Hemp for Victory: The WWII Film That Told US Farmers to Grow Hemp

Hemp for Victory is a 1942 US Department of Agriculture propaganda film that urged American farmers to grow hemp for the World War II effort, even though Washington had all but shut the crop down just a few years earlier. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 pulled the United States straight into the war, American war production had to kick into high gear. The problem was a fiber shortage: hemp production in the Philippines and the East Indies was in Japanese hands, and jute imports from India were limited. Those were exactly the materials needed to make rope, shoelaces, parachutes and more. The fix was to grow hemp on American soil, a plant that was effectively illegal in the US at the time.

What was Hemp for Victory?

"Hemp for Victory" is a short propaganda film produced by the US Department of Agriculture in 1942 to persuade farmers in states like Kentucky and Wisconsin to plant hemp instead of corn. The 14-minute black-and-white film was directed by Raymond Evans and narrated by Lee D. Vickers. After the war, growing hemp, the very plant that had helped the US win, was banned all over again. The government even denied the film existed for years. But in 1989, cannabis activist Jack Herer, along with Maria Farrow and Carl Packard, donated two VHS copies to the Library of Congress. They'd tracked the film down after a long search and took it upon themselves to bring to light a secret the US government had kept under wraps until then.