H E M PREAL TIMES August 22, 2010

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Volume 001 Edition 420

An American Commdity

Hemp continued on page 2

By: Richard S. Lilly

In the early 21st century United States, hemp should be reinstituted as an agricultural crop because, hemp produces more pulp per acre than timber on a sustainable basis, provides food, medicine, and clothing, and hemp could help to stabi-lize the nation’s economy as a major source of in-come, and with the pro-duction of biomass fuels also break our dependence on the oil that we current-ly import from the Middle East.

Cannabis Sativa L (hemp) should be rein-stituted as an agricultural crop in America for the most obvious reasons. With the activists who are continuously scream-ing about the environment and the alleged mishan-dling of the natural re-sources that we are cur-rently dependent on, they should look to the plant kingdom in search of the solution. According to the Hemp Industries Associa-tion, hemp produces more pulp per acre than timber on a sustainable basis, can be used for every quality of paper, and practical, in-expensive fire-resistant construction material, with excellent thermal and sound insulating qualities. In addition, hemp is envi-ronmentally safe creating a reduction in wastewater contamination because it needs dramatically less acids for pulping and harsh chlorine compounds for bleaching than cotton or virgin timber due to its natural creamy color. During the growing season, hemp requires little or no treatment at all with the toxic pesticides and herbicides that cotton, corn or wheat re-quire in massive amounts. In addition, hemp can replace all of the crude oil we currently use to create the plastics needed in everyday products, from the water bottles that are being thrown into our landfills to the case that encloses the laptop on which this paper is being created. In addition, there has been an increasingly growing interest in the United States and other nations throughout the world in the market for clothing and tex-tiles made of hemp. Yet the Federal government, or more specifically the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), continue to demonize Cannabis sativa L claiming that “As far as our laws are concerned, hemp,

marijuana, whatever you want to call it, it’s the same plant. An illegal drug under a different name is still an illegal drug.” This statement ac-cording to Tim McCormick, head of the Minneapolis DEA office is the main talking point of the DEA and the federal government where hemp is concerned.

For centuries, man has cultivated and pro-cessed hemp for use in a variety of products from the most basic needs of clothing, food, and medi-cines to the high technol-ogy of automobiles. Hemp was widely grown in the United States from the co-lonial period into the mid-1800s at which time it was being used in a variety of fabrics, twine and paper. Going back to the begin-nings of the United States we find that our founding fathers, George Washing-ton and Thomas Jefferson in particular, grew hemp, with Jefferson even going so far as to smuggle hemp seeds from China to France and into America. We can also note that Benjamin Franklin not only owned one of the first paper mills in America, it was also used to process hemp. This remained true into the early 20th century United States. According to a 1901 report by Lyster H. Dewey, As-sistant Botanist, Bureau of Plant Industry for the Unit-ed States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “the average annual consump-

tion of hemp fiber in the United States is (was) about 18,000,000 pounds, of which only about 8,500,000 pounds are (were) raised in this country, the remainder being imported”. Then with the introduction of the decor-ticator in 1937, a machine that could strip the fiber from nearly any plant, leaving the pulp behind, the February 1938 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine proclaimed that hemp was going to be the “New Billion Dollar Crop!” This amazing proclamation also came at a time when hemp was known to “produce some 25,000 different products, ranging from dyna-mite to cellophane.” In addition, Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Com-pany designed and built an automobile from hemp that used hemp fuel for power. We can also note with these facts, according to Doug Yurchey, 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc., were made from hemp until the 1820s, with the introduction of the cotton gin.

Special Edition

The United States has come of age and so has our population. With the average citizen living to an age of ninety, and the need for new medications continuing to grow in demand, the United States government, for the past eighty years, has created laws and “drug enforcement” agencies at the taxpayers’ expense, to criminalize and eradicate a plant that may very well be the miracle cure for any number of diseases. In the late 1930s, William Randolph Hearst and Harry J. Anslinger began a campaign against hemp founded on the evils of “marijuana”. Spread-ing propaganda horror stories filled with crazed “Negros” raping white women while “high” on “marijuana” and claims of there being “100,000 marijuana smokers in the United States and most are Negros, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertain-ers”, eventually led to the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 that ultimately destroyed hemp cultivation in the United States. While certain strains of Cannabis Sativa L do contain the psychoactive chemical THC, industrial hemp is high in anoth-er cannabinoid, CBD, which counteracts THC’s psychoactivity, a sort of “anti-marijuana” if you will. And to say that “certain” ethnic groups are the only ones that use hemp (marijuana) is com-pletely false and a totally racist view point that does not take into account the true uses of hemp and the abil-ity that it has to re-plenish not only the soil in which it is cultivated, but the earth as a whole. When the United States of America entered World War II, the cultivation of hemp was once again brought to the forefront of Ameri-can agriculture. Producing a ten minute movie, the federal government called on the farm-ers of our nation to produce “Hemp for Victory!” in order to properly outfit our troops and then supply them with the means to fight, and win, the battle. Then, with hemp research beginning anew in the 1960s, the federal government once again became involved for the next ten years. At this time, the idea that hemp made the general public go mad upon con-sumption was trumped and the myth of “zom-biefied pacification” was born. This should serve as an indicator to the average reader that the sup-pression of this plant does not come because of any imaginary dangers it may pose. With billions of dollars in profits on the line, the crusade of Hearst, DuPont and Anslinger has continued on to this day, only changing the mantra as they see fit.

Hemp has been used for medicinal pur-poses dating as far back as “2300 B.C.E., when the legendary Chinese emperor Shen Nung pre-scribed chu-ma (female hemp) for the treatment of constipation, gout, beri-beri, malaria, rheuma-tism, and menstrual cramps.” In addition, hemp

foods contain 35% carbohydrates, 31% fat, 35% fiber, calcium, m a g n e s i u m , phosphorus, po-tassium, and vi-tamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, C, D, and in partic-ular vitamin E, and only 8% sat-urated fat or less. If hemp were legal, it would immediately re-place 10-20% of all pharmaceuti-cal prescription medicines (based on research through 1976). In addition, there are no known side effects from using hemp as a medication, and to date there has never been any case of a person overdosing, intentionally or unintentionally, while on hemp medications.

As America’s national debt grows at an exponential rate, Hemp could help to stabilize

the nation’s econo-my as a major source of income, and with the production of biomass fuels break our dependence on the imports of fos-sil fuels from the Middle East. Retired General Barry Mc-Caffrey of the White House of National Drug Control Policy and former “Drug Czar” under Presi-dent Bill Clinton has said that one of the reasons that he con-tinues to support the criminalization of hemp cultivation is because hemp is not an economical crop. At the peak of hemp production in the United States (World War II) growers of hemp, “producing an “average” crop

netted $80 to $100 an acre as opposed to $30 an acre for corn, $20 an acre for wheat, $17 an acre for oats, etc…” The logic behind the federal gov-ernment’s argument has never really been truth-ful making the government of the United States the only government in history to ban the culti-vation and production of a plant because it was not profitable. History has also shown, through-out the world that farmers go broke or file bank-ruptcy while growing corn, cotton, flax, wheat, and even potatoes every year. Does this mean the federal government should ban and/or criminal-ize the crops mentioned above because farmers go broke? The market for hemp is growing rap-idly and according to Richard L. Miller in his 1991 report to the Agriculture Task Force Mis-souri House of Representatives, Hemp Crop for Missouri Framers, “hemp yields on an average twice as much textile fiber per acre as fiber flax and three times as much fiber per acre as cotton. It is one of the heaviest fiber-yielding crops adapt-

Hemp from page 1: REAL TIMESed to production in the United States.” In addi-

tion, Lynn Osburn cites in the article “Energy Farming in America”, origi-nally published in the April 1990 High Times maga-zine, that “About six percent of con-tiguous United States land area put into cultivation for biomass could supply all current demands for oil and gas.” The re-

institution of hemp would almost immediately create thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in our ailing economy. From the farmlands across the nation to the retail stores in our in-ner cities, businesses in the private sector would once again be able to revive our dying economy, employee our fellow citizens who are currently struggling to make ends meet week to week and put the United States of America back where it belongs on the world economic stage, at the top.

While the suppression of hemp by the federal government has been vigorous over the past eight decades, the plant is making its pres-ence known again along with all of the positive aspects it brings to society and the world at large. In addition, with a long and detailed history of man’s relationship with hemp it would only make sense to decriminalize the plant and allow the American farmer to cultivate and produce the thousands of products that will be used by the citizens of the United States of America. This one plant alone can help in our nation’s time of need as well as protect and save our environment from the toxic and destructive chemicals we are now using; therefore, hemp should become the commodity that it is meant to be, an American Commodity.

References available upon request

Contact Richard at:

rlilly@email.itt-tech.edu

for more information

About the editor/author:

Richard S. Lilly was born and raised in the Great Republic of Texas. A former Marine and father of three he now resides in San Diego, CA and attends school at ITT Technical Institute in the Visual Communications program. A.S. expected 2012Online Portfolio:http://www.issuu.com/richardlilly