The farm bill, passed by the House on Wednesday after clearing the Senate, has plenty of corporate welfare and market-distorting subsidies, but it also includes a long overdue end to the prohibition of industrial hemp — which should never have been illegal in the first place.

Hemp lacks the psychoactive properties of its better-known cousin marijuana. For much of early American history, was a key fiber used in everything from clothing to rope to paper, making it one of the most widely grown and most popular crops in the colonies.