| Hemp
has been cultivated for 1000's of years, probably
starting in China, and it's one of the oldest
sources of textile fiber known.
Most people trace
the introduction of hemp into North America to the
early 1600s, and it immediately flourished,
especially in Kentucky, Wisconsin, California,
North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Indiana,
Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas and Iowa.
Even early
Presidents, such as George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, both grew and wrote about the virtues
of hemp. And through the 19th Century, hemp was
considered the standard to judge fiber-bearing
plants.
However, the
Marijuana Act of 1938 made hemp illegal to grow in
the US. It was also made illegal in Canada in that
same year. Ironically, that was the same year that
Popular Mechanics called hemp "the new
billion dollar crop" because it could be used
"to produce more than 25,000 products,
ranging form dynamite to cellophane."
This has caused
many to claim that hemp was made illegal as part
of conspiracy to protect less efficient crops,
such as cotton.
Recently,
however, Canada has opened up licensed hemp
farming, and many US States are interested in
opening up licensed farming as well.
While the Federal
Government has strongly opposed the legalization
of industrial hemp farming, their dissent is largely without
cause. The domestication of hemp has led to very
distinct and distinguished cultigens, even
subspecies of the cannabis plant. Thus, as Canada
does, hemp cultivation can be monitored to ensure
that hemp farms don't become fronts for marijuana
cultivation. In fact, most industrial hemp looks
quite different than cannabis grown for illegal
purposes.
In Canada lines
of Industrial Hemp have been proven to be reliably
grown without converting back into drug strains,
and there is every reason to believe that
America's agricultural expertise could breed even
better, non-drug strains of industrial hemp
-strains that aren't just drug-free, but that
offer even greater industrial applications. Industrial
hemp is NOT a drug. |
