REAL TIMES
August 22, 2010 Hi: 880 Low: 690
Special Edition
Volume 001
Edition 420
HEMP
An American Commdity By: Richard S. Lilly
marijuana, whatever you want to call it, it’s the same plant. An illegal drug under a different name is still an illegal drug.” This statement acIn the early 21st century United States, hemp should be reinstituted cording to Tim McCormick, head of the Minneapolis DEA office is the as an agricultural crop because, hemp produces more pulp per acre than main talking point of the DEA and the federal government where hemp timber on a sustainable basis, provides food, medicine, and clothing, and is concerned. hemp could help to stabilize the nation’s economy For centuries, man as a major source of inhas cultivated and procome, and with the processed hemp for use in a duction of biomass fuels variety of products from also break our dependence the most basic needs of on the oil that we currentclothing, food, and medily import from the Middle cines to the high technolEast. ogy of automobiles. Hemp was widely grown in the Cannabis Sativa United States from the coL (hemp) should be reinlonial period into the midstituted as an agricultural 1800s at which time it was crop in America for the being used in a variety of most obvious reasons. fabrics, twine and paper. With the activists who Going back to the beginare continuously screamnings of the United States ing about the environment we find that our founding and the alleged mishanfathers, George Washingdling of the natural reton and Thomas Jefferson sources that we are curin particular, grew hemp, rently dependent on, they with Jefferson even going should look to the plant so far as to smuggle hemp kingdom in search of the seeds from China to France solution. According to the and into America. We can Hemp Industries Associaalso note that Benjamin tion, hemp produces more Franklin not only owned pulp per acre than timber one of the first paper mills on a sustainable basis, can in America, it was also be used for every quality used to process hemp. This of paper, and practical, inremained true into the early expensive fire-resistant 20th century United States. construction material, According to a 1901 report with excellent thermal and by Lyster H. Dewey, Assound insulating qualities. sistant Botanist, Bureau of In addition, hemp is enviPlant Industry for the Unitronmentally safe creating ed States Department of a reduction in wastewater Agriculture (USDA), “the contamination because it average annual consumpneeds dramatically less acids for pulping and harsh chlorine compounds tion of hemp fiber in the United States is (was) about 18,000,000 pounds, for bleaching than cotton or virgin timber due to its natural creamy color. of which only about 8,500,000 pounds are (were) raised in this country, During the growing season, hemp requires little or no treatment at all the remainder being imported”. Then with the introduction of the decorwith the toxic pesticides and herbicides that cotton, corn or wheat re- ticator in 1937, a machine that could strip the fiber from nearly any plant, quire in massive amounts. In addition, hemp can replace all of the crude leaving the pulp behind, the February 1938 issue of Popular Mechanics oil we currently use to create the plastics needed in everyday products, magazine proclaimed that hemp was going to be the “New Billion Dollar from the water bottles that are being thrown into our landfills to the case Crop!” This amazing proclamation also came at a time when hemp was that encloses the laptop on which this paper is being created. In addition, known to “produce some 25,000 different products, ranging from dynathere has been an increasingly growing interest in the United States and mite to cellophane.” In addition, Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Comother nations throughout the world in the market for clothing and tex- pany designed and built an automobile from hemp that used hemp fuel tiles made of hemp. Yet the Federal government, or more specifically the for power. We can also note with these facts, according to Doug Yurchey, United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), continue to demonize 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc., were Cannabis sativa L claiming that “As far as our laws are concerned, hemp, made from hemp until the 1820s, with the introduction of the cotton gin. Hemp continued on page 2
REAL TIMES
Hemp from page 1: The United States has come of age and so has our population. With the average citizen living to an age of ninety, and the need for new medications continuing to grow in demand, the United States government, for the past eighty years, has created laws and “drug enforcement” agencies at the taxpayers’ expense, to criminalize and eradicate a plant that may very well be the miracle cure for any number of diseases. In the late 1930s, William Randolph Hearst and Harry J. Anslinger began a campaign against hemp founded on the evils of “marijuana”. Spreading propaganda horror stories filled with crazed “Negros” raping white women while “high” on “marijuana” and claims of there being “100,000 marijuana smokers in the United States and most are Negros, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers”, eventually led to the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 that ultimately destroyed hemp cultivation in the United States. While certain strains of Cannabis Sativa L do contain the psychoactive chemical THC, industrial hemp is high in another cannabinoid, CBD, which counteracts THC’s psychoactivity, a sort of “anti-marijuana” if you will. And to say that “certain” ethnic groups are the only ones that use hemp (marijuana) is completely false and a totally racist view point that does not take into account the true uses of hemp and the ability that it has to replenish not only the soil in which it is cultivated, but the earth as a whole. When the United States of America entered World War II, the cultivation of hemp was once again brought to the forefront of American agriculture. Producing a ten minute movie, the federal government called on the farmers of our nation to produce “Hemp for Victory!” in order to properly outfit our troops and then supply them with the means to fight, and win, the battle. Then, with hemp research beginning anew in the 1960s, the federal government once again became involved for the next ten years. At this time, the idea that hemp made the general public go mad upon consumption was trumped and the myth of “zombiefied pacification” was born. This should serve as an indicator to the average reader that the suppression of this plant does not come because of any imaginary dangers it may pose. With billions of dollars in profits on the line, the crusade of Hearst, DuPont and Anslinger has continued on to this day, only changing the mantra as they see fit.
foods contain 35% carbohydrates, 31% fat, 35% fiber, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, C, D, and in particular vitamin E, and only 8% saturated fat or less. If hemp were legal, it would immediately replace 10-20% of all pharmaceutical prescription medicines (based on research through 1976). In addition, there are no known side effects from using hemp as a medication, and to date there has never been any case of a person overdosing, intentionally or unintentionally, while on hemp medications.
ed to production in the United States.” In addition, Lynn Osburn cites in the article “Energy Farming in America”, originally published in the April 1990 High Times magazine, that “About six percent of contiguous United States land area put into cultivation for biomass could supply all current demands for oil and gas.” The reinstitution of hemp would almost immediately create thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in our ailing economy. From the farmlands across the nation to the retail stores in our inner cities, businesses in the private sector would once again be able to revive our dying economy, employee our fellow citizens who are currently As America’s national debt grows at an struggling to make ends meet week to week and exponential rate, Hemp could help to stabilize put the United States of America back where it the nation’s econo- belongs on the world economic stage, at the top. my as a major source of income, and with While the suppression of hemp by the the production of federal government has been vigorous over the biomass fuels break past eight decades, the plant is making its presour dependence on ence known again along with all of the positive the imports of fos- aspects it brings to society and the world at large. sil fuels from the In addition, with a long and detailed history of Middle East. Retired man’s relationship with hemp it would only General Barry Mc- make sense to decriminalize the plant and allow Caffrey of the White the American farmer to cultivate and produce the House of National thousands of products that will be used by the Drug Control Policy citizens of the United States of America. This and former “Drug one plant alone can help in our nation’s time of Czar” under Presi- need as well as protect and save our environment dent Bill Clinton has from the toxic and destructive chemicals we are said that one of the now using; therefore, hemp should become the reasons that he con- commodity that it is meant to be, an American tinues to support the Commodity. criminalization of hemp cultivation is References available upon request because hemp is not Contact Richard at: an economical crop. At the peak of hemp rlilly@email.itt-tech.edu production in the United States (World for more information War II) growers of hemp, “producing an “average” crop netted $80 to $100 an acre as opposed to $30 an acre for corn, $20 an acre for wheat, $17 an acre for oats, etc…” The logic behind the federal government’s argument has never really been truthful making the government of the United States the only government in history to ban the cultivation and production of a plant because it was not profitable. History has also shown, throughout the world that farmers go broke or file bankruptcy while growing corn, cotton, flax, wheat, and even potatoes every year. Does this mean the About the editor/author: federal government should ban and/or criminalize the crops mentioned above because farmers Richard S. Lilly was born and raised in the go broke? The market for hemp is growing rap- Great Republic of Texas. A former Marine and idly and according to Richard L. Miller in his father of three he now resides in San Diego, CA Hemp has been used for medicinal pur- 1991 report to the Agriculture Task Force Misand attends school at ITT Technical Institute poses dating as far back as “2300 B.C.E., when souri House of Representatives, Hemp Crop for in the Visual Communications program. A.S. the legendary Chinese emperor Shen Nung pre- Missouri Framers, “hemp yields on an average expected 2012 scribed chu-ma (female hemp) for the treatment twice as much textile fiber per acre as fiber flax Online Portfolio: of constipation, gout, beri-beri, malaria, rheuma- and three times as much fiber per acre as cotton. It http://www.issuu.com/richardlilly tism, and menstrual cramps.” In addition, hemp is one of the heaviest fiber-yielding crops adapt-