AlterNet: Hemp Is the Far Bigger Economic Issue Hiding Behind Legal Marijuana

[marmar]

....(snip)....

If the upcoming pot legalization ballot in California were decided by hemp farmers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, it would be no contest. For purely economic reasons, if you told the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the nation they were founding would someday make hemp illegal, they would have laughed you out of the room.

If California legalizes pot, it will save the state millions in avoided legal and imprisonment costs, while raising it millions in taxes.

But with legal marijuana will come legal hemp. That will open up the Golden State to a multi-billion-dollar crop that has been a staple of human agriculture for thousands of years, and that could save the farms of thousands of American families.

Hemp is currently legal in Canada, Germany, Holland, Rumania, Japan and China, among many other countries. It is illegal here largely because of marijuana prohibition. Ask any sane person why HEMP is illegal and you will get a blank stare. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/148560/hemp_is_the_far_bigger_economic_issue_hiding_behind_legal_marijuana/

[lunatica]

1. I've been trying to say this for weeks

[eShirl]

2. Hemp is perfectly legal here, in fact we import it. It's only illegal here to grow it.

Does not make any sense.

[RainDog]

5. which is stupid b/c that makes it expensive

one of my local stores sells hemp oil - it's the best source of EFAs for humans b/c it perfectly matches the ratio of 3 and 6 omega acids for the human body.

but it's imported so it's expensive.

one manufacturer here wanted to make hemp jeans - he would've hired workers who would have jobs with bennies, etc. - but the cost of import made it too expensive.

North Dakota farmers want to grow hemp. So do farmers in KY. it has nothing to do with getting stoned or high.

[Le Taz Hot]

6. It's legal but expensive as hell

because of that illegal status. Marijuana is already CAlifornia's largest cash crop -- hemp would raise BILLIONS $.

[mediaman007]

3. During my son's chemical engineering studies, he told me that

hemp was probably the most versatile crop known to man.

[RainDog]

7. Purdue University report on hemp

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html

they don't really get the politics but they definitely understand the plant.

---

One of the reasons hemp fiber has been valued is because of its length. The primary bast fibers in the bark are 5–40 mm long, and are amalgamated in fiber bundles which can be 1–5 m long (secondary bast fibers are about 2 mm long). The woody core fibers are short—about 0.55 mm—and like hardwood fibers are cemented together with considerable lignin. The core fibers are generally considered too short for high grade paper applications (a length of 3 mm is considered ideal), and too much lignin is present. While the long bast fibers have been used to make paper almost for 2 millennia, the woody core fibers have rarely been so used. Nevertheless it has been suggested that the core fibers could be used for paper making, providing appropriate technology was developed (de Groot et al. 1998). In any event, the core fibers, have found a variety of uses, as detailed below. The long, lignin-poor bast fibers also have considerable potential to be used in many non-paper, non-textile applications, as noted below.

(actually, hemp paper is better than wood pulp paper because of the fibers - documents written on hemp paper still survive - like the Constitution.)

Other desirable features of hemp fibers are strength and durability (particularly resistance to decay), which made hemp useful in the past for rope, nets, sail-cloth, and oakum for caulking. During the age of sailing ships, Cannabis was considered to provide the very best of canvas, and indeed this word is derived from Cannabis. Several factors combined to decrease the popularity of hemp in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Increasing limitation of cheap labor for traditional production in Europe and the New World led to the creation of some mechanical inventions, but too late to counter growing interest in competitive crops. Development of other natural fibers as well as synthetic fibers increased competition for hemp’s uses as a textile fiber and for cordage. Hemp rag had been much used for paper, but the 19th century introduction of the chemical woodpulping process considerably lowered demand for hemp. The demise of the sail diminished the market for canvas. Increasing use of the plant for drugs gave hemp a bad image. All this led to the discontinuation of hemp cultivation in the early and middle parts of the 20th century in much of the world where cheap labor was limited.

Thermal Insulation. Thermal insulation products (Fig. 20, 21) are the third most important sector of the hemp industry of the EU. These are in very high demand because of the alarmingly high costs of heating fuels, ecological concerns about conservation of non-renewable resources, and political-strategic concerns about dependence on current sources of oil. This is a market that is growing very fast, and hemp insulation products are increasing in popularity. In Europe, it has been predicted that tens of thousands of tonnes will be sold by 2005, shared between hemp and flax (Karus et al. 2000).

[mediaman007]

10. Interesting, Thanks!

[RainDog]

15. did you know that Ford made a hemp car that could be fueled by hemp?

that's included in the paper, above, but it's also here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxlj6fgQ-ZU

this video includes footage from World War II era American industrial film encouraging farmers to grow hemp for the war effort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxd64t6H3_4&feature=related

[RainDog]

16. here's a professor of plant genetics history of the eradication of hemp in KY

and links to other articles about industrial hemp

http://www.gametec.com/hemp/archives.html

[DirkGently]

21. Another potential American industry squelched by ideological nonsense.

[raccoon]

4. Off to Greatest with you! nt

[randr]

8. Hemp production threatens the petro/chemical industries

A search on the uses for hemp would convince anyone of the benefits and the reasons the enemies of humanity are so oppose to legal production.

[marmar]

22. Yep. ..... THe petrochemical biz will fight legal hemp with all its might.

nt

[druidity33]

9. Hemp for Victory! K&R, nt.

[Tsiyu]

11. A society afraid of a plant

even in a benign, can't-get-anyone-happy, industrial form, is a stupid society.

Nothing pragmatic, sensible, safe or secure in making the cultivation of an agricultural plant illegal. Especially when we import that plant.


If Antonin Scabia wants to be an "originalist" in interpreting the Constitution - imagining just what the "Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the document" - he would certainly have to agree that hemp cultivation was a vital part of the late eighteenth century's economy.

You can't get more "original" than that.

[Enthusiast]

12. Scalia is a liar. That is all.

[Tsiyu]

13. True dat n/t

[Old and In the Way]

14. IIRC, the Constitution was written on hemp paper.

Kind of ironic that we'd outlaw the plant that provided the medium for this important document.

[TheKentuckian]

17. kick

[HopeHoops]

18. That's the entire reason behind pot being illegal - ever seen "Reefer Madness"?

It was propaganda created by the cotton industry. Despite the clear fact that hemp is a far superior fiber than cotton, they used fear to make hemp illegal (sound familiar? It isn't anything new). "Reefer Madness" was created for the single purpose of freaking people out so there would be support for making hemp illegal.

[RainDog]

19. DuPont received a patent for nylon in 1938. Hemp was outlawed in 1938

DuPont was accused of monopolistic practices long before hemp was outlawed - DuPont created most of the ammunition used in American wars since the 1800s. Andrew Mellon, who wrote the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, was DuPont's banker. Mellon's niece was married to Harry Anslinger, the man appointed to eradicate marijuana from American legal and economic life. William Hearst used his newspaper to spread propaganda about marijuana because his interests in paper mills made it useful for him to demonize a benign plant in order to maintain a wood pulp monopoly for paper.

These economic interests were the entire reason hemp was made illegal.

The mode by which they accomplished this was an appeal to white American's racism. America's original sin, iow, was the reason this cabal of industrialists was allowed to embark on a 70-plus (now) year racist campaign.

It had nothing to do with hemp's value - or rather, had to do with hemp's value as a crop and the monopolistic practices of the same group of people, btw, who plotted a coup to assassinate FDR and to install a figure head in General Smedley Butler (based upon his testimony before a House committee.) It was called "The Businessmen's Plot." FDR refused to prosecute the fascists in our midst and, so, we deal with them to this day. Jules Archer wrote about this moment in history as well and the history channel has a documentary available online based on Archer's work called, "The Plot to Seize the White House."

Mellon's heirs include Richard Mellon Scaife, famously known by Hillary Clinton's description of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

"Scaife played a major role in funding the Arkansas Project investigating President Clinton; former Clinton White House Counsel Lanny Davis claimed Scaife was using his money "to destroy a president of the United States." Scaife claims to be public about his political spending (q.v.<8>). CNN stated in a study the news outlet conducted on Scaife, "If it's a conspiracy, it's a pretty open one."<9> (wiki)

The Arkansas project was also investigated by Joe Conason in his book, The Hunting of the President. (iow, what Obama gets from the fascists in America is nothing new - Scaife turned around and endorsed Hillary in 2008.

Similar right wing economic interests (Dick Armey's teabaggers) have used racism to oppose the Obama presidency.

Scaife endowed a new public policy department at Pepperdine University and installed Ken Starr (Clinton's Javert, the man who prosecuted him throughout his time as president) as its first dean. Starr gave up the position b/c of controversy and scandal surrounding his appointment. He was then appointed Dean of Pepperdine's Law School and left to become president of the Southern Baptist (fundamentalist, literalist) Waco "university" this year.

[Javaman]

20. Coming soon: Monsanto corners the market in pot seeds.

This goes for hemp as well.

You think I'm kidding?

If pot becomes legalized, it will become a massive biz. It will dwarf the cigarette industry.

And if you think hemp will save us all, just keep in mind the dangers of mono-croping.