ban in 1945. The only thing that changed was the political convenience of the moment.

As we continue to navigate the slow, uneven process of cannabis legalization in 2026, the lesson of Hemp for Victory is worth keeping in mind. Cannabis policy in America has never been about the plant. It has always been about power, money, and who gets to decide what is and is not acceptable.

The film is now freely available online, a 14-minute reminder that the truth has a way of resurfacing, no matter how long the government tries to bury it.

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