The hemp plant has had a curious relationship with the world’s legal codes throughout the ages. As noted before, it has variously been illegal to grow hemp and not to grow it at different times. But hemp has also played a direct role in law enforcement.

    For example: The most serious punishment/rehabilitation meted out in many African tribes for capital crimes was forcing the transgressor to smoke massive amounts of dagga (cannabis) non-stop for hours on end in a small, enclosed hut until he passes out—literally unconscious from inhaling the fumes. The equivalent of a year or two’s supply for a heavy American smoker is consumed in just an hour or so. Does it work? African users say the rate of repeat criminal offenses after dagga treatment is virtually non-existent.

    European and American cultures used hemp to enforce their laws in a more terminal form of capital punishment: the hangman’s noose^* of hempen rope.

    * “Merry boys are we / As e’re did sing / In a hempen string / Under the gallows tree.” John Fletcher Rollo, Duke of Normandy; Act III, sc. 3; 1639. “We’re bound to stop this business, or hang you to a man / For we’ve hemp and hand enough in town to hang the whole damn clan.” From a horse thief’s tombstone in Rapid City, SD, 1877: Shushan, E.R.; Grave Matters; Ballantine Books, NY, 1990. Also see Hemp for Victory, USDA film; 1942.

the authorized on-line version of Jack Herer’s “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”
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