Talk:United States

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Page scope

United States is about cannabis in the United States. It covers where feral cannabis grows; colonial, Kentucky and Wisconsin hemp; the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the state laws, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and the Controlled Substances Act of 1970; state medical and adult-use laws; the rescheduling of 2023–2026 and the hemp definitions; eradication and the "ditchweed" counts; the Hawaiian name paka lōlō and the Hawaiian seed line; potency and strain studies; herbarium specimens, feral-population genetics and the federal hemp germplasm collection. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name the United States as their country.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

Federal Register. The final order of 28 April 2026 (91 FR 22714), the proposal of 21 May 2024 (89 FR 44597), the hearing notice of 28 April 2026 (91 FR 22777), Executive Order 14370 (90 FR 60541) and the hemp production rule of 2021 (86 FR 5596) are cited from the Federal Register's full text. The figure of 61.9 million past-year users is the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health as printed in the proposal of 2024; the survey's own report is not cited.
Statutes. The Pure Food and Drug Act (34 Stat. 768), the Marihuana Tax Act (50 Stat. 551) and the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act (84 Stat. 1236) are cited from the Statutes at Large on govinfo; the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 and Public Laws 119-37 and 119-103 in govinfo's public-law texts; 21 U.S.C. 812 in the 2024 edition of the Code. The page does not state the repeal of the 1906 and 1937 Acts.
Hemp definition in October 2026. Section 781 of Public Law 119-37 takes effect 365 days after 12 November 2025. Section 2019 of Public Law 119-103 limits it, until 11 December 2026, to products with cannabinoids not capable of being naturally produced by the plant. The text does not say whether "until December 11" includes that day. The order of April 2026 predates the later law and gives 12 November 2026.
State counts. The counts as at 27 June 2025 are the International Narcotics Control Board's, which names the National Conference of State Legislatures as its source. The count of 23 states and the District of Columbia as at August 2023 is the proposal of 2024's.
Hawaii. Act 228 of 2000 and Act 241 of 2015 are described from the Hawaii Department of Health's list of laws.
Dewey (1913) and Bonnie and Whitebread (1970) are cited from facsimiles of the original printings held on an advocacy organisation's site; the citations give the original publications and carry no page numbers.
The Shafer Commission's report (1972) is cited from the Wellcome Collection's digitisation of the Government Printing Office print, whose text is machine-read.
paka lōlō is the headword of Pukui and Elbert's Hawaiian Dictionary (1986) as served by the University of Hawaiʻi's Wehewehe Wikiwiki site. The dictionary writes two words with macrons; the one-word pakalolo is not a headword there. It glosses lōlō as "paralyzed, numb, feeble-minded, crazy", so "crazy tobacco" is one possible reading of the compound, but its own literal gloss is "numbing tobacco".
Eradication figures come from the Drug Enforcement Administration's programme reports for 1987 and 1989 (NCJRS scans), the NCJRS abstract of the 1993 report and the Inspector General's audit of 1995.
Green Harvest in Hawaii. The Drug Enforcement Administration's report of 1989 dates the National Guard's part to 1977; the Hawaii Department of Defense's history page, which compiles extracts from annual reports, covers 1978 onwards. Most extracts on that page carry no year, so the helicopter operations are not dated in the article beyond the Kauai operation of August 1981.
Herbarium specimens are known from their GBIF occurrence data (2,854 preserved specimens, 19 from Hawaii; counts of 14 October 2026). A specimen's collection date is not an introduction date. Three Hawaiian vouchers of 2021 are of a cultivated hemp crop at a Kauai hemp company.
The seed line is described from the archived strainguide entry, as on its accession page.

Where the sources differ

The first state law. Bonnie and Whitebread (1970) and McGlothlin (1975) give Utah, 1915, as the first statewide prohibition. The Senate of Canada's committee report (2002) gives California, also 1915. Emily Murphy (1922) wrote that California, Missouri and Wyoming had legislated against the drug.
How the drug-smoking habit arrived. The Shafer Commission (1972) and McGlothlin (1975) name Mexican immigrants, with West Indian sailors in the Commission's account. Both rest on secondary work; the account is attributed on the article and its framing is theirs.
When hemp reached North America. Aina et al. (2025) write both that hemp arrived in the Northeast "as early as the 16th century" and that it "was introduced to North America in the early 17th century". The article uses neither date.
Sample counts in Aina et al. (2025). The abstract gives 760 plants sequenced; the methods give seed and tissue collected from 1,815 plants in 88 populations and, elsewhere, 1,821 plants in 91 populations. The article gives the 760 sequenced plants only.
Naturalised range. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's biology document places the naturalised range in the United States in the Midwest and Northeast in one passage and in the Midwest and southeast in another. Flora of North America places it in the prairies and plains, with a list of 28 states.
The germplasm collection. Aina et al. (2025) give 581 accessions, 57 available; the unit's undated page gives more than 600 from 35 countries.

Other reports

The rescheduling hearing after April 2026. Trade-press and law-firm reports say the hearing ran from 29 June to 15 July 2026, that the presiding judge stayed it on 29 September 2026 and that the D.C. Circuit refused on 9 September 2026 to stay the April order. None of these is confirmed by a primary text cited here, and the page cites no later Federal Register document in the docket.
Wisconsin's last hemp crop. The University of Wisconsin–Madison page gives 1957.
Wartime hemp. The acreage of 1943 is given as Aina et al. (2025) state it. The Hemp for Victory film appears in the National Agricultural Library's film list by title only.
The 1619 wording. "Hempe also both English and Indian" is quoted without a gloss. The text gives no botanical name, and "Indian" may mean a plant of the Americas or hemp from elsewhere.
Flora of North America's ethnobotanical line on Iroquois use of Cannabis sativa (citing Moerman 1986) does not identify the plant, and is not used.
A medical-cannabis appropriations rider in force for 2024: whether it continues in the appropriations laws of 2026 and 2027 is open.

Open questions

Hawaii. The cited sources include no peer-reviewed history of cannabis in Hawaii and no study of Hawaiian populations or of named Hawaiian varieties of the 1970s. The first written use of paka lōlō is open.
Aerial spraying in Hawaii. The Drug Enforcement Administration's report of 1987 names a staff coordinator for the environmental impact statement and "the use of herbicides". Whether herbicides were used in Hawaii was not established.
Kentucky hemp seed. What became of the older Department of Agriculture seed lots is open.