By writing about this topic, some people may think I am advocating that people turn into potheads. But if that is what you get out of this, you are missing the point. People who think that also are likely to misunderstand the difference between hemp and marijuana.
Some may ask why I’m writing this when I’m not a pothead, I’ve never owned a bong, and the most intoxicating substance in my house is an old bottle of whisky someone left in the kitchen after a dinner party a few years back, which goes untouched because nobody here likes the taste of brewed alcohol. My experience with hard drugs is staying far away from them. Even when I had surgery to repair broken bones I didn’t take the pain pills after the first couple of days because I found the pain to be more tolerable than being stoned on pain medication and the subsequent “downer” feeling the drugs induced.
Some of this confusion about the topic of this book is due to the fact that people think hemp is the same thing as marijuana. It isn’t.
My goals in writing this book are to clarify what hemp can do for the world now, to clarify its history, and to help do away with the misunderstanding that hemp should remain illegal based on the concept that it can get you high. It can’t.
It appears that a rather large majority of people knows little about what hemp is, what it can do, and what it can’t do.
Throughout history various cultures on many parts of the planet have relied on hemp for paper, fuel, clothing, food, and building materials. As I explain later in the book, the U.S. relied on hemp to supply fiber and oil for the U.S. military. Other countries, including Germany, England, France, Spain, and China, did the same. More recently, China relied on hemp seed and hemp oil for nutrition during Mao Zedong’s reign in the 1960s. Today I know of women in Canada who make hemp seed mylk (spelled that way when made from seeds or nuts) to feed to their babies and toddlers. In countries throughout the world hemp seed provides nutrition in the form of food oil, flour, and cereal dishes. Closer to home, many people in the U.S. unknowingly are using bird feed containing imported hemp seeds to fill the containers on bird feeders they keep in their yards. Many products sold in American natural foods stores contain hemp oil, hemp protein, and hemp flour. Because U.S. farmers aren’t allowed to grow hemp, these food products are also made from imported hemp seeds. Nutritional powders that muscle-bound body builders use often contain hemp protein, again made from imported hemp seeds. More and more fabrics sold in the U.S. contain hemp fiber, also from imported hemp material.
“Over 30 countries are currently developing a hemp industry to meet international fiber demands. The United States is not one of them.
… Industrial hemp is not a drug crop. The international standard is that hemp of cannabis with less than 1 percent THC is not marijuana. Strains that would likely be grown in the U.S. would be 0.3 percent, or less THC [content] as is the case with Canada and the European Union.”
– North American Industrial Hemp Council, NAIHC.org; 2006
What I do advocate is the total legalization of hemp farming for any farmer who wants to grow it. Many farmers do want to grow it and some state governments have legalized it, but, foolishly, the U.S. federal government won’t allow it.
“The THC levels in industrial hemp are so low that no one could ever get high from smoking it. Moreover, hemp contains a relatively high percentage of another cannabinoid, [cannabidiol] CBD, that actually blocks the marijuana high. Hemp, it turns out, is not only not marijuana; it could be called ‘antimarijuana.’ ”
– David West, PhD; Hemp and Marijuana: Myths and Realities; Madison, WI: North American Industrial Hemp Council, 1998; page 3; DrugWarFacts.org/Hemp
“U.S. farmers want to grow hemp legally like their counterparts in Canada, Europe, and Asia. Many of hemp’s uses such as in foods, animal bedding, biofuel and composites will become more viable if hemp is treated like other crops. How can a raw material that’s legal to import, to sell, to eat, and to use in all kinds of everyday products not be legal for farmers in America to grow? No other agricultural commodity is restricted to just importation.”
– Eric Steenstra, president of VoteHemp.com; May 2006
“Unlike the U.S., other Western countries (such as Canada, Germany, and Australia) have adopted rational THC limits for foods, similar to those voluntarily observed by North American hemp food companies which protect consumers with a wide margin of safety from any psychoactive effects or workplace drug-testing interference [see hemp industry standards regarding trace THC at TestPledge.com]. The 14-year-old global hemp market is a thriving commercial success. Unfortunately, because [the] Drug Enforcement Administration’s drug-war paranoia has confused nonpsychoactive industrial hemp varieties of cannabis with psychoactive ‘marijuana’ varieties, the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation to prohibit the growing and processing of industrial hemp.”
– From Organic Consumers Association and Natural Foods Industry Slam DEA on Ban on Hemp Foods; VoteHemp.com; March 28, 2003
The reasons U.S. farmers can’t grow hemp has nothing to do with people getting high. But the law outlawing hemp is tied to marijuana, and vice versa, as well as to corporate greed, crooked politicians, and corrupt government officials.
Many people mistakenly believe the laws banning hemp were created to prohibit the use of marijuana because hemp appears so similar to the marijuana plant. But the differences in hemp and marijuana plants are easy to differentiate. Marijuana is short and bushy, and hemp is tall and lanky with a leafy top. The hemp plant typically grows from six to 18 feet tall within a three- to four-month period. The marijuana plant usually stays well below six feet tall. There are some shorter varieties of hemp, such as those grown for fine fabrics, but these are also easily distinguishable from cannabis.
“Industrial hemp plants have long and strong stalks, have few branches, have been bred for maximum production of fiber and/or seed, and grow up to 16 feet in height. They are planted in high densities of 100 to 300 plants per square yard. On the other hand, the drug varieties of cannabis are shorter, are not allowed to go to seed, and have been bred to maximize branching and thus [have] leaves and flowers. They are planted much less densely to promote bushiness. The drug and non-drug varieties are harvested at different times, and planting densities look very different from the air.”
– Vote Hemp, February 28, 2007 press release: Vote Hemp Exposes White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and Drug Enforcement Administration Lies about Hemp Farming
“Hemp is grown for its stalk and seed, with plants grown closely together to maximize the crops’ yield. Industrial hemp can grow up to 18 feet tall with plants only inches apart. Marijuana plants, grown to maximize the flowering buds, need at least one square yard per plant to grow effectively. Realistically, anyone who’s ever seen a field of industrial hemp could easily tell the difference. Canadian law enforcement officials can. Why can’t ours?
… The USA is the only industrialized country that does not allow commercial hemp farming because American law enforcement supposedly can’t tell the difference between these remarkably different plants.”
– Kentucky Hemp Museum, KentuckyHemp.com
Growing hemp and marijuana together would not do much good for those wanting to get stoned. Hemp pollinates the marijuana, lowering the THC level in the marijuana grown from the seeds. The claim by some people that if we legalize hemp the hemp farms will also become marijuana farms is nonsense. People who grow marijuana would want their plants as far away as possible from hemp plants.
“Planting marijuana anywhere near industrial hemp would be ill-conceived. When hemp pollinates marijuana it transfers the genes for low drug content to developing seeds of the marijuana. The drug potency in the new marijuana plants will be about half that of the original marijuana. When hemp repeatedly crosses with new marijuana plants obtained each year, the drug content is repeatedly reduced in the plants. Thus, the drug content will become so low and uncertain that the derived marijuana will be useless as a drug plant.”
– Dr. Paul G. Mahlberg, professor, department of biology, Indiana University, who has held a Drug Enforcement Administration research license for cannabis research for over 30 years
Even though it is well established that marijuana growers would not want their plants growing near hemp plants, the U.S. government keeps spreading misinformation about why people want hemp legalized in the U.S. Not only do they make it sound as if the reason people want to legalize hemp is so that they can grow marijuana, they also make it sound as if the law enforcement officers are stupid. Or perhaps the person who said the following is displaying his own ignorance:
“You have legitimate farmers who want to experiment with a new crop. But you have another group, very enthusiastic, who want to allow cultivation of hemp because they believe it will lead to a de facto legalization of marijuana. The last thing law enforcement people need is for the cultivation of marijuana-looking plants to spread. Are we going to ask them to go through row by row, field by field, to distinguish between legal hemp and marijuana?”
– Tom Riley, White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, as quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 28, 2007
“The ONDCP is wrong in its characterization of industrial hemp advocates, and there is no evidence that farmers who grow industrial hemp are hiding marijuana plants in their fields, whether in Canada or anywhere else. Because cross-pollination of low THC industrial hemp and high THC marijuana is inevitable, illicit marijuana growers avoid industrial hemp fields to protect the potency of their drug crop. It’s simply illogical that a farmer’s industrial hemp fields are ideal places to hide marijuana plants with all the extra scrutiny that comes with growing the crop. It’s sad that, instead of a real policy debate on the issue of farming industrial hemp in the United States based on legislative intent and agronomic facts, the ONDCP and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) resort to false hyperbole and character assassination. Tom Riley is welcome to join me in Canada this summer for the Hemp Industries Association annual meeting and see for himself how our neighbors in the north can easily tell the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana crops.”
– Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra, February 8, 2007
The point I want to make in this book is not about marijuana, but about hemp, which is not a drug. I think it is important for people to understand what the hemp plant can do for society, the environment, and the health of both humanity and wildlife today.
“Hemp cannot be commercially grown in the United States because it is erroneously confounded with marijuana. In fact, industrial hemp and marijuana are different breeds of Cannabis sativa, just as Chihuahuas and St. Bernards are different breeds of Canis familiaris. Smoking large quantities of hemp flowers can produce a headache, but not a high.”
– HempIndustries.org
“Hemp is cannabis grown specifically for industrial use and thus contains very low levels of cannabinoids (THC). The use of hemp dates back many thousands of years. Properly grown hemp has virtually no psychoactive (intoxicating) effects when consumed. With a relatively short growth cycle of 120 days, hemp is an efficient and economical crop for farmers to grow.”
– HempNation.com