I was listening to Jello Biafra yesterday, and on his album I Blow Minds for a Living, he dictates the short history of pot and the legal system.
It's a well-known fact that hemp was a widely-used fabric, used in rope and clothing for centuries. Henry VIII of England made it obligatory for farmers to grow cannabis in order to make ropes and cords. The reason for this is that hemp is an exceptionally durable material, and is very hard to tear or rip. It's also exceptionally cost-effective, as large amounts can be grown in short time, especially today where we have UV lights, meaning we can grow it indoors.
Something I did not know until recently is that hemp was also widely used to make paper, and is a more natural way to make paper. To make paper with timber (I.E. wood) you need to use a lot of pulping chemicals in order to turn it into paper. But I'll get back to that later.
One thing you should know though, is that it was used to write the American constitution and declaration of independence. George Washington and Ben Franklin smoked it, too. Oh, and for all you christians out there? Up to the 19th Century, the King James bible was printed on... yeah, you guessed it... HEMP. Believe it or not, George Bush Sr. once ejected out of a fighter plane in WWII. His parachute was made out of hemp, as the US government had temporarily legalized cannabis in order to compensate for the cloth shortage. Neat, huh?
Among other uses of cannabis, here are a few important ones:
- It can be used to relieve pain, and medical marijuana is legal in some 38 states in the US
- Cannabis seeds can be used in cookery, and contain many beneficial proteins
- It can be used as biofuels, making it more efficient than using vegetable oil, as it can be grown quicker than crops.
Well, in America it was legal until the turn of the century. People used it for the above purposes, but they also openly smoked it and cultivated it. I mentioned earlier that it was considered far superior over timber as in order to create paper with timber, many chemicals needed to be used. Well, unfortunately the chemical barons got a little antsy about this, as they had just developed a new wood-pulping chemical and didn't want to see themselves go out of business. They pressured the government to make cannabis illegal, as did the tobacco companies.
In his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer reveals that it was a company named DuPont who played a pivotal role in banning cannabis as they had just created several new chemicals that were challenged by hemp. In his book, Herer states that:
USDA Bulletin No. 404, reported that one acre of hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/4 to 1/7 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp paper making process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp paper making process requires) but instead safely substitutes hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process. ... If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
Hemp was therefore quite an easy target, as many companies were able to rally against it and call for it's legalization.
Anyway, I've had my say. I'd like to hear your views on the matter, and any research you may come up with!
Stay sane,
James
1 comment:
Woah, easy there tiger! There's a world of difference between legalising pot the drug and legalising the plant for other uses. In fact there is a dictionary difference between hemp as a crop and cannabis as a drug, which was finally recognised officially in the UK in 1993 when an the Home Office eased of the legal restrictions around hemp crops to allow the consortium Hemcore to grow 1,500 acres of hemp (Article: The Agriculture of British Hemp in the 1990s). A similar legislation change happenened in Canada in 1998 (Article: Hemp Seed: Functional Food for the Future).
In fact you can see a small crop of hemp plant at The Eden Project (Photos on Flickr), and even buy some hemp products in their shop.
There are a number of places to buy hemp products in the UK such as the online stores Hemp-World and The Hemp Shop, or physical shops like The Hemp Shop in Glastonbury.
You've also undersold the uses of hemp somewhat. As well as fabrics for ropes, clothing, bags, and other such things, it is also used to replace current "tree-paper, cosmetics, and plastics" (Wiki), and "paper, clothing, fuel, oils, resins, medicines, and many other uses" (Article: Industrial Hemp Production and US Maruijana Prohibition). Thanks to the properties of the hemp plant it also has uses in agriculture where the thick low-lying canopy it creates can kill off many weeds, making it "the ideal break crop to bring fallow land and permanent pasture back into production" (Article: The Agriculture of British Hemp in the 1990s, also Hemp as Weed Control). And of course, as you mentioned, as food.
In terms of the drug, well that's a different matter entirely. Despite it not being officially an addictive substance I know a number of people who simply cannot function without pot. Of course this is probably a case of self-medicating to deal with anxiety issues, issues which those people then never learn to manage or cope with but only cover up much in the way alcoholics do (as further discussed in Depressed Teens Using Marijuana, Other Drugs to Relieve Symptoms). So yes, people can get "addicted" to cannabis but in a psychological sense rather than a biological dependency. More worrying though, there have been a number of studies even quite recently that have shown the link between pot smoking and schizophrenia (Article: Schizophrenia Linked To Dysfunction In Molecular Brain Pathway Activated By Marijuana), the psychotic effects of skunk (Article:
Skunk smokers 18 times more likely to be psychotic and Cannabis dangers: Skunk smokers more at risk of psychosis than hash users). There is even evidence to show that cannabis use can exacerbate the very anxiety and depression symptoms that some people use it to treat (Article: Teen Maruijana Use Worsens Depression).
There are also new doubts over the use of cannabis as a medical pain-relief (Article: Oral Cannabis Ineffective In Treating Acute Pain, Study Finds), Interestingly though this is almost directly opposed by another article: Marijuana May Be Effective For Neuropathic Pain, so I guess the jury is still out on that one.
Getting back to my own life and experiences, I have seen first hand the effects of pot smoking and all it brings. I have a few friends who you only need to talk to for a few moments before you can immediately say "pot head", because the drug has so clearly affected their minds and how they act and interact with people. But these people are on the extreme scale of things, so what about casual users? Well personally I have no issue with other people smoking a little bit of pot, as long as they know the risks involved. But myself, I've left it all behind me now.
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