Pope Innocent VIII labels cannabis as an unholy sacrament of the Satanic mass and issues a papal ban on cannabis medicines. I orders land owners with 60 acres or more to grow cannabis or face a 5 fine. Jamestown Colony, Virginia, enacts the New World's first marijuana legislation, ordering all farmers to grow Indian hemp seed. Mandatory hemp cultivation laws were passed in Massachusetts in 1631 and in Connecticut in 1632. Cannabis is frequently used for barter, and during times of shortage, farmers sometimes face jail terms for not growing hemp.
Some colonies allow farmers to pay taxes with cannabis hemp.
Without hemp, the Continental Army would have frozen to death at Valley Forge. In that same year, in Common Sense , Thomas Paine lists cordage, iron, timber and tar as America's four essential natural resources. The first draft of the Declaration of Independence is written on Dutch hemp paper. The final draft, signed by the Founders, is copied from the second draft onto animal parchment. This plant greatly exhausts the soil.