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| Cannabis sativa. |
I came across an interesting act of activism yesterday, the CEO of a hemp soap company protesting the presidents stand on industrial hemp. The man decided to do a demonstration of harvesting the oils from probably the seeds of live hemp plants he had growing in a large metal cage. The catcher though, he was doing it in front of the white house in Washington D.C. It seems that recently the Obama administration has said that it does not consider industrial hemp any different from the schedule 1 drug marijuana.
This is a very saddening and misguided position to take, It seems that most people cannot distinguish between industrial hemp and marijuana. About two years ago I got called out for signing a petition to legalize industrial hemp. My mother came up to me asking why in the world I had signed a petition to legalize marijuana ( I did no such thing). I tried explaining to her that industrial hemp although being the same plant was a variety that contained very little delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol (THC) the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. Her reply"well you shouldn't be doing either one!" You cannot "do" industrial hemp, it cannot get you high no matter how much you smoke. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page for hemp, please read and educate yourself.
Cannabis sativa is one of man kinds oldest cultivated plants, it has been used for thousands of years for paper, textiles, food, and even medicine. Many people are heavily misguided when they talk about hemp, they claim it is a different species of cannabis,that Cannabis sativa is hemp and Cannabis indica is marijuana. This concept is only partially true. There is only one species of cannabis, C.sativa with three subspecies, C.sativa subs. sativa, C.sativa subs. indica, and C.sativa subs. ruderalis. All of which can freely interbreed with each other. For convenience people shorten it to C.sativa or C.indica, which leads to the confusion. All members of the cannabis species contain THC and a large number of other cannibinoids. There are several different varieties of the cannabis plant which in the drug community are referred to as strains. Most strains are a mix of sativa and indica and are bred to have high
THC content, as well as CBD, or cannibidiol, which can be said to be anti THC.
Industrial hemp is essentially just another strain usually pure C.sativa subsp. sativa. It has been bred to have an incredibly low THC content, presumably also lowering CBD content as well. The global standard for industrial hemp is .3 percent THC. Marijuana is usually between 5 and 20% THC. Most modern industrial nations produce hemp, The United States of America is one of the only modernized countries that does not.
Under federal law all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa are schedule 1 along with drugs such as LSD and Heroin.In recent years the FDA has changed its regulations to allow for hemp products to be sold on shelves. However it is still illegal to produce hemp here in america. We import much of the supplies from Canada and other nations where it is legal. Cannabis is an interesting legal glitch, the whole plant was criminalized, not just the active constituents. Actually the active constituents are scheduled separately but in the same schedule, so not only is the drug THC scheduled the plant itself is as well. This is not true for other organisms which produce drugs, I will use here as an example Psilocybin mushrooms, the mushrooms and all parts of them are not scheduled, you can legally have magic mushrooms on your person. You would however have to have a convincing argument that you did not intend to eat them. They are considered containers of the schedule 1 drug Psilocybin.
Hemp was once one the most important crops in America, early colonists were allowed to pay their taxes in hemp, hemp produced high quality ropes for sailing vessels and fabric for the sails. It was a strong and heavy duty material used in everyday life right up until the early 20th century. 1937 the marijuana tax act was passed effectively making cannabis and hemp illegal. It was still technically legal to grow but you had to purchase a stamp for your crop, and they did not issue stamps. Then world war two came and the government temporarily reversed its decision on hemp and released the propaganda film Hemp for victory. Farmers were actually asked by the U.S. Government actually asked farmers to produce tons of hemp for the war effort. After the war the farmers were no longer allowed to grow hemp.
The seeds from these hemp plants however spread from the farms, cannabis literally grows like a weed. And wild populations of cannabis sativa popped up in several states. There is currently a large amount of feral hemp (referred to as ditch weed) growing throughout the United States. Now bear in mind that this is the result of industrial hemp production in the 1940s the THC content in this "ditch weed" is incredibly low. You would get a headache from smoking the chlorophyll before even getting the slightest bit high. Even so, the vast majority of confiscated cannabis plants by the Drug Enforcement Agency is feral cannabis.
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| Industrial hemp. Image from wikipedia. |
What purpose does it serve to eradicate a plant that cannot even get you high? Why does the government refuse to accept its legitimacy. I have seen arguments that illegal marijuana growers could hide marijuana plants in the fields of hemp, but this is simply not the case. Hemp is grown in such a way that it is tall and lanky to increase stem length and fibre production, where as marijuana needs room and space to branch out to produce more flowers, it is the flowers or "buds" of the cannabis plant that people smoke to get high. The more buds your plant produces the more marijuana you will get, now in a hemp field you have no room for bud production and aside from that the pollen from the industrial hemp will decimate the marijuana, as soon as pollen hits the buds they begin forming seeds and the THC level drops significantly effectively ruining the marijuana. The best thing to do to stop illegal growers would be to allow industrial hemp, it would essentially force all outdoor growers inside. Where the signs of cultivation become harder to hide.
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| A flowering drug variety |
As you can see in the two photos I have provided above, an industrial hemp field looks quite different from a marijuana field, The hemp plants are spaced very close together where as the marijuana plants have a bit of distance between each other. This right here is enough evidence that you couldn't hide a marijuana plant in a hemp field if your life depended on it, it would stick out like a sore thumb. It would be similar to people trying to grow in corn fields, when they do this they usually get caught. It should be noted that no police agency in any country that has legalized industrial hemp has had any problems like that, so its unlikely to occur here.
In conclusion there is no real reason to keep industrial hemp illegal, If you disagree with me please do tell, I would love to hear your concerns. In the end the industrial hemp industry could bring us quite a few jobs, there is a clear market for hemp products, and currently it's ALL being imported. It would be advantageous for us to bring the supplies home and have domestic industrial hemp. You can produce everything from bread to plastic from hemp, you could even produce biodiesel fuel. The seed from the hemp plant contains almost all essential amino acids, it is an incredibly healthy food source. To equate a plant with this many legitimate benefits is insane and an indignity to one of humanities oldest cultivated plants.
