A 14-minute propaganda film made by the Department of Agriculture in 1942 called Hemp for Victory changed the course of hemp legalization many decades later.
The short extolling the industrial benefits of hemp for the war effort was obtained by Bill Conde in 1976. He gave a copy to Jack Herer in 1984. Five years later, Herer and Maria Farrow traveled to Washington, DC in hopes of finding actual proof of the film's existence at the Library of Congress.
"They didn't have a copy so we gave them one," Farrow tells CelebStoner. "We found the proof that it was made by the government. I know what we did, what we saw and what we proved."
Now, all these years later, another hemp activist, Joe Domino, has acquired a treasure trove of governemt hemp photos and documents from the 1940s.
Domino, who owns Gourmet Hemp Foods, contacted the National Archives in College Park, Maryland last November asked to look at microfilm related to "War Hemp Program of the Department of Agriculture, 1942-1947." It was know known as War Hemp Industies. After finding the photos at the Maryland office in December (they were archived by the now-defunct Farm Security Adminstration), he went to the Kansas City, MIssouri office to do further research in January.
Since the program benefited the war effort, it was unceremoniously canceled by the government after World War II ended, thanks in part to Harry Anslinger, who ran the now-defunct Bureau of Narcotics. Domino handed his research over to hemp expert John Dvořák.
Domino's also the author of Craig Lee's Kentucky Hemp Story: Memoirs of an Industrual Hemp Activist.
Here are some of our favorite Hemp for Victory photos:
Check out the entire photo collection here.
