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| Illustration credit: The Cap Times "Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere." ~ George Washington |
Oh, sure ::sigh:: a select group of woefully mis-informed people are still freaked out by Reefer Madness, but puh-lease! That ridiculously worn 1936 propaganda saw is so dull and broken, non? Besides, while the THC'd medicinal/recreational variety of hemp (known widely as marijuana) has been scientifically demonstrated multiple times as healthfully efficacious in a variety of ways ~ which folks have known for thousands of years (not to mention that marijuana use can cut the size of cancerous tumors in half... though I did, just now, mention it) ~ it's quite especially the Importance of the much mis-understood and deeply under-discussed Industrial Hemp that I'm digging at just now.
Stop and think (if you haven't already): Even in 1938, Popular Mechanics magazine had counted 25,000 uses for industrial hemp, so *IMAGINE* how many more uses we could have and discover for it now. From this one amazing plant ~ which requires very little fertilizer and no pesticides (as it has no enemies, save man) ~ we can make environmentally gentler paper (which doesn't yellow, and lasts for hundreds of years), textiles, powerhouse foods, fuels, oil-dispersants, lubricants, carbon-negative building materials, rope, tape, dynamite...
Truly, billions of very green dollars can be had to help regenerate our stagnant economy; family farms by the thousands can be revitalized; countless quiet industrial plants can be retooled and brought back to life, particularly as hemp processing is best conducted close to where the crop is grown; many forms of dis-ease can be remediated from the gentle and healthful nature of this God-given plant; farming it is much kinder to Mama Earth than a food-and-fuel crop like corn ~ again, as the growth and cultivation of hemp requires no pesticides ~ plus its root structures actually help to heal or phytoremediate soil damaged by chemicals, radiation, or other abuses; and re-legalizing hemp will help us to truly begin reducing the environmentally toxic effects of fertilizers, pesticides and processed, genetically-modified foods produced and foisted upon nations ~ whether industrialized or developing ~ by multi-national behemoths like Monsanto... But these benefits and more are, in my mind, wrongfully denied to us, all for the vicious sake of profits for an entrenched industrial-financial-political-pharmaceutical-"health"care GreedMachine.
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| Illustration credit: AboveTheIgnorance.org |
I call AntiReefer MADness in the name of protecting an obesely-entrenched status quo, which behaves as if it doesn't want us to be happily "high" and healthy from eating and otherwise using a beneficent and natural growth of our blessed planet Earth, but would rather have us drunk on booze, amped up on chemically processed and colored foods, and dependent on expensive medical care and pharmaceuticals. (Not to mention ~ though, again, I shall ~ the USofA is uncomfortably saddled with a deleteriously produced cotton crop and its attendant pesticides and fertilizers; thanks very much, not, Mr. William Randolph Hearst and Dupont, Inc.)
Actually, did you know that ~ ironically ~ the first "marijuana" law in America, crafted in the colony of Jamestown, made it a requirement to grow hemp (punishable if one didn't)? Or that it was considered legal tender in selected colonial states? Or that Founding Father Ben Franklin used hemp in his paper mills, that Thomas Paine printed his pamphlets on hemp paper, and that both Presidents Washington and Jefferson were hemp farmers?
For heaven's sake: It's our nation's BIRTHRIGHT!
But there is a bright light of Common$ense on the horizon: In a major development, California's State Senate recently passed the Industrial Hemp Farming Bill, SB 676, which would at the very least result in a five county pilot program for its cultivation. The bill still requires approval by the Assembly ~ not a simple walk in the park by any means, as this bill has been through the sausage mill of legislative debate, in various forms, for a number of years (and THANK you for hanging in there to push it through, State Senator Mark Leno and all who've supported him ~ but if (please, oh PLEASE!) it makes it through that gauntlet, we can be hopeful for signature by Governor Jerry Brown.
As goes California, so goes the nation...? Heck, yeah! C'mon. Let's DO this, We the People...
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| Historical illustration credit: Google Images DigitallyWeasle'd via ICanHasCheezBurger.com (^_^) Didja know? Betsy used hemp as the fabric for our first flag... |
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"Hemp is of the first necessity
to the wealth & protection
of the country"
Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
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