President's Use of Weed and other Drugs

"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?" - Henry Ford

Marijuana is an imbedded part of our American culture, before our nation was founded and a single document drafted, we have grown to rely on marijuana for much more than just getting high. Prohibition has been pathetically unsuccessful and many lawmakers refuse to acknowledge the truth that it is a fight they cannot win. More than half of the adult population has at least tried to smoke Marijuana and our Founding Fathers praised it! We have official Government documents that were written on hemp paper including the Declaration Of Independence and the US Constitution.

Marijuana consumption is about more than just getting high, it is about our liberty and our prosperity as a nation.

President Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton's publicly admitted to trying marijuana during his younger days, by his account, he never actually felt its effects.


"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again." –Bill Clinton

As part of MTV's "Choose or Lose" get-out-the-vote campaign for the 1992 presidential race, the cable network hosted a town-hall style meeting with then-candidate Clinton. When asked whether he had smoked marijuana, Clinton answered he had, but he "didn't inhale."

President Barack Obama

"When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point." - Barack Obama

"The war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our nation's marijuana laws." -Barack Obama

President Barack Obama's recent biography detailed a young Obama smoking marijuana during his high school days. The president had previously admitted to using the drug in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams of My Father."

Obama's history of drug use is a past behavior that is certainly still frowned upon, but he is by no means the only president to have a drug history.

President George W. Bush

Former President George W. Bush, had a turbulent drug history before his political career.

Bush has maintained a policy of silence around his past youthful indiscretions, other than to say he has been clean since 1974.

Reports of his younger days, however, suggest that Bush had a wild lifestyle for a time, indulging in marijuana and even cocaine.

President John F. Kennedy, Jr.

President John F. Kennedy, Jr., might have the most complex history with drugs out of any president in U.S. history.

Like some 42 percent of Americans today, Kennedy tried smoking marijuana during his younger days, according to an ex-girlfriend who knew him during his college years. In a book released last year, she recounts an incident in which Kennedy lit up while on vacation in Jamaica.

Kennedy also took many different prescriptions for a variety of health conditions that he kept secret from the American public. These drugs included "codeine, Demerol and methadone for pain; Ritalin, a stimulant; Meprobamate and Librium for anxiety; barbiturates for sleep" and more, according to medical records.

President Franklin Pierce

President Franklin Pierce may have had an odd way of motivating men on the battlefield.

According to contemporary accounts of Pierce, he used to smoke marijuana with his soldiers during wartime. In fact, during the Mexican-American War, Pierce declared that smoking cannabis was "about the only good thing" about the conflict.

President Ulysses S. Grant

Long before cocaine was a controlled substance that came with a heavy jail sentence for abusers, it was a legally available and widely used pain reliever. The drug, however, was as addictive then as it is now.

Stricken with oral cancer, President Ulysses S. Grant used cocaine throat drops regularly to soothe his pain. In fact, Grant reportedly took cocaine while he wrote his now famous memoirs.

He would remain addicted to the drug until the illness claimed his life at age 63.

President Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was another president who openly smoked marijuana on occasion. Like Pierce, Jackson smoked with his troops during wartime, along with tobacco cigars.

President Thomas Jefferson

"Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see."  - Thomas Jefferson

"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country." - Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the country's Founding Fathers, grew vast fields on hemp of his plantation. In fact, an early draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, a common material at the time.

Whether Jefferson actually smoked his crop is a matter of historical debate. Jefferson's Farm Book includes references to growing hemp that could indicate he was growing them for purposes of recreational smoking.

President George Washington

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere." - George Washington

George Washington, arguably the most admired figure in U.S. history alongside Abraham Lincoln, was not only a user of marijuana, but a major advocate for the spread of hemp as a cash crop in the United States.

Washington grew hemp as a fiber, and even has several journal entries detailing his efforts to grow a better crop. Washington also suffered from tooth pain, and it's believed that he smoked marijuana to bring relief.

President James Madison

James Madison was once heard to say that smoking hemp inspired him to found a new nation on democratic principles.

President James Monroe

James Monroe, the 5th US President, was introduced to hashish when he was serving as Ambassador to France, and he continued to enjoy the smoke until he was 73 years old.

President Zachary Taylor

When Zachary Taylor served as a military commanders, he smoked hemp with his soldiers.

President Abraham Lincoln

"Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica." - Abraham Lincoln

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bound of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded" -Abraham Lincoln

President John Adams

"We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption."
- John Adams, U.S. President








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