Hemp Is the Far Bigger Economic Issue Hiding Behind Legal Marijuana
http://www.alternet.org/story/148560/hemp_is_the_far_bigger_economic_issue_hiding_behind_legal_marijuana
Prop 19 will open up California to hemp, a multi-billion-dollar crop
that has been a staple of human agriculture for thousands of years.
October 19, 2010
By Harvey Wasserman
Hemp is the far bigger economic issue hiding behind legal marijuana.
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.
For paper, clothing, textiles, rope, sails, fuel and food, hemp has
been a core crop since the founding of ancient China, India and
Arabia. Easy to plant, grow and harvest, farmers---including
Washington and Jefferson---have sung its praises throughout history.
It was the number one or two cash crop on virtually all American
family farms from the colonial era on.
If the American Farm Bureaus and Farmers Unions were truly serving
their constituents, they would be pushing hard for legal pot so that
its far more profitable (but essentially unsmokable) cousin could
again bring prosperity to American farmers.
Hemp may be the real reason marijuana is illegal. In the 1930s, the
Hearst family set out to protect their vast timber holdings, much of
which were being used to make paper.
But hemp produces five times as much paper per acre as do trees. Hemp
paper is stronger and easier to make. The Declaration of Independence
was written on hemp paper, and one of Benjamin Franklin's primary
paper mills ran on it.
But the Hearsts used their newspapers to incite enough reefer madness
to get marijuana banned in 1937. With that ban came complex laws that
killed off the growing of hemp. The ecological devastation that's
followed with continued use of trees for paper has been epic.
As canvass, hemp has long been essential for shoes, clothing, rope,
sails, textiles, building materials and much more. It's far more
durable than cotton and ecologically benign compared to virtually any
other industrial crop. Hemp needs no pesticides, herbicides or
chemical fertilizers, and can grow well without much water.
Hemp's use for rope was so critical to the US war effort that in the
1940s, the US military the bans and blanketed virtually the entire
state of Kansas with it.The War Department's "Hemp for Victory" is
the core film on how to grow it.
Henry Ford produced an entire automobile made from hemp fiber
stiffened with resin. Like the original diesel engine, it was
designed to run on hemp fuel.
Powder from hemp seeds is extremely high in protein and in omega-3
oils, now mostly gotten from fish.
Hemp could be key to the future of bio-fuels. Growing food crops like
corn and soy to make ethanol and diesel is extremely inefficient and
expensive. They force hungry people to compete with cars for fuel.
Fast-growing hemp stalks and leaves are well-suited for cheap
fermentation into ethanol, and for compression into fuel pellets. The
seeds produce a bio-diesel that's far superior to what comes from soy.
Alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical and law
enforcement/prison-industrial industries -- not to mention entrenched
narco-terrorists -- are leading the fight against legal pot.
But the industrial production of hemp would also transform the
industries for paper, cotton, textiles, plastics, fuel, fish oil and
more. The economic, ecological and employment benefits would be incalculable.
When Californians go to the polls November 2, they may end a
marijuana prohibition that's had devastating impacts on state's
public health and civil liberties, while costing it billions.
They'll also decide whether California -- and, ultimately, the US --
will resume production of history's most powerful, versatile and
profitable industrial crop, one ultimately certain to be worth far
more than marijuana.
One that was essential to this nation's founding -- and that could be
central to its economic, ecological and agricultural revival.
--
Harvey Wasserman's history of the US is at www.harveywasserman.com,
along with PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS by "Thomas Paine." His
"George Washington Was America's First Stoner…" is in the December
issue of Hustler Magazine.
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