Note about the author: Mary Schaefer worked as Jack Herer’s personal assistant from 2004-2005, and they remained friends until his passing in 2010. She witnessed firsthand his daily activism, relationships with cannabis breeders, and unwavering commitment to legalization.
Jack Herer swore he’d legalize weed or die trying. I worked for him and can confirm: every breath and puff Jack took was in the service of legalizing cannabis.
Walk into any dispensary, at any corner of the world, and ask for Jack Herer. They’ll know what you’re talking about: the ever-popular, most awarded cannabis sativa strain of all time. They will likely have the original and at least one more that’s crossed with it.
But what they may not know to tell you is that the energizing, mind-opening cultivar, with a rich body high that rides its tenacity to the end, is a potent reflection of its human namesake.
So, who was Jack Herer? And why did Sensi Seeds breed arguably the best ever sativa-traited hybrid in his name?
Photo by: Mary Schaefer
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Getting to know Jack
I first met Jack Herer while working at a 2004 Oregon medical marijuana campaign.
Though I smoked weed and wanted it legalized to avoid any more jail trips, I didn’t know why legalization mattered beyond that. I worked at a cannabis campaign office because I needed a job, not because I cared.
So, toward the end of summer, when the campaign hit a money slump and Jack Herer agreed to drive up from Northern California for a book signing fundraiser, everyone in the office got really excited, and I quietly tuned into all the buzz to avoid looking as ignorant as I was.
I thought I got the picture while listening to staff and volunteers’ breathless exchanges about Jack’s mind-blowing book and him being legit weed royalty, the “Emperor of Hemp.” But I wasn’t prepared for how Jack’s spirited gesticulations and passionate sermons cast spells on people in cozy couch conversations or packed event halls, drawing them in and rousing their indignant, proactive spirits.
We gathered around, rapt, anytime Jack spoke. He was generous with his time and knew well the good that could come from each newly activated activist. The sparkle in his eyes showed his delight with his attentive audience, and you could hear it clearly through his growling voice.
The medical marijuana campaign lost, along with all socially progressive measures, as George W. Bush claimed his second term. But I ran into Jack later that month at an Oregon NORML conference. He was a featured speaker, along with his friend and neighbor, the equally scrappy grower and activist, Reverend Eddy Lepp.
We all sat together during the silent auction and dinner, and I helped Jack carry his plate and drink, and navigate the room. He’d had a massive stroke in 2000 and never fully recovered his mobility and speech. I was writing for High Times Magazine by then, and after I got my quotes from the two weed celebrities, Eddy told me Jack needed an assistant, and invited me to move down to his Lake County, California, weed commune, only a few miles from Jack and his wife Jeannie.
When I arrived a month later, working for Jack had transformed from drinking out of a firehose into doing gravity bongs through a gas mask. It was epic, but it was also a lot to take in and relentlessly mind-bending.
The Emperor of Hemp
The Jack Herer strain was already gaining fame in 2004, but Jack the man was famous then for his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
The Emperor Wears No Clothes is a raw, passionate exposé of lies and cover-ups to keep farmers from successfully commodifying hemp and people from getting high or well.
Photo by: Jeannie Herer
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He conceived of the idea after the cult success of his 1973 adult coloring book, G.R.A.S.S., the full title of which is “Great Revolutionary American Standard System — The Official Guide for Assessing the Quality of Marijuana on the 1 to 10 Scale for Determining What You Have and Where You Are At.”
The Emperor Wears No Clothes didn’t take shape, though, until 1984, when Jack got arrested for registering voters without a $5 permit. As he sat in a holding cell, pissed off, he channeled his outrage into a robust outline for the first edition of The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
Back home and free from jail, Jack threw himself into his research and writing.
First published in 1985, The Emperor Wears No Clothes unveils unnerving and oft-forgotten truths. Like that, in 1619, the first enacted U.S. cannabis law was to make it mandatory to grow it. That’s because it used to be common knowledge that hemp was our best, most renewable resource for making fuel, clothing, paper, and much more.
In Chapter 10 we learn, “From at least the 27th century B.C. up until this century, cannabis was incorporated into virtually all the cultures of the Middle East, Asia Minor, India, China, Japan, Europe, and Africa for its superior fiber, medicines, oils, food and for its meditative, euphoric, and relaxational uses.”
“Well, why wouldn’t everyone still use it today?” you might ask. But it’s bound to surprise exactly no one that hemp and cannabis were and still are heavily, successfully repressed by people profiting from petrol, cotton, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals.
Jack wanted everyone to know that they could have a better life if they smoked cannabis every day. That hemp could heal the soil, clean the air, and save the planet. And he included a $100,000 incentive to anyone who could disprove his claims.
Jack Herer was sick of corrupt government messaging, and he wouldn’t sit silent while its cogs continued wrecking people’s lives with their lies.
The blossoming of Jack the man
Jack Herer was born in New York City on June 18, 1939, but the extraordinary force that led to the creation of one of weed‘s most lauded strains wasn’t born in or on a day.
Let’s just say Jack didn’t pop onto the planet from a liberal mold. He was a square kid who prided himself on following the rules. He then enforced the rules during the Korean War as a military police officer. He worshipped Air Force General and 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater so much he named his first son after him.
Jack made it to thirty years old like that, until he tried to impress a beautiful woman by hitting her joint. Mary Jane stole his heart instead. Jack was mind-blown to discover that everything he’d ever heard and personally pontificated about weed had been a lie.
As an avid reader, Jack at once set out to learn everything he could about cannabis.
Being a pot pioneer takes charisma
My early smoking days were in the 1990s, when colorful blown glass pipes and bongs were ways to express our tastes and personalities. Which is a roundabout way of saying I couldn’t roll joints for shit when I first started working for Jack.
On day one, minute one, Jack sat me at a folding card table stacked with books and loose pages of research, unfurled a handful of weed and papers, and said gruffly, “Roll me a joint.”
I tried, though I knew I was doomed to fail. I could feel his irritation while I fumbled with the crumbled bud and paper as much as I felt the beads of sweat popping out of my skin. Finally, I gave the thing a wet lick, stuck the paper down, and passed him the result to his swift cry of outrage, “That’s not how you roll a fucking joint!”
I spent the next six hours rolling joints until one passed his inspection. “That’s how you roll a fucking joint,” he grumbled out the side of a crocked smile and ruffled my hair.
Though Jack was of the old-school, loud-mouthed, boomer white guy ilk, and the gesture could have ticked me off, it didn’t because he was sincere. He was truly proud of me, glad that I’d persevered and learned to roll a decent joint. These days, I can roll with my eyes closed, and I’m grateful to Jack for that. Plus, the unapologetically puffed-up elements of his personality were at the heart of his legendary status as much as his giant heart and burning soul.
Jack bootstrapped book signing tours at dispensaries, head shops, and alternative book stores whenever the urge struck him, wherever he felt like going. He knew the names, stories, and families of activists, dispensary owners, actors, writers, and other enormous personalities in cities of all sizes and locales. No one could refuse him, even with little to no notice.
That was Jack’s reality: people’s eyes lit up when they saw him coming. If he met someone new who’d heard of him before, and they inevitably said his name with the inflection on the second “er,” he’d correct them with his raspy chuckle, “It’s hair-er, Herer. Herer rhymes with terror.”
The coy correction could solicit knowing scoffs from his friends and associates, as there was no sugar-coating Jack’s quick temper, but it certainly made it easier to remember the pronunciation of his last name.
Jeannie Herer and I became friends while I was working for Jack. Jeannie had been preaching the teachings of The Emperor Wears No Clothes long before she met her surly cannabis-devoted hero and husband.
Photo by: Jeannie Herer
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The pair had matching convictions and equal parts gumption. Jeannie maintained the jackherer.com website, kept Jack as well-fed and healthy as he’d let her, and constantly scoured the internet for weed studies, laws, or news.
Jeannie once told me she knew she’d never be bored married to Jack, and truer words had never been spoken.
From activist to icon
It is only fitting that the world-renowned growers at Sensi Seeds were the ones to create the Jack Herer strain, which they describe as an ode to Jack’s “countless years of tireless cannabis activism.”
Though Jack Herer is a 50/50 hybrid, its most popular phenotypes have typical sativa growth traits and offer energizing effects. The highly resinous plant is a three-way cross of Haze, Northern Lights, and Skunk plants. It’s won nearly every cannabis award there is, and is beloved by cannabis connoisseurs everywhere for its long-lasting, uplifting, and body-comforting high.
Jack Herer’s legacy lives on beyond the strain
While it’s a helluva strain to carry his name, Jack Herer’s impact is far vaster than that. The Emperor Wears No Clothes started a hemp industry revolution that is paved in Jackolytes.
Also intangible is the number of activists Jack ignited. His willingness to educate anyone interested in learning how hemp can save the planet, about studies that show smoking cannabis is good for lung health, how magic mushrooms heal the mind, body, and soul, or why corrupt government is the worst part of society, would spark righteous inspiration in the people he met, everywhere he went.
Jack Herer was non-stop up until the end, and his influence continues to ripple throughout the global cannabis movement.
The twelfth edition of The Emperor Wears No Clothes was published in 2010, the same year Jack died of complications from a heart attack he suffered at Portland Hempstalk. Even if much of its exhaustive research remains underground knowledge, the book’s contents remain fully and freely available at the Jack Herer website, and his claims have yet to be disproven.
Keeping the Jack Herer torch lit
Photo by: Mary Schaefer
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I do my best to pay homage to Jack by living my life according to some of his stronger advice.
“Smoke joints all day, every day. You’ll add at least ten years to your life.”
“We can’t let them tax cannabis, no! It’s bullshit.”
Never let The Man tell me I misunderstand.
And, crucially, sing my heart out, windows down, whenever I’m on the road.
The cannabis movement needs Jack Herer’s brand of ferocious conviction and unabashed love now more than ever as we spy a global aha moment cresting the horizon.
The surest way for us to emulate Jack Herer’s grand, irrepressible spirit is to keep fighting to free cannabis from superfluous laws, regulations, and taxes, and to ensure its powerful seeds, flowers, and fibers are fully available to all peoples of all nations — or die trying.
