“The easiest way to consider the implication of hemp and agriculture on our society is to remember, anything produced from hydro-carbon (fossil fuels) can also be produced from carbo-hydrate (plant matter).”
– Practical Guide to Hemp, HempLobby.org
“With focused and sustained research and development, hemp could spur dramatic change. Renewable, fast-growing hemp could allow major industries to reduce their dependence on nonrenewable, fast-disappearing resources and move toward sustainable production.”
– HempIndustries.org
“We are growing, processing and supplying hemp fiber on an increasing basis to replace glass fiber for composites in the automotive sector.”
– Geof Kime, Hempline, Delaware, Ontario, Canada; North American Industrial Hemp Council Director who runs a Canadian hemp fiber separation facility that in 1994 brought in the first crop of industrial hemp in North America since the 1950s after being instrumental in persuading the Canadian government to change its policy; quoted in pamphlet Industrial Hemp, by the NAIHC; NAIHC.org
“The largest maker of industrial carpet in the world is focused on producing carpet that is biodegradable and results in full life cycle sustainability. Research proves that carpet made from industrial hemp is both biodegradable and recyclable.”
– Dr. Raymond A. Berard, Senior VP of Technology, Interface Research Corporation, Kennesaw, Georgia. North American Industrial Hemp Council, NAIHC.org
“Our bill is about letting California farmers grow a crop that’s legal worldwide. We can import hemp, we can process it into shampoo, plastics, and food, but we won’t let our farmers grow it. AB 1147 is a common sense measure that regulates the industrial farming of hemp to conform with federal law while relieving law enforcement of the burden of having to discern legal hemp from illegal marijuana grown in clandestine groves.”
– California’s Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, co-author of the same bill, June 2006. It was later vetoed on September 30, 2006 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (See Appendix 3). It was reintroduced in 2007.
“Once this bill is enacted, it will create a more efficient market, leading to better prices for the consumer, and provide an opportunity to expand the market for the nutritious hemp seed.”
– Hopeful words of David Bronner, head of Dr. Bronner’s Soaps, a natural, biodegradable, hemp-based soap company that imports over $125,000 per year to import hemp seed oil from Canada; commenting on AB 1147; 2006
“Many people mistakenly think hemp is no longer an economically viable crop. As you now know, hemp remains the most versatile and profitable crop on Earth. The legal penalties on using hemp now are just a pretext to confuse people and protect oil and timber companies from fair competition. This hurts America both financially and environmentally. Please help to correct this injustice.”
– From the 1980s-era flyer, Hemp: Friend to People and Ecology, distributed by the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp
“Despite the hurdles in its way the hemp industry is coming together in this country. It’s small but it’s growing. Here in Bluegrass Country, the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative and the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Association are working to develop it. The hemp movement is exciting; there are untold opportunities just waiting to be tapped. Just think: Paper-free forests and over 20,000 different products to complement them! Hemp can help promote rural economic development by bringing agriculture and industry together, creating jobs and saving family farms. Currently, however, our government won’t even allow us to grow research [hemp] crops, so keep an eye on Canada. Canadian farmers harvested their first commercial crop in 1998 and the results are promising. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? Go Canada!”
– Kentucky Hemp Museum, KentuckyHemp.com
“It is time to clear up the misunderstanding, change the law, and clear the way for ecologically sustainable, economically viable opportunities for American farmers and businesses.”
– HempIndustries.org
“Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest natural fibers in the plant kingdom. It is also one of the most versatile plants, with approximately 25,000 uses – ranging from paper to textiles to cosmetics.
According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, in 1999, hemp yields averaged 800 pounds (17 to 22 bushels of grain), grossing $308 to $410 per acre. These figures compare favorably to the $103 to $137 gross made on canola and wheat crops per acre.
… Industrial hemp is not a drug. The DEA’s intrusion into the realm of agriculture is preventing American farmers from growing a crop that has the potential to help address the global depletion of forest resources, the harmful effects of petrochemicals, the excessive use of pesticides for fiber crops, and the economic depression of farming communities.
… Concerned citizens should let their House members or Congress know their feelings about this wonder crop.”
– Ralph Nader, The DEA should get out of regulating hemp agriculture; San Francisco Bay Guardian editorial, April 3, 2000
“Hemp is an agricultural crop presently being grown in Canada, England, France, Germany and China to name only a few hemp-producing countries. If hemp is really a drug, why aren’t these countries being denounced as enemies in our war against marijuana? Why is hemp listed as a legitimate commodity in both the NAFTA and GATT agreements?”
– Kentucky Hemp Museum, KentuckyHemp.com
“The fibers from hemp fall into three categories:
• Bast (or ‘long’) fibers which stretch the length of the stalk and are used for cordage, textiles, building materials, as a forest product extender (involving paper recycling).
• Hurd is the woody core in the center of the stalk which is cellulose-laden, thus ideal for paper, plastics, animal bedding.
• Tow (or ‘short’) fibers come from the interior of the plant used in nonwoven materials (felts), paper, home and industrial insulation, building materials, etc.”
– Practical Guide to Hemp, HempLobby.org
It has been only a few hundred years since the world was a pristine wreath of Nature where all who lived on it relied on its abundance, and not on toxic chemicals. Some may argue that the world wasn’t that pristine since humans had developed large cities. But at least the humans were using biodegradable and environmentally safe materials, and not toxic chemicals developed from fossil fuels, or developing massive amounts of nuclear weaponry and other nuclear uses that produce radioactive waste.
Massive land “development” in the form of the construction of suburbs, highways, and new cities has covered millions of acres of land with homes, buildings, parking lots, roads, and sidewalks. Dam building, coal mining, oil drilling, and the construction of power plants have taken place just to feed the fossil fuel-based lifestyles, turning humans away from their connection to Nature and making them increasingly dependent on multinational corporations to supply their food, shelter, clothing, and entertainment.
“Back in 1935, approximately 58,000 tons of hemp seed was used just to make nontoxic paint and varnish. When hemp was banned, these safe paints were replaced with toxic petro-chemical versions.”
– Hemp: A True Gift from God(ess), by Dr. Heather Anne Harder, SeattleHempFest.com/Facts; 2006
The reliance on petroleum has created a toxic, synthetic society. We are now seeing the destruction, death, and long-lasting poisons resulting from over 100 years of a still increasing global dependence on fossil fuels.
Allowing for industrial hemp farming can help us unplug from petroleum and coal, live more in tune with Nature, and help to reverse some of the damage we have done to Earth.
Because the major greenhouse gas that is created by burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide, stays in the atmosphere for several decades, and because hemp absorbs so much of the greenhouse gasses while emitting oxygen, planting hundreds of thousands of acres of hemp around the world will take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and help to slow and reverse global warming. The products made from all that hemp can save trees by providing pulp for paper, and provide food, clothing, building materials, clean burning fuels, and a safer environment. Because we would rely less on trees in a hemp society, the forests could regenerate, which would absorb more pollution, put forth oxygen, improve air and water quality, and provide homes for wildlife.
“I used to be skeptical about hemp until I read about this and realized that this was the way of the future.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Times have turned away from tobacco. We’re losing farmers just like we lost soldiers in WWII.
Farmers are the lifeblood of this state.
We can’t live in the past; we must look to the future. Kentucky needs to be in the forefront.
Industrial hemp is not legalized marijuana. There is a very definite distinction between the two. And if the state police and Kentucky law enforcement are not able to determine the difference, then I think they can be adequately educated – they’re basically intelligent people.”
– Former Kentucky Governor Louie Nunn, speaking at the first Southern Kentucky Hemp Expo, April 2000. Nunn, a Republican who is also an attorney, represented actor Woody Harrelson in court when Harrelson was tried for illegally planting four hemp seeds in an attempt to bring hemp farming out of the Dark Ages. The jury agreed that Harrelson didn’t break the law.
“I had the opportunity to talk to some of the jurors afterward, and, regardless of what the Supreme Court says and regardless of what the legislators say, those people don’t think it’s right that someone should go to jail for growing industrial hemp.
To me, they’re sending out a very strong message.”
– Woody Harrelson, after his acquittal for planting four hemp seeds; August 2000
“We don’t think we can turn our backs on the family farm and we ought to look at anything that can give relief to the family farmer. And this is one.”
– Former Kentucky Governor Edward “Ned” Breathitt; March 2000
“Major markets have opened up for hemp fiber in the US. We are importing Canadian and European hemp, since it is illegal to grow hemp here in the U.S.”
– Hugh S. McKee, president, Flaxcraft, Inc., Cresskill, New Jersey, North American Industrial Hemp Council Director; HAIHC.org; 2006
“Hemp farming in Canada is well regulated by Health Canada ensuring that only legitimate farmers are licensed and that they only grow government approved low-THC hemp. Requirements include applicant background checks, GPS coordinates of hemp fields, the use of varieties of approved low-THC certified hemp seed purchased from licensed seed vendors, and random inspections and testing. This licensing scheme ensures that farmers are only growing nondrug industrial hemp and not marijuana. Even though law enforcement is able to distinguish the difference between hemp and marijuana, the licensing process eliminates the need for them to visually distinguish between industrial hemp and its drug psychoactive cousin.”
– Vote Hemp press release, Vote Hemp Exposes White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and Drug Administration Lies, February 8, 2007
“Why not give back to American agriculture an old crop for which new technologies are creating a large market so that our farmers can take a step towards profitability and sustainability?”
– A. Bud Sholts, chairman, North American Industrial Hemp Council, NAIHC.org
“The U.S. needs to become more sustainable in terms of fibers, fuels, and energy. A strong and viable agriculture is important to the national security. Current trade deficits and near depression conditions in agriculture are not a good recipe for long-term national economic security.
… The widespread use of industrial hemp could result in numerous environmental benefits, including but not limited to:
1) Less reliance on fossil fuels
2) More efficient use of energy
3) Less long-term atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide
4) Soil redemption
5) Forest conservation
6) Agricultural pesticide use reduction
7) Dioxin and other pollution reduction
8) Landfill use reduction
Hemp is superior to many other plants for a variety of uses.”
– North American Industrial Hemp Council,
NAIHC.org; 2006
“We can no longer afford to allow the hemp production to remain a matter of ignorance versus politics. This insane prohibition against one of the world’s most valuable plants must stop.”
– Hemp: A True Gift from God(ess), by Dr. Heather Anne Harder, SeattleHempFest.com/Facts; 2006
Today America could greatly benefit by once again growing hemp and using it for a variety of products.
Millions of trees and varieties of wildlife around the world could be saved if people would rely more on paper made from hemp. With modern machinery it is less expensive to make paper from hemp pulp than from tree pulp.
The harsh sulfuric acids and other chemicals used in the manufacture of tree pulp paper are not needed to process hemp pulp into paper. Tree pulp paper factories are major sources of water pollution that poison drinking water and are toxic to marine life.
Hemp provides more pulp per acre than many types of trees. Wood chips are 30 percent cellulose. Hemp is 70 percent cellulose and is better suited as a paper ingredient. Hemp was once the main source of material for paper in America. When slavery ended, the labor-intensive hemp processing became too expensive with the antiquated machinery, and hemp farming became less popular.
As mentioned elsewhere, hemp had become less and less popular as a material for fabric after the 1793 invention of the Eli Whitney cotton gin, which greatly sped up the processing of cotton, and made the south the king of cotton production, and the slave owners wealthy. While the hemp fabric and textile industry continued in the U.S. into the 1900s, the industry was killed by the U.S. government in the late 1930s. Today we do have technology that processes great quantities of hemp, but the technology is only being used in other countries, where industrial farming is legal, and not in the U.S.
“Cotton is the dominant natural fiber used in textiles worldwide today. It accounts for about 40 percent of textile production, while synthetic fibers (primarily polyester) account for approximately 55 percent of textile production. One study of hemp for the U.S. market suggests that, ‘an area of land only 25 miles square (the size of a typical U.S. county) is sufficient to produce enough hemp fiber in one year to manufacture 100 million pair of denim jeans, thus providing an equivalent yield to an area ten times the size planted in cotton, and offering the additional benefit of producing clothing which is 10 times stronger than cotton and that, in contrast to cotton which requires exceptionally high applications of pesticides and enormous quantities of water, requires no pesticides and only minimal quantities of water as well.’ In fact, cotton inputs and yields show very large variation throughout the world as well as within the cotton-producing areas of the United States. Based on the best available estimates for domestic cotton and hemp production, the degree of industrial hemp efficiency over cotton appears to be somewhat exaggerated in popular references on the topic, in part due to incomplete life-cycle analyses of each fiber.
The United States grows an average of 14 million acres of cotton each year, with lint (fiber) yield for the past 10 years averaging a little more than 700 pounds per acre. (Cotton fiber, derived from the flower of the plant rather than the stalk as in hemp, is a little more than one-third of the raw cotton yield, after the seed is removed.) By comparison, industrial hemp fiber production for high quality paper markets in France yields a dry-stem average of 3.1 tons per acre, of which 34 to 39 percent (an average of 2300 pounds per acre) is long fiber suitable for cotton-type textiles. Industrial hemp-fiber yield appears to be roughly three times per acre that of domestic cotton—not 10 times—although, cotton crops take twice as long to mature (180 days instead of 90).”
– March 2008 Reason Foundation Study on Hemp, Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition. Policy Study 367, by Skaidra Smith-Heisters
The government’s ban on hemp and combining it with a ban on marijuana is absurd and deprives us of a useful medicine as well as a plant that can be instrumental in healing both the environment and financial crisis. There are many individuals working for the government who are well aware of this.
Because U.S. drug policy affects other countries, the U.S. laws banning hemp have resulted in massive worldwide environmental damage. The example that many people have cited is that if the oil spills in the oceans consisted of hemp fuel (or other seed fuels) and not of petroleum, the environmental damage would be minimal. As the Organic Consumers Organization explains it, “Hemp fuel is biodegradable; so oil spills become fertilizer, not eco-catastrophes.” Cannabis carbohydrates can be used to make the same products made from petroleum hydrocarbons, but without the environmental damage.
“It is unfortunate that the federal government has stood in the way of American farmers, including many who are struggling to make ends meet, competing in the global industrial hemp market. Indeed the founders of our nation, some of whom grew hemp, surely would find that federal restrictions on farmers growing a safe and profitable crop on their own land are inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of a limited, restrained federal government.”
– Dr. Ron Paul, House of Representatives (R-Texas), when introducing a bill (Industrial Hemp Farming Act: HR3037) to legalize hemp farming in the U.S., June 23, 2005
The 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was amended by the 1972 Protocol Amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, to allow an exemption for hemp farming. Article 28 of that amendment states, “This convention shall not apply to the cultivation of the cannabis plant exclusively for industrial purposes (fibre and seed) or horticulture purposes.” Thus, changing U.S. law to allow hemp farming would not be in conflict with international law as established by the Single Convention, of which the U.S. is a signatory.
“Perhaps someday Americans will realize what they are missing out on by allowing a few antidrug zealots in the government (along with the lobbying of threatened companies) to continue to ban this remarkable crop, with its enormous potential to produce high-quality products at a low environmental cost. Meanwhile, Canadian farmers are going to cash in on this potential.”
– Don Lotter, Ph.D., in Transcontinental Farm Tour: Crossing Canada with Don Lotter: Hemp Heaven… and hell: A story in two parts, The New Farm, newfarm.org/international/canada_don/manitoba/index.shtml; 2007, The Rodale Institute, RodaleInstitute.org. Lotter has worked in sustainable agricultural development in North America, Latin America, and Africa over the past 25 years. DonLotter.com
“Nations that followed the United States in prohibiting hemp cultivation have, for the most part, rescinded these laws—some more than a decade ago. A report by the Congressional Research Service in 2005 noted that, ‘the United States is the only developed nation in which industrial hemp is not an established crop.’ It seems likely that the United States cannot maintain hemp prohibition indefinitely. Reasons given for hemp prohibition in the United States make little sense today. Drug enforcement officials have argued that hemp shouldn’t be grown because it looks like marijuana; in that case, the USDA should stop growing kenaf, which, as its Latin name Hibiscus cannabinus suggests, has a palmate leaf that can be mistaken for marijuana. Others have argued that hemp shouldn’t be grown because the market for it is too speculative, and the crop may turn out to be unprofitable; in that case, corn (subsidized by the USDA at $9.4 billion in 2005) should top the list of prohibited crops.”
– March 2008 Reason Foundation Study on Hemp, Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition. Policy Study 367, by Skaidra Smith-Heisters
Hemp farming needs to be legalized in the U.S. Not doing so would continue our destructive relationship with Earth, and would be a crime against all life forms on the planet. In WWII the U.S. grew thousands of acres of hemp to save the country. Now we need to grow it to save the world. Hemp is what the world needs NOW.