Who Was Jack Herer? The Emperor of Hemp and His Legacy

By James Buddsey · Updated October 16, 2026

Jack Herer (1939 to 2010) was an American cannabis and hemp activist, best known for his 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, which argued that hemp could supply fuel, food, fiber, paper and medicine and that the government had suppressed that knowledge. Nicknamed “the Emperor of Hemp,” he ran for president twice, founded the group HEMP, and is the namesake of the famous Jack Herer strain.

This page once held a video of Herer telling the story of his first time getting high. The clip is gone, but the man is worth a proper profile. If you came for the strain, jump to our Jack Herer strain guide.

Jack Herer at a Glance

From Goldwater Republican to Hemp Crusader

Herer was born in Buffalo in 1939. He started out politically conservative, a Goldwater Republican, which made his later turn to cannabis activism all the more striking. He became an early glass pipe entrepreneur and opened his first head shop in 1973. That same year he co-wrote a small book, G.R.A.S.S., with Al Emmanuel, and began collecting everything he could find about the cannabis plant, encouraged by his friend “Captain” Ed Adair.

He spent roughly 12 years gathering old government documents, agricultural reports and news clippings, and the result became his life’s work.

The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Herer self-published The Emperor Wears No Clothes in 1985. The title nods to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale: Herer cast cannabis prohibition as an obvious falsehood everyone was afraid to call out. The book’s core claims:

• Hemp is one of the most useful plants on earth, a renewable source of fiber, paper, food, fuel, building material and medicine.
• Its prohibition in the 1930s was driven less by public health than by politics and business interests. Herer pointed in particular at newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and the DuPont company.
• The U.S. government knew about hemp’s potential and hid it from the public.

The book’s backers offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who could disprove its central claims. It went through many editions, was reprinted by Quick American Archives, and became a standard text for hemp and legalization activists.

It also has critics. European hemp researchers, including Hayo van der Werf and Ivan Bócsa, argued that some of Herer’s figures for hemp yields and cellulose content were unrealistic, and historians generally give more weight to racial politics and the anti-marijuana campaign of Harry Anslinger than to a corporate conspiracy when explaining the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. Read it as an advocacy book that helped revive interest in hemp, not as a neutral history. Our history of marijuana in the U.S. covers the period in more detail, and what hemp is used for covers its real uses today.

Activism, Campaigns and the Portland Years

Herer founded and led Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) and toured relentlessly, speaking at rallies, festivals and smoke-outs. He ran for president on the Grassroots Party ticket in 1988, drawing 1,949 votes, and again in 1992, drawing 3,875. The numbers were small, but the campaigns were platforms for the message.

He had a long connection to Oregon. In 1987 he opened the Third Eye Shoppe, a head shop in Portland; his son Mark took it over in 2001, and it closed in 2017. A PBS-aired documentary, Emperor of Hemp, told his story, and he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame at the 16th Cannabis Cup. For more films on the subject, see our list of marijuana documentaries.

Illness and Death

Herer had a minor heart attack and a major stroke in July 2000, which slowed but did not stop him. On September 12, 2009, he suffered a heart attack backstage at the Hempstalk festival in Portland. He never fully recovered and died on April 15, 2010, in Eugene, Oregon, at 70. He is buried at Eden Memorial Park in the Los Angeles area.

The Jack Herer Strain

Sensi Seeds in the Netherlands bred a sativa-dominant hybrid in his honor in the 1990s. It is usually traced to Haze, Northern Lights #5 and Shiva Skunk, though the breeder has never published a full recipe. The strain won the 7th High Times Cannabis Cup and has become a staple in legal markets, known for a piney, spicy aroma and a clear, energetic effect. It is a fitting tribute: a plant people actually use, named for a man who wanted everyone to know what the plant could do. Full details are in our Jack Herer strain profile, and our strain directory covers hundreds more.

Jack Herer’s Legacy

Herer did not live to see legal adult-use sales; Washington and Colorado voted to legalize in 2012, two years after his death. But the arguments he pushed for decades, that hemp is a valuable crop and prohibition did more harm than good, moved into the mainstream. The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp cultivation nationally, and the hemp industry he imagined is now real, if smaller and more regulated than he predicted.

Jack Herer FAQ

For adults 21+ in legal states. General information, not medical advice.