Jack Herer was born in the land of buffalo wings and blue cheese, Buffalo, New York. Herer is a cannabis activist with a cult-like following. His book “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” tells the forgotten history of hemp and is in its twelfth edition. Campaigning for marijuana and hemp decriminalization for over thirty years, Herer’s impact on cannabis culture still reverberates all over the world, but how did “The Hemperor” come to be?
Herer lived a normal middle-class life after serving in the military. After Herer divorced his wife in 1967, he tried marijuana for the first time with his new girlfriend. Experiencing marijuana’s, he began to pontificate. If this plant makes me feel this good, why is it illegal?
Herer’s first foray into writing was a short cartoon book simply titled “Grass.” It became an underground success, selling over 30,000 copies. Later finding out from a friend that paper used to be made from hemp. After researching these claims, Herer found his calling, championing hemp as the future of industrial textiles.
“The Emperor Wears No Clothes” was released in 1985 and was Herer’s magnum opus. The product of meticulous research, it laid out in detail, hemps origins, its uses throughout human history and its future as a textile godsend. The book explains how hemp came to be illegal, highlighting the likes of William Randolph Hearst, The DuPont Company and Harry J. Anslinger’s “Reefer Madness” campaign.
Some researchers don’t buy Herer’s conspiracy theories, that big players in the textile business conspired against hemp to keep their paper business free from competition. Citing more common reasons for the marijuana/hemp propaganda like racism and misplaced fear of Mexican immigration. However, the documentary “Emperor of Hemp” breaks down several coincidences that give Herer’s claims more credibility than mainstream thinkers would like to admit.
Herer found the film “Hemp for Victory” in a dusty cluttered shelf in the Library of Congress. A film made by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1947. The 14-minute documentary urged farmers to grow as much of the crop as possible to support war efforts. Herer showed the film as an example of hemp’s potential and simultaneously, the government’s willingness to deceive the American public.
In 1994 Jack Herer was given The Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action, by the Conservative Drug Policy Foundation. Finally signaling Herer’s rise to prominence and mainstream acceptance for his hemp activism.
Herer died on April 15, 2010, in Eugene, Oregon due to complications of suffering a heart attack. He’s survived by his son Mark, who dabbles in marijuana advocacy and legislature while growing weed in southern Oregon, per the Oregonian.
