Replies

Looks like that link is won't work from an outside referer.
Here's the contents page : The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799

Yes, the main page opens and at least some of the links on the main page work. Naturally, the one we would like to use is broken. LOL

Wow, what a great reference! I used the search engine on the site. Washington almost always refers to hemp along with flax, or as a descriptor, as in hempen reins or cord. He also refers to it as an agricultural commodity. The search engine brings up only 38 mentions.

There is no evidence here that he used hemp, or cannabis, to get high. Separating male and female plants has more to do with breeding and cordage; it is not evidence that he was trying to make more "potent" plants.

On FR a year or so ago there was a proponent of using hemp as a fiber, who brought up Washington's hemp acreage, and strongly made the point that hemp is not MJ and cannot be used to get high!

If he did smoke weed, you'd think he'd have written about it once or twice.

Likewise if his household used cannabis as medicine, it would have been in herbals of the day or stored among his effects, or mentioned in doctor's notes. Laudanum is mentioned, but never cannabis as medicine. At his museum, a medical kit has laudanum and even nux vomica bottles, but no cannabis preps.

It may seem odd to a proponent of cannabis, but it looks like he grew it for fiber and rope and never considered getting high from it, unless he kept it a deep secret, which would be odd for something that would not become illegal for a century or more in the future.

If you can find a validated historical document stating that Washington shared MJ as a drug I'll reconsider There are many references to ale and whisky- he had one of the biggest distilleries in the New World- but to my knowledge never a reference to smoking or eating his hemp crops.