Hemp 2 Essay, Research Paper

Hemp is our Savior

It has been once said that as a human race, if our current rate of deforestation of trees continues at the same rate as today, in less than fifty years we will no longer be able to survive on this planet. Sometime in the near future, a great change must be made for the fate of human kind. This change is going to have to be to legalize industrial hemp. Hemp is a plant that has a wide variety of uses. It has been proven that the stalk of the hemp plant can produce three times as much paper that trees can produce(1). Many countries have already begun to start cultivating hemp but it still remains illegal to grow industrial hemp in the United States.

The reason that hemp became illegal is because the marijuana tax act illegalized marijuana in 1937, and because industrial hemp is marijuana s cousin, the two became to be thought as the same thing and hemp became illegal. But these two different plants are far from the same. Industrial hemp contains such a low level of THC, which is the psychoactive substance in marijuana, that it cannot reasonably be considered a drug(3). No matter how much hemp you try to smoke, it is absolutely impossible to get high off of it.

The government opposes legalizing hemp because they believe that it would send the wrong message to the public, and they think that this may lead to legalizing marijuana. But the government s main reason for their opposition to legalize hemp is because they are afraid that marijuana plants could be hidden in the middle of hemp fields making aerial surveillance impossible to spot out the marijuana(2). This is a poor argument however, for it is impossible to grow marijuana next to or amongst hemp, because the cross-breading of the two plants lowers the THC potency and destroys both of the plants. Even if you could grow marijuana in the middle of hemp fields, it can easily be distinguished, for hemp is tall, skinny, and leafy and can grow up to fifteen feet in height. Marijuana is short and bushy and could never reach such heights. Meanwhile, the U.S government continues to spend money uprooting hemp. According to DEA figures, 98 percent of the 7.3 million dollars spent on marijuana eradication programs went to kill ditchweed, a type of industrial hemp that grows wild and has been defended as vital to the diets of migratory birds in states including Minnesota and Wisconsin(4).

Today there is only one million acres of forest left in the U.S. Only four hundred years ago there was as much as eight hundred million acres. That is a tremendous decrease. If these rates stay the same, we ve only got another fifty years to live, and that is not good seeing that over the next twenty years the world demand for paper products will double(2).

But besides saving the world, hemp has many other benefits. The paper that it does produce is stronger and is able to be recycled more times than paper from trees, and fewer chemicals are needed to turn hemp into paper. Hemp can also be used to make clothing material. It takes color and absorbs moisture better than cotton, and it is more durable than cotton. Cotton can only grow in warm climates while hemp is capable of growing in a variety of different environments(1). About thirty percent of pesticides that are sprayed in the United States are sprayed on cotton, while hemp on the other hand can be grown with little or no use of pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides because it has natural resistances(1).

Hemp not only has the potential to substitute trees for paper, but also wood, for hemp can be pressed into boards for building materials. It can also be used to produce furniture, carpets, food oil, and a range of plastic products. It may also work as a substitute for petroleum diesel meaning that it could be used as fuel for diesel engines(3).

Even though hemp is currently illegal to grow in the U.S, it is not illegal to own hemp products. All hemp products sold in the United States are expensive because they have to be imported from countries where hemp is legal such as Canada which currently legalized hemp cultivation in late winter of 98. Five years ago along the southwestern belt of Ontario s struggling Tobacco farms a man named Kime teamed up with Joe Strobel to revive a substantial, job creating crop that could be grown without pesticides, and that is how they sold the idea to the government(4). With that manifesto the two men formed the company Hempline and set out to change the government s mind. They were successful and by last summer the contracted farmers planted 512 acres of hemp. Canada is currently the twenty fifth country to legalize and cultivate hemp, and America s time is coming closer every day(4).

Clearly, Hemp fares well against the forces of nature, but how will it prevail against the Global market force if it becomes legal. If the initial demand for hemp is high and the price looks good, farmers will need to avoid going overboard and overplanting, it s happened before. Now, more than ever, agriculture is a global business, and the parts of the world that never stopped growing hemp are certain to want to infiltrate our domestic market(4).

Upscale automobile manufacturer BMW is incorporating hemp into car doors and dashboards, designer Giorgio Armani is weaving hemp into clothes, and chefs at five star restaurants are sprinkling it on salads. Less than a year after commercial cultivation of the plant became legal again, there are retail products of every description produced from hemp s fiber and oil producing seed crops. At the time hemp farming was banned, there were a reported 25,000 uses of hemp(4). Today, Ontario s Hempline lists such diverse uses as: insulation, particle board, medium density fiberboard, rope, twine, yarn, methanol, heating oil, salad oils, pharmaceuticals, soaps, cellophane, phenol, diapers, newsprint, cardboard, filters, non-woven and absorbent paper, carpets, curtains, upholstery, and paint and ink(4).

Our average American farmer can buy a shirt or shoes made of hemp, but if he tries to grow it, he will be arrested. This is one of the many ridiculous, hypocritical contradictions that our American society, the land of the free, is built upon. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both hemp farmers. Hemp fibers were used to make shrouds, ropes, and sails for our nation s navy, and the paper that our founding fathers used to write this nation s constitution contains hemp. If we care to breath air, and prevail as a human race than we will preserve this earth s natural resources, by legalizing and cultivating industrial hemp.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.Andrews, David. Grown in the U.S.A? Mother Earth News July,97 n162p56(5)

2.Editorial, Legalize Hemp, Multinational Monitor, April,98 v19n4p5

3.Elvin, John. Green Mountain state says go smoke a rope. Insight on the News.June,3 96

4.Jenkins, Phil. Field of Opportunity, Canadian Geographic, March99 v119 i2 p58