Were the Founding Fathers tokers?

So these comments of Newt Gingrich's from NH has been floating around the web over the past few days.

"I think Jefferson and George Washington would strongly discourage you from growing marijuana, and their tactics to stop you would be more violent than they would be today."

Well this point is clearly moronic and terribly inaccurate. Perhaps he should have studied harder in graduate school. Check this:

President George Washington wrote a letter that contained an oblique reference to what may have been hashish. "The artificial preparation of hemp, from Silesia, is really a curiosity." 38 Washington made specific written references to Indian hemp, or cannabis indica, and hoped to "have disseminated the seed to others. " 39 His August 7, 1765 diary entry, "began to separate the male from the female () plants," describes a harvesting technique favored to enhance the potency of smoking cannabis, among other reasons. 40 Hemp farmer Thomas Jefferson and paper maker Ben Franklin were ambassadors to France during the initial surge of the hashish vogue. Their celebrity status and progressive revolutionary image afforded them ample opportunities to try new experiences. Jefferson smuggled Chinese hemp seeds to America and is credited with the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Did the Founding Fathers of the United States of America smoke cannabis? Some researchers think so. Dr. Burke, president of the American Historical Reference Society and a consultant for the Smithsonian Institute, counted seven early presidents as cannabis smokers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce. 41 "Early letters from our founding fathers refer to the pleasures of hemp smoking," said Burke. Pierce, Taylor and Jackson, all military men, smoked it with their troops. Cannabis was twice as popular among American soldiers in the Mexican War as in Vietnam: Pierce wrote to his family that it was "about the only good thing" about that war.

H/T: Andrew Sullivan.