Industrial Hemp
Just the mention of the word Cannabis in today’s society brings about all types of negative connotations. This is understandable due to the major propaganda campaign that has been waged by the U.S. government on the plant. Most citizens have no idea what a mature Cannabis plant looks like, and close to none recognize the thousands of uses it has. This is paper will not discuss whether drug-type Cannabis should be legalized for recreational or medicinal purposes, what it will discuss is the many environmentally friendly products that can be made from non-psychoactive hemp.
The Columbia History of the World states that the first archaeological record of human industry is a piece of hemp fabric. This is testament to the fact that the Cannabis plant has been used since the dawn of mankind for all types of purposes, and only lately has fallen out of use due to it’s prohibition by capitalists. Earlier cultures used it for fabric, rope, oil for lighting lamps, medicine, and paper, to name the most important ones. With the rise of technology we have alternative resources to use for those products, but are they superior? Cotton accounts for half of the agricultural chemicals used in America today. Now, forests are cut down to make paper that is inferior to hemp paper in every way. We have all types of petrochemical oils that are used today, but studies have shown that hemp oil can accomplish all of the major tasks that modern synthetic oils achieve. Medicine will not be discussed, but it will be said that Cannabis is listed in the oldest surviving medical text, and for thousands of years was used to treat almost every symptom that a human can acquire.
Non-Psychoactive Cannabis has been popularly known as Industrial Hemp. There are three main varieties of the plant; ones with good fiber, ones with good oils, and one with good psychoactive properties. Industrial Hemp is very easy to grow and harvest. It does not require an abundance of fertilizers to grow. Nor does it require pesticides/herbicides/fungicides because insects never pose a serious threat due to its alarmingly fast growth rate and natural defense system.
Hemp fiber is the strongest natural fiber in the world, the reason why it was used for all ship rigging up to the modern age. Hemp fabric has an excellent texture that gets softer with each use, yet keeps it durability. Despite it’s functionality as a fabric/fiber, the main reason that it is important to use today is that growing fiber-type hemp does not pollute our environment with agricultural chemicals to the gross extent of cotton.
One major issue with Industrial Hemp is its use for BioMass fuel. Believe it or not, but the energy that Cannabis stores during its growth can be converted into fuel after harvest. Many plants can be used to make BioMass fuel, yet Cannabis is the top candidate for its supply due to it’s abundance of cellulose and ease of harvesting it. BioMass fuel can be used for absolutely any form of energy, be it fuel to power an engine (car) or to generate electricity. BioMass fuel burns cleaner than petrochemical fuels.
Paper made from hemp is superior to wood-pulp paper in every facet. First, and most importantly, Cannabis is grown in a field and is planted and harvested in the same year. Forests that are cut down for paper destroy natural habitat that take many years to grow. Wood-pulp paper is bleached in a process that has many toxic byproducts. Cannabis paper requires no bleaching due to its naturally creamy color. Hemp paper is stronger, lasts longer, and holds ink better than wood-pulp paper.
Hemp seed has been claimed as man’s perfect food. It has a complete set of essential fatty acids, along with high amounts of Omega-3 and Omega-6 oils that are extremely healthy, yet hard to find in foods. It is 75% protein. It was used for ages in cooking due to its exceptional nutritional value. Today, hemp foods are extremely expensive due its illegal status in the U.S. With nutrition becoming a major concern in our society, it would be important to allow citizens to use the hemp nut again, no matter what their economic status is.
Proponents against Industrial Hemp are a strange list. First, you have capitalists who realize that if Hemp was allowed in U.S. industry, their companies would fail. Despite the fact that Hemp would offer an environmentally safer product, and in many cases, a superior product, all that matters to them is the bottom line. Included in this list are Oil Companies, Paper Companies, Textile Companies, and in the case of medicinal Cannabis, Pharmaceutical companies. All these industries spend millions of dollars a year lobbying politicians. Then you have people who feel that drugs are the devil, and Industrial Hemp, despite not being psychoactive, is still too close to the drug-type to allow. These people are extremely misinformed on the subject.
It is true that Industrial Hemp and drug-type Cannabis look extremely similar, but their relationship has odd side-effects. Drug-type Cannabis is grown as sinsemilla, or without seeds. All males found in the patch are quickly culled so as to not pollinate the females and cause them to take seed. Cannabis is open-pollinated; a field of it will completely pollinate a crop 20 towns over. Therefore, one of the groups that don’t want Industrial Hemp allowed is drug-type Cannabis cash croppers. First, Industrial Hemp would pollinate their sinsemilla crop because for hemp, the males are used just as the females. And secondly, Industrial Hemp would wreck their drug-type gene pool. For both of those reasons, cash croppers would have to either quit that profession, or be fine with getting a significantly lower price for their product. If Industrial Hemp were made legal, you would see a decline in local drug-type Cannabis suppliers. This would not stop imports of psychoactive Cannabis, which make up 95% of the Cannabis consumed in the U.S. today. So legalizing Industrial Hemp, in a strange turn of consequences, would actually lower the local Cannabis supply, not make it more proliphic. It would definitely not increase its ease of acquiring; it would have the opposite effect.
Industrial Hemp is just now starting to catch on in other civilized countries, due the fact that they are now ignoring a U.N. law that states no form of Cannabis should be grown by a member of the United Nations. Hemp products are extremely expensive in the United States due to the need to import them all, and that is a major reason why they have not gained too much attention. Industrial Hemp used to be the staple of Kentucky's economy, too. Willard R. Jillson, in 1942, wrote a speech about the hemp industry in Kentucky and stated, “Born with the Commonwealth, the story of the hemp industry in Kentucky is, in effect, a history of the state itself.” (1) In a strange dichotomy of policy, even after the government’s war on the plant and its illegalization, during WWII the USDA requested that children’s 4-H clubs in Kentucky grow hemp for the war! The University of Kentucky still has this flier in their archives.
The case has been made for why Industrial Hemp should be allowed to be grown by U.S. farmers. It has also been shown that the major reasons against its use are completely unconvincing, for they are based in selfishness, corruption, and misinformation. Industrial Hemp is an environmentally friendly alternative to many of the most used and most polluting resources in the U.S. today. With all the damage being done to the Earth’s environment by modern industry, the time to use Hemp again is more important than ever. So, as one can see, the issue is complex, yet the answer is clear. Unfortunately the antagonist is one of man’s oldest and strongest enemies, greed.