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A New Deal for the South
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 03/29/2009 13:31:59

It has 10's of 1000's of uses as a product, its easy to grow, it can create jobs, it doesn't harm the soil like tobacco does, and you can't get high from it. So why is it illegal?

I speak of course, of Hemp. The question that should have been asked of President Obama last week in his open question appearance instead of "Hey duuuuude, what about ganja man, weed, you know..... pot'.

With 25,000 known applications from paper, clothing and food products -- which, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal back in January, is the fastest growing new food category in North America -- to construction and automotive materials, hemp could be just the crop to jump-start America's green economy. Especially here in the south with its vacant tobacco farms and fields.

But growing it still remains illegal due to the (very low) THC found in the plant. The U.S. just refuses to distinguish between the two plants, as do most people who still confuse it with the other Cannibas, Marijuana. Despite the FDA's ban on letting us grow it, we can import it - lots of it - where it is legal to grow, in Canada. We also import it from China (where it may or may not also contain Lead. Well, no.... that's just speculation and paranoia on my part. Sorry).

Hemp can not only help our struggling economy but it is a "green" product as well. According to Wiki (which I must admit is not always reliable):

Industrial hemp has many uses, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food, and fuel. It is one of the fastest growing biomasses known, and one of the earliest domesticated plants known. It also runs parallel with the "Green Future" objectives that are becoming increasingly popular. Hemp requires little to no pesticides, no herbicides, controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper (the processing of which uses chlorine bleach, which results in the waste product polychlorinated dibensodioxins, popularly known as dioxins, which are carcinogenic, and contribute to deforestation), cosmetics, and plastics, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily. The strongest chemical needed to whiten the already light hemp paper is non-toxic hydrogen peroxide.


According to an Australian website (oh yeah, its also grown in Australia, along with France and several other of our European friends) the plant was used thousand years before the time of Christ until 1883 AD, and it was our planet's largest agricultural crop and most important industry.

Here is a short list of things that can be made using Industrial Hemp. Imagine the factories that could open up to produce these things: Paper (Hemp only takes 4 months to grow, unlike the tree's we currently use), clothing, Protein powders, Protein bars, Kitty litter, building materials, anything where fiberglass is currently used, feminine products, Linens, lamp oil, shoes, cars.....

Wait a minute. Cars? Seems so....... I found this on a Hemp companies website:

Henry Ford dreamed that someday automobiles would be grown from the soil. The Ford motor company, after years of research produced an automobile with a plastic body. Its tough body used a mixture of 70% cellulose fibres from Hemp. The plastic withstood blows 10 times as great as steel could without denting! Its weight was also 2/3 that of a regular car, producing better economy. Henry Ford was forced to use petroleum due to Hemp prohibition. His plans to fuel his fleet of automotive vehicles with plant-power also failed due to Alcohol prohibition.


Weird.

So, Mr. President, its time to talk about Industrial Hemp, "the other Cannibas plant". Duuuuude.
 

17 comments (Latest Comment: 03/30/2009 02:23:24 by trojanrabbit)
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