[ConservingFreedom]

‘In his diary for August 7, 1765, Washington writes, “Began to separate the Male from the Female hemp … rather too late.” Female marijuana plants are the ones that contain enough THC to be worth smoking. Some take this to mean Washington was cultivating the plant not just for fiber. Of course, two days later Washington says he put the hemp in the river to soak and separate out the fibers, and later in September that he started to harvest the seed. That suggests he divided the plants because the males made stronger fiber while the female plants produced the seed needed for the next year’s crop. Jefferson in his Farm Book wrote that a female plant would produce a quart of seed, and a bushel of seed was enough to plant an acre.’ - http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2912/did-george-washington-and-thomas-jefferson-grow-marijuana

[ifinnegan]

I’m well aware of all that. I recently had an exchange with someone on one of these threads on it, and I think it may have been you.

I brought up this passage from Washington’s Diary and a responder provided more info, essentially exactly what you just wrote.

The preponderance of such old claims is actually my entire point and this Washington smoked dope claim is another of the old 60’s counter culture claims.

All this stuff from the 60’s hippies keeps getting recycled ad nauseum.

Another one is how Hearst made dope illegal because of his paper patents.

That one hasn’t shown up in this thread yet, I don’t think.

There was a book/pamphlet called The Emperors’s New Clothes and much of this stuff came out of that.

High Times pushed a lot of it as well.

Robert Wilson and Tim Leary were big popularizers of these ideas as were more overtly New Left types such as William Ayers and the like.