Hemp

But the hemp harvesting machines never went into mass-production. As researcher Shan Clark notes: the introduction of the first synthetic fiber - nylon, the patenting of the polluting sulfide paper-making process enabling pulp mills to use trees, the first successful use of machinery to separate hemp's long fibers from the cellulose hurd and the outlawing of hemp as "marijuana" all occurred simultaneously.

Forty years later, the Ford administration eliminated the threat to the powerful pharmaceutical transnationals by effectively outlawing further research into the medicinal properties of hemp.

The risk was real. By 1976, more than 60 therapeutic compounds had been developed from hemp - which for 3,000 years had been the most used medicine in the world. From 1842 to 1900 cannabis made up half of all medicine sold in the U.S.; in 1839, the Royal Academy of Science stated that the medicinal use of marijuana was as important to western medicine as "the discovery of antibiotics."

Hemp's healing powers are legendary. Poultices, THC and Cannabidohl extracts and other hemp preparations have been used to successfully treat asthma, glaucoma, many types of tumors, nausea, epilepsy, gonorrhea, herpes, rheumatism and anorexia - as well as high blood pressure, insomnia, migraines and stress - without the drastic side-effects of pharmaceuticals based on such dangerous and often addictive substances as mandrake, henbane and belladonna.

After reviewing extensive medical testimony, the U.S. Drug-busting department's own administrative law judge, Francis Young, concluded that "marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." (sic) If cannabis-derived medications were once again made legal, they could replace up to half of the synthetic drugs used in prescriptions.

Hemp also threatens the hegemony of the petro-chemical transnationals profiting heavily from a worldwide hydrocarbon economy. According to Herer, hemp is "50 times richer in biomass than any other plant used to replace petroleum-based fuels." Through a high-heat process known as pyrolsis, the much cleaner-burning hemp can be converted into charcoal, fuel oil, gas or liquid methanol with a 95.5% feed-to-fuel efficiency. Hemp seeds contain large quantities of oil which can be used as motor oil or burned in diesel engines.

Using hemp as a "halfway house" to help break our planet-ravaging petroleum dependency could also spark a return to large-scale hemp cultivation for food. The most natural compound closest to plasma, readily digested hemp seeds are also an important feed source for domestic and wild animals - especially millions of migratory birds on the decline worldwide as their feeding grounds are poisoned and paved over.

The seeds contain only trace amounts of mind-altering tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The bugaboo of hemp production, THC-free strains of hemp have been developed in Europe where France, Italy, Spain are once again growing hemp for pulp.

In terms of deforestation and mutagenic contamination. papermaking remains hemp's biggest single contribution to a commercial realignment which could overnight begin turning this planet away from ultimate catastrophe.

Until this century, 70 to 90 percent of all the world's paper came from hemp. Books, bibles, paper money, newspapers - all were made from hemp. One of North America's first pulp mills was started by Benjamin Franklin using hemp to make paper. Hemp paper and artist's canvas withstands heat, mildew and insects. While conventionally acid-bleached papers fall apart within 10-20 years, books printed on hemp paper have remained sound for centuries.

Hemp not only provides far superior paper, but is a much more efficient pulping plant than precious old growth trees chain-sawed to make paper bags and toilet paper. Hemp contains 77 percent cellulose, compared to trees' 44- percent. Because hemp contains very little lignin, no toxic bleaches necessary to make high-grade paper. The mustard gas-derived chlorine used to delignify wood chips release spectacular quantities of some of the deadliest, most persistent substances known into our air and waterways, altering the genetic structure and sabotaging the immune systems of wild and human lives for generations to come.

As early as 1916, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released special bulletin #404, which stated that hemp could replace trees for making paper at a 4 to 1 margin in favor of hemp. Harvesting 10,000 acres of hemp, the official record stated, could replace the fiber equivalent of 41,000 acres of trees.

It's at this point that outrage seems the only possible response to the hemp revelations. Outrage and determination to put hemp, kenaf and other papermaking vegetation into big time production as quickly as possible.

Had bulletin #404 been heeded, we could have saved most of the rivers, bays and ancient forests ravaged by timber-pulp consortiums. Just seven runs of the Sunday New York Times consumes 525,000 trees - "that's 25 million trees," Herer points out, "to print one year's editions of the Sunday NY Times!" An acre of hemp produces four times the pulp fiber of an acre of trees - and does so two or three times a year, while the fastest- growing pulp tree "crops" take 50 to 80 years to mature.

While family-run hemp farms are saving Canada's remaining forests, a process called Environcore can make up for the increasing shortfall in good timber by using hemp fibers to make construction paneling strong enough to replace plywood and drywall.

Hemp can also eliminate the plastics used in making many products, such as synthetic carpets and PVC pipe.

Awareness is power. It's also more than half the prelude to transformation. Fifty-four years after hemp was renamed "marijuana" and outlawed by what amounted to a corporate-instigated witch-hunt, Tracey Chester-Bennet observes that "60 percent of the world's rainforests are gone, and with them thousands of species of flora, fauna and every description of animal, from the tiniest insect to entire cultures of human beings." As this hemp proponent says, "We now rest at the crucial turning point if we are to save this planet."

It's obvious to more than prospective Earth stewards that extensive hemp cultivation is one obvious North American solution to a host of our worst environmental ills.
In 1991 the U.S. government instituted the death penalty for anyone caught growing more than 30,000 cannabis plants



So what do you think, ten years later?

Diego Maradona wrote: »

It'll take 10 years to read it all

Is that too long to get in your thanks whoring comment? Get a life.

Diego Maradona wrote: »

I'll dig up this thread in 2022 and let you know.

Sure go on, you've nothing better to do