After the Great Depression and the reefer madness that overcame our country, the U.S. government issued the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, lumping hemp indiscriminately with its cousin reefer. Not that the Act made hemp illegal, but the exorbitant tax struggling farmers would have had to pay on the crop made its cultivation economically unfeasable. Not a single tax stamp was sold.

For a period during World War II the U.S. government sponsored a program to encourage farmers to grow hemp for the war effort including a 1942 Department of Agriculture documentary entitled Hemp for Victory. In the 1950s the government redefined industrial hemp as marijuana and made industrial cultivation illegal. Hemp jeans were replaced with plastics, synthetics, and forests.