Jack Herer — "The Hemperor"

Last verified: April 2026

Who He Was

Jack Herer (born June 18, 1939, in Buffalo, New York; died April 15, 2010, in Eugene, Oregon) was a cannabis and hemp activist, author, and organizer — the man primarily responsible for the 1980s–90s revival of industrial hemp as a serious political and scientific argument in the United States. He was called "The Hemperor," a nickname he both tolerated and sometimes affectionately mocked, and he operated for decades from the Venice Beach boardwalk and later Oregon, running head shops, collecting signatures, and delivering the same core argument to anyone who would listen: that hemp was unjustly criminalized in 1937 despite its enormous industrial utility, and that the case for its prohibition did not survive contact with evidence.

He was not primarily a smoker-culture figure — though he smoked cannabis openly throughout his life — and he is best understood alongside Dennis Peron as the two pre-legalization activists who did the most to move the political needle.

Key Contributions

• The Emperor Wears No Clothes (first self-published 1985). Written partly while Herer was serving a 14-day federal sentence in Terminal Island for cannabis and other charges. The book is an argument — part history, part industrial survey, part conspiracy-tinged polemic — that hemp was criminalized through the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act not because of any legitimate public health concern but to protect timber, cotton, and petrochemical interests. It is now in its 14th edition and has sold more than 800,000 copies.
• The $100,000 bounty. Inside the book, Herer offered a standing reward of $100,000 to anyone who could disprove its core factual claims. The bounty has never been paid. It remains on offer; the Jack Herer Foundation continues to honor the challenge.
• Jack Herer (the strain). In the mid-1990s, Dutch breeders at Sensi Seeds in Amsterdam created a sativa-dominant hybrid — commonly described as a Haze x Northern Lights #5 x Shiva Skunk cross — and named it Jack Herer in his honor. It went on to win the High Times Cannabis Cup nine times, has been used as parent genetics for a long list of descendants, and remains one of the most culturally durable strains in modern cannabis.
• Decades of retail organizing. Herer ran Captain Ed's head shop on the Venice Beach boardwalk in the 1970s, where he printed and distributed early versions of his hemp pamphlets. He organized the California Marijuana Initiative efforts of the 1970s and wrote the 2000s-era Hemp Initiative language that became the template for later state measures.

Signature Moments

Terminal Island, 1983. Herer was federally convicted on charges related to his activism and served his 14-day sentence at the Terminal Island federal prison near Los Angeles. He spent most of the time writing. Portions of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, including some of its most cited historical sections, were drafted there. "If you don't like the book, I'll give you $100,000." The line is Herer’s own.

The Cannabis Cup. Herer was a regular presence at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam throughout the 1990s and 2000s — partly because Sensi Seeds' Jack Herer strain was a perennial winner, and partly because High Times had inducted him into its Counterculture Hall of Fame in 2003. He spoke on cup stages alongside Keith Stroup, Tommy Chong, and Willie Nelson. See our Tommy Chong profile for the adjacent comedic lineage.

The 2010 death. Herer collapsed after a speech at the Hempstalk Festival in Portland, Oregon in September 2009 and died of complications from the resulting heart attack and a prior health decline on April 15, 2010 — five days before 4/20, which his friends and family noted with some dark humor. He was 70.

Legacy and Current Status

Herer's legacy is carried by the Jack Herer Foundation, by his widow Jeannie Herer, and by the continuing presence of the Jack Herer strain in nearly every legal U.S. cannabis market. His book remains in print; the 14th edition was released in 2010 with foreword updates, and newer printings continue to circulate. His political descendants — in both the hemp-reform wing and the full-legalization wing of cannabis politics — include essentially every major modern advocacy organization.

In a meaningful sense, the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalization of industrial hemp — eight years after his death — was a posthumous validation of the central industrial-hemp argument he had been making since 1985.

For the adjacent activist and dispensary history, see our Dennis Peron profile. For the cultivation-side companion volume, see our Jorge Cervantes profile.