Legalize hemp already, you idiots! Thousands of jobs, millions of $...what's the holdup?

[Barbella]

Hemp is a good fiber... strong, natural, easy to grow... is that why it's still illegal in the US? It might benefit Americans, so no... can't have that, can we? We'd rather buy the shit from other countries, and let THEM make the money. We're surrounded by morons.

Hemp is a variety of cannabis that is grown for the fiber and seeds. The fiber and seeds are incredible valuable and is why hemp is often called a “cash crop”. Hemp is a very hearty plant and grows very quickly in very diverse soil conditions. Cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes has been done by many civilizations for over 12,000 years. Industrial hemp was the desired fiber used to manufacture rope, canvas, paper, and clothing until alternative textiles and synthetics for these purposes were discovered. Although China has been the largest hemp producer over the years, other countries such as Australia and Canada are catching up.

Since becoming legal to grow again in Canada, the crop has taken off and has become a booming multi-million dollar export. Hemp building materials are another growing segment of the hemp industry. Canada is now a leader in the global hemp food/health marketplace. Canadian hemp products can be found in many hemp markets now in the United States and the world over.

http://www.hemp.com/what-is-hemp/

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-hemp-114928.html?hp=b1_c3

 

[BobbyT]

Hemp is a good fiber... strong, natural, easy to grow... is that why it's still illegal in the US? It might benefit Americans, so no... can't have that, can we? We'd rather buy the shit from other countries, and let THEM make the money. We're surrounded by morons.

Hemp is a variety of cannabis that is grown for the fiber and seeds. The fiber and seeds are incredible valuable and is why hemp is often called a “cash crop”. Hemp is a very hearty plant and grows very quickly in very diverse soil conditions. Cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes has been done by many civilizations for over 12,000 years. Industrial hemp was the desired fiber used to manufacture rope, canvas, paper, and clothing until alternative textiles and synthetics for these purposes were discovered. Although China has been the largest hemp producer over the years, other countries such as Australia and Canada are catching up.

Since becoming legal to grow again in Canada, the crop has taken off and has become a booming multi-million dollar export. Hemp building materials are another growing segment of the hemp industry. Canada is now a leader in the global hemp food/health marketplace. Canadian hemp products can be found in many hemp markets now in the United States and the world over.

http://www.hemp.com/what-is-hemp/

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-hemp-114928.html?hp=b1_c3

Completely concur.

 

[Craig]

Hemp is a good fiber... strong, natural, easy to grow... is that why it's still illegal in the US? It might benefit Americans, so no... can't have that, can we? We'd rather buy the shit from other countries, and let THEM make the money. We're surrounded by morons.

Hemp is a variety of cannabis that is grown for the fiber and seeds. The fiber and seeds are incredible valuable and is why hemp is often called a “cash crop”. Hemp is a very hearty plant and grows very quickly in very diverse soil conditions. Cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes has been done by many civilizations for over 12,000 years. Industrial hemp was the desired fiber used to manufacture rope, canvas, paper, and clothing until alternative textiles and synthetics for these purposes were discovered. Although China has been the largest hemp producer over the years, other countries such as Australia and Canada are catching up.

Since becoming legal to grow again in Canada, the crop has taken off and has become a booming multi-million dollar export. Hemp building materials are another growing segment of the hemp industry. Canada is now a leader in the global hemp food/health marketplace. Canadian hemp products can be found in many hemp markets now in the United States and the world over.

http://www.hemp.com/what-is-hemp/

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-hemp-114928.html?hp=b1_c3

Welcome aboard.

 

[Caroljo]

It makes no sense at all.

 

[Queen Titania]

Hemp is a good fiber... strong, natural, easy to grow... is that why it's still illegal in the US? It might benefit Americans, so no... can't have that, can we? We'd rather buy the shit from other countries, and let THEM make the money. We're surrounded by morons.

Hemp is a variety of cannabis that is grown for the fiber and seeds. The fiber and seeds are incredible valuable and is why hemp is often called a “cash crop”. Hemp is a very hearty plant and grows very quickly in very diverse soil conditions. Cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes has been done by many civilizations for over 12,000 years. Industrial hemp was the desired fiber used to manufacture rope, canvas, paper, and clothing until alternative textiles and synthetics for these purposes were discovered. Although China has been the largest hemp producer over the years, other countries such as Australia and Canada are catching up.

Since becoming legal to grow again in Canada, the crop has taken off and has become a booming multi-million dollar export. Hemp building materials are another growing segment of the hemp industry. Canada is now a leader in the global hemp food/health marketplace. Canadian hemp products can be found in many hemp markets now in the United States and the world over.

http://www.hemp.com/what-is-hemp/

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-hemp-114928.html?hp=b1_c3

It was the logging trade which insisted on Hemp being made illegal - using 'grass' as the excuse.

 

[Barbella]

It was the logging trade which insisted on Hemp being made illegal - using 'grass' as the excuse.

Interesting history:

The decision of the United States Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was based on poorly attended hearings and reports based on questionable studies.[35][36] In 1936 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) noticed an increase of reports of people smoking marijuana, which further increased in 1937. The Bureau drafted a legislative plan for Congress seeking a new law, and the head of the FBN, Harry J. Anslinger, ran a campaign against marijuana.[37][38] Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst's empire of newspapers used the "yellow journalism" pioneered by Hearst to demonize the cannabis plant and spread a public perception that there were connections between cannabis and violent crime.[39] Several scholars argue that the goal was to destroy the hemp industry,[40][41][42] largely as an effort of Hearst, Andrew Mellon and the Du Pont family.[40][42] They argue that with the invention of the decorticator hemp became a very cheap substitute for the wood pulp that was used in the newspaper industry.[40][43] They also believe that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. There are also facts that contradict that Hearst had a financial interest in banning the cultivation of hemp. Hearst newspapers had very big problems with debts to Canadian suppliers of paper. They used wood as raw material. If there emerged an alternative raw material, it would have lowered the price of the paper needed to print Hearst's many newspapers.[44] However, in 1937, Hearst's newspapers were the only Hearst assets making money; Hearst's mining and forest products holdings had been ordered into reorganization by bankruptcy courts.[45] Mellon was Secretary of the Treasury, as well as the wealthiest man in America, and had invested heavily in nylon, DuPont's new synthetic fiber. He considered nylon's success to depend on its replacement of the traditional resource, hemp.[40][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history_of_cannabis_in_the_United_States

In other words.... nothing's changed. Money talked then, and it talks now.

 

[Craig]

There were also many racist considerations to the outlawing of not just cannabis, but intoxicants across the board. We were still working off the temeperance movement when the drug laws came into being. Hemp was just carried into the debate by the folks who expressed fear of "others".


...In the United States, marijuana prohibition began partly as a throw-in on laws restricting opiates and cocaine to prescription-only use, and partly in Southern and Western states and cities where blacks and Mexican immigrants were smoking it. Missouri outlawed opium and hashish dens in 1889, but did not actually prohibit cannabis until 1935. Massachusetts began restricting cannabis in its 1911 pharmacy law, and three other New England states followed in the next seven years...

...The campaign against cannabis heated up after Repeal. "I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents," a Colorado newspaper editor wrote in 1936. "The fatal marihuana cigarette must be recognized as a DEADLY DRUG, and American children must be PROTECTED AGAINST IT," the Hearst newspapers editorialized.

Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed the charge. "If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana, he would drop dead of fright," he thundered in 1937.

An ambitious racist (a 1934 memo described an informant as a "ginger-colored N*****r") who had previously been federal assistant Prohibition commissioner, Anslinger railed against reefer in magazine articles like 1937's "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth." It featured gory stories like that of Victor Licata, a once "sane, rather quiet young man" from Tampa, Fla., who'd killed his family with an axe in 1933, after becoming "pitifully crazed" from smoking "muggles." (Actually, the Tampa police had tried to have Licata committed to a mental hospital before he started smoking pot.)

Anslinger's other theme was that white girls would be ruined once they'd experienced the lurid pleasures of having a black man's joint in their mouth. "Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with female students (white) smoking and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution," he noted. "Result, pregnancy."

In 1937, after a very cursory debate, Congress enacted the Marihuana Tax Act, levying a prohibitive $100-an-ounce tax on cannabis. "I believe in some cases one cigarette might develop a homicidal mania," Anslinger testified in a hearing on the bill...

Prohibition's racist history

The belief that marijuana prohibition came about because of the secret machinations of an economic cabal ignores the pattern of every drug-law crusade in American history. From the 19th-century campaigns against opium and alcohol to the crack panic of the 1980s, they have all been fueled by racism and cultural war, conflated with fear of crime and occasionally abetted by well-intentioned reform impulses. (The financial self-interest of the prison-industrial complex has been a more recent development.) The first drug-prohibition laws in the United States were opium bans aimed at Chinese immigrants. San Francisco outlawed opium in 1875, and the state of California followed six years later. In 1886, an Oregon judge ruled that the state's opium prohibition was constitutional even if it proceeded "more from a desire to vex and annoy the 'Heathen Chinee'… than to protect the people from the evil habit," notes Doris Marie Provine in Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. In How the Other Half Lives, journalist Jacob Riis wrote of opium-addicted white prostitutes seduced by the "cruel cunning" of Chinese men...



http://www.alternet.org/story/77339/debunking_the_hemp_conspiracy_theory