Needs to be more Evil
I strongly suspect that the potential textile and food uses are exagerated by people who just want to smoke dope. It's OK to argue that you should just have the right to smoke any dope you want, you don't have to start believing in conspiracy theories! The moral argument for freedom of choice and the pragmatic argument of the negative effects of prohibition are both stronger than anything about other industrial applications of hemp.
Point that somewhere else, or I'll reengage the harmonic tachyon modulator.
Besides, hemp =/= THC content. Only certain species in the hemp family will actually get you high. C. indica is the one you smoke, C. satvia is the one that's used for fiber.
edited 30th Jun '11 2:12:25 AM by DrunkGirlfriend
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
Happy New Year!
Also I've heard that hemp rope is softer than nylon and won't cause friction burn.
You wouldn't be able to confirm that would you Drunk Girlfriend? 
I Am The Walrus
Nothing's wrong with hemp. Big business doesn't want it stealing its business, therefore that's why there are these laws.
Sometimes money is the root of all evil.
More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/
Needs to be more Evil
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Conspiracy theory; hemp was just banned by sanctimonious busybodies "for the greater good", the same kind that is usually fussing about homosexuality, alcohol, hate speech, porn, video games, etc.
Sure, if you look hard enough you can find somebody who has a financial interest in the ban, but that doesn't mean it's the root cause.
Point that somewhere else, or I'll reengage the harmonic tachyon modulator.
I don't know as much about this issue, but unless hemp is substantially cheaper to grow and process would it really be that much of a threat to other textile businesses?
edited 30th Jun '11 2:32:39 AM by LoniJay
Be not afraid...
Needs to be more Evil
(And the usual response of textile business when a more efficient crop is found is to start using it, not waste money to try to get it banned.)
edited 30th Jun '11 2:39:15 AM by SlightlyEvilDoctor
Point that somewhere else, or I'll reengage the harmonic tachyon modulator.
Happy New Year!
@Loni Jay: It's not call weed for nothing
from The Other Wiki[1]
:
Chaotic Greedy
I remember a Megatokyo omake page about the uses for Hemp other than drugs. And The Rant below it that lamented that even was still regulated by drug enforcement instead of agriculture authorities.
@DG: Not true, either can be used for either. According to Wikpedia, satvia is actually stronger as a drug than indica, though both create the standard effects of marijuana when smoked.
@ Joeyjojo OK, so much for the 'easy to grow' - but what about process?
Be not afraid...
Happy New Year!
@Loni jay: Don't know, any agriculturally inclined here?
hashtagsarestupid
I feel it's worth pointing out that hemp is produced commercially throughout Europe and China, and in at least most of the countries covered (OK, at least in Britain) smoking pot is still illegal (more or less - not to the extent it is in the US, admittedly). There is at least supposed to be no contradiction here.
@Black Humor:
Yeah, you can totally get high off hemp.
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
Zzzzzzzzzz
DG and Black Humor are both kind of right. Hemp grown for fiber isn't very good smoking material, but it's not because of the species, it's because of when and where in the plant the THC levels are highest. For smoking, you want relatively young leaves or buds, and minimal stem growth. For fiber, you want heavy stems and that means mature plants that have been allowed to flower and have bigger, older, tougher leaves.
The reason that cotton producers don't simply switch to raising hemp is that the harvesting and processing for fiber is completely different, much more akin to what you have to do to flax to get linen than what you do to cotton.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
rrrrrrrrr
Our founding fathers grew hemp in their farms, and it was used in our paper money for a very long time. The fibers are extremely versatile, useful for everything from rope to paper to clothing. Hemp rope was particularly useful to fishermen and other seafarers, owing to its resistance to rot when submerged.
The oils are similarly useful for a wide variety of things, including various home-keeping products, seals, varnishes, and soaps.
If grown for the purposes of these things, they are (as stated before) not useful for smoking, owing to the need for a different growing and harvest method. This is a good thing, since frankly, we should only need that chemical for cancer and glaucoma treatments, or whatever other benefits come about. I'm highly doubtful that smoking the plant is the best way to use those chemicals, either.
Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.
Lord of Flapdoodle
Hemp is a great material, but its really another cover for wanting pot legalized. Kentucky farmers have been lobbying for the right to grow hemp for a while, but that's the one case I've seen where they aren't just trying to sneak weed past the fed. They need some crop to replace tobacco, and apparently they think growing hemp is similar enough that they wouldn't need to modify their equipment much. Or something.
Poor farmers.
the pronoun system in Cherokee is just better. Need Scion GM.
Given that Meth is far more dangerous than Marijuana, and the chemicals used to make it are far harder to control.
So even if Hemp is used for some marijuana, I'm not exactly worried.
Micromastophile
The famers should be allowed to grow whatever the marketplace will buy.
I don't care what people do with their own bodies and money either.
OMG NO NOSECONES
I agree that hemp has a lot of valid non-smoking uses, so tossing it into a burn pile or something due to one or two illicit uses seems... silly. People huff aerosol spray cans, but we don't ban those, as the valid use of the stuff far outweighs the drawbacks of a few idiots who want to kill some braincells.
So from the utility aspect, I have nother wrong with hemp, and I came to grips with the reality that it has valid medical use a long time ago. So really, the only problem I have, are the people who smoke it for recreation, not with the material itself.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Lord of Flapdoodle
I have a problem with medical marijuana, but that's a different issue.
the pronoun system in Cherokee is just better. Need Scion GM.
The Shadows Devour You.
Well this is sort of stupid. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
edited 30th Jun '11 11:19:48 AM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.
Wandering Student ಠ_ಠ
I've done several reports on hemp before, and I can tell you that the plant used for fiber has a chemical which keeps you from getting high, as well as a lower THC content.
Also, the reason why hemp was banned was because of lobbyists. Du Pont (which had just invented Nylon) and a major paper mill (which had just come into ownership of several square miles of forest) had lobbied congress to ban Marijuana, a term they made to incite fear and apprehension.
As for hemp as a foodstuff, it is full of protein and nutrients. And it has a unique thing I've not seen before: it can grow in radioactive areas and doesn't gain radioactivity. (On this point, I am not 100% sure. I know it "eats" radioactivity, though.)
Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry
Happy New Year!
@cancerlad: What's your problem with medical marijuana?
edited 30th Jun '11 3:21:32 PM by joeyjojo
hashtagsarestupid
This article was publish by the appropriately named GreenLeft[1]
. I found convincing. What is your opinion, dear internet?
Egypt had a long history of using Cannabis as a drug. As a Muslim country, it also had a long history of attempting to prohibit its use. And Egypt in the 1920s, like the United States, was a great producer of cotton, a rival textile to hemp.
In the United States, the prohibition of Cannabis (dubbed "marijuana") occurred in 1937, following a long campaign by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. It came in as the prohibition on alcohol was lifted.
Alcohol was, of course, the whites' preferred drug. Marijuana, as Hearst reiterated in his many papers, made blacks disrespectful and violent towards whites, and gave black males "ideas" about white women. He enlisted the support of racist white organisations in his campaign. And his friend Harry Anslinger, the director of the Bureau of Narcotics, did not lose his job when alcohol was legalised: there was this convenient new prohibition to enforce.
Some of the other characteristics of this plant may also provide clues to the motives that condemned Cannabis.
In its Latin name, sativa may be translated as "satisfying". And indeed it did satisfy a wide range of human needs in much of Eurasia (it probably was native to India, southern Siberia, southern Russia and China) for aeons, before making its way via trade routes to Africa and Europe. It was part of the great common of useful and easy to grow food plants of the old world.
It has long, tough fibres in the stems — this makes it an ideal source of textile material.
It also contains a number of alkaloids that have powerful pharmaceutical properties.
These two characteristics are found both in true Cannabis, and in the native American equivalent, Apocynum cannabinum (meaning Cannabis-like Apocynum). The common names of these plants are, respectively, Indian hemp and American hemp. American hemp has never been prohibited. On the other hand, it does not ever seem to have been cultivated and may well be less easy to grow than Cannabis sativa.
From these two characteristics came practical uses: it is estimated that, as a source of textile fibre, Cannabis was used for at least 10,000 years. It is as old as pottery, older than metal-working. String, rope, sacking — all were of hemp, or hemp mixed with other fibres.
To get the best and longest fibres, the plants are grown close together. Cannabis sativa can reach 4-5 metres in height. When full-grown, the stalks are cut and water-rotted, then beaten to release the fibres. These stalks contain only small traces of the alkaloids.
The cultivation of hemp as a source of fibre spread across Asia, Africa and Europe. Italy was a major source of hemp imported to England, for example, for use in clothes, tents, sails, linen, drapes, quilts, sheets and towels. It was not until the invention of the "cotton gin" (meaning cotton engine) in the 1820s that cotton became as economical as hemp for textile fibre.
Not as old as its use in textiles is the use of Cannabis for paper, but the Chinese have made paper from hemp fibre for 2000 years. Until 1883, most European paper was made from recycled hemp fibre — rags and worn-out sails. At the time of Cannabis prohibition, paper manufacturers had invested heavily in processes and machinery for converting wood to paper cheaply. Also in the 1930s, machinery for processing hemp was developed which would have made raw hemp fibre an even cheaper source of paper pulp than wood. Surely there is, in this paper connection, the long shadow of William Randolph Hearst?
The seeds of Cannabis sativa, like the stalks, contain no significant quantities of alkaloids. Before 1800, hempseed oil was the most common lighting oil in the world. It was also used for cooking and later for engine lubrication. Paint and varnish used always to contain either hempseed or linseed oil. In 1935, the United States used 58,000 tons of hempseed oil. After hemp prohibition, Du Pont petrochemicals inherited this market.
As a source of food, hemp is coarse but highly nutritious. The pressed seeds make a high-protein cake for animals or humans. The seeds can be sprouted and eaten, or ground into flour.
As a source of combustible fuel, Cannabis sativa is the fastest-growing source of biomass on the planet. It releases no sulphur or lead when burned, and grows better with more ultraviolet radiation.
It is only the leaves, flowering tops and exuded gum on the hairs of these that contain significant amounts of the alkaloids for which prohibition was imposed. To encourage the production of these, the plants are spaced widely and encouraged to branch.
The medicinal and mood-altering properties of the plant have also been known since ancient times. Its many names include "Cementer of Friendships", "Leaf of Delusion", "Increaser of Pleasure", "Poor Man's Heaven". For these effects, the leaves were smoked or infused as "tea"; the sticky gum from the flowering tops was combined with honey or baked into cakes and eaten.
The drug was used to treat a wide range of physical and psychological disorders, by the Chinese, the Indians and the ancient Greeks. It was noted from earliest times that the drug heightened or intensified mood: thus it was effective in inciting fanatics to murder (our word "assassin" is derived from the word "hashish"), as well as in augmenting calm.
The drug was not much used in northern Europe, perhaps because the leaves quickly lose their potency with storage, until the return of Napoleon's armies from Egypt and the establishment of the British in India. Eminent French and British doctors reported on its effectiveness in relieving pain without the undesirable side effects of alcohol or opiates. It became, after alcohol and opium, the most common ingredient in patent medicines in 19th century Western Europe.
Surely, the makers of alcoholic beverages and the producers of tobacco and cigarettes would not have been displeased to have easily grown and cheaply available competition eliminated by this ban. The nascent pharmaceutical industry, whose new drugs like aspirin were being heavily promoted, would also have stood to profit by the change.
So it may be that the health and moral grounds on which, ostensibly, the cultivation of Cannabis sativa was prohibited are firmly underpinned by the profit motive of a number of commercial interest groups. It is dubious that the prohibition has been in any way beneficial to anybody except these interest groups and criminal profiteers. It is likely that its prohibition has deprived many of the world's poor of a useful subsistence crop.
edited 30th Jun '11 1:46:09 AM by joeyjojo
hashtagsarestupid