The Credibility Of Hemp In The Cannabis Family

Imagine having a son or daughter who has six or more seizures a day. If you could could decrease the number of seizures they had a day by half, wouldn’t you consider medical marijuana? It is well known that medical cannabis has been used to cure many medical conditions for a long period of time already. Among the diseases marijuana can help treat, nausea, glaucoma, anorexia, epilepsy and more. Medical marijuana also helps with the side effects of many treatments, such as cancer chemotherapy. There are many health benefits of marijuana; it may have some negative effects, but the pain and symptom relief of many diseases and disorders makes it well worth it.

Marijuana has been a controversial subject for some time. Marijuana has been used for abundant treatments for thousands of years. Marijuana assists in relieving the pain and symptoms. Marijuana also has many names and various forms. Some common names are pot, weed, joint, and Mary Jane. Smoking, eating in cooked foods like brownies, pills like prescription capsules, are a few forms marijuana is used. Mary Jane helps patients with epilepsy, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain and anxiety and much more. In the world today, there is a lack of access to medicinal help for people in the society. The restrictions on marijuana allow for patients in critical conditions to decline in health. With fewer

Hall, P. W., & Degenhardt, P. L. (2009, October). Adverse Health Effects of Non-Medical Cannabis Use. The Lancet, 374(9698), 1383-1391.

Hemp is the perfect substitution for making paper than trees. There are about 220 million pounds of toxic pollution that are let out into the air and water annually during the process of making paper from trees. At the same time, deforestation also drives climate change and reduces the filtration of carbon dioxide to oxygen. Most species of trees can take up to thirty years to be grown to harvest opposed to hemp that can be grown within the span of months. Also, because hemp is a reusable resource, hemp paper can be recycled up to 7 times, when paper made from trees can only be recycled a maximum of 3 times. By using hemp paper could have a tremendous effect in the way the war on global warming is

McGrath, J., Welham, J., Scott, J., Varghese, D., Degenhardt, L., & Hayatbakhsh, M. et al. (2010). Association Between Cannabis Use and Psychosis-Related Outcomes Using Sibling Pair Analysis in a Cohort of Young Adults. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 67 (5), 440. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.6

My step dad had a pair of hemp jeans in high school. They lasted him over 10 years, until he got too big to fit them anymore. He gave them to a friend who still wears those pants made of hemp. Cotton is much more difficult to grow than hemp because cotton is addicted to chemical elixirs. It requires a lot of artificial fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides for it to be able to grow well. When cotton is ripe, the leaves have to be knocked off with defoliants before the bolls can be harvested. Hemp is by far a much better alternative to grow. It does not require any herbicides and it actually cleanses the land instead of depleting it of nutrients. Making paper from hemp is far more economical and environmentally friendly than making paper from trees. Wood-based paper pulp is brown from the cooking process thus requiring it to be bleached which releases toxins into the environment. Hemp paper is naturally bright with no bleaching necessary. The nation could reduce unsustainable logging if American farmers were allowed to grow hemp which produces twice as much fiber per acre as an average forest. Hemp is a clean, renewable option that can replace virtually all products made with non-renewable hydrocarbons like oil and coal (Williams).

The General perspective that society throws on marijuana is that equal to any drug; negative. However, many researchers have found that the effects of marijuana for medicinal purposes can be beneficial to the right patients, as well as the United States government. The negative effects from marijuana use in a medicinal environment are far less than that of most over the counter drugs, while the benefits remain the same. There are instances in which marijuana was legalized for people with prescriptions from licensed doctors; however, full legalization is leaps and bounds away from the current status. Another way full legalization could help is money the government uses to try and fight marijuana

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is an interest group created on January 1995. It’s the biggest organization in the United States with the objective to eliminate the prohibition of marijuana. Their main goal is to gain public support for these non threatening policies as well as gaining influence in Congress. For states to decide on their own marijuana policies without federal interference, so marijuana would be regulated as if it was beer. Thus properly informing the people about its medical and taxation benefits. But in order to overtake their task the MPP is separated into three branches: the MPP, MPP Foundation, and MPP PAC. The MPP and MPP Foundation are the influential branches. While the MPP deals with lobbying and election initiatives;

The legalization of hemp has been a very controversial topic since it was made illegal in 1937. However, through research in recent years that it has become more evident that hemp is more than a drug, but a versatile, economical, friendly product that can be used in a wide variety of resources with low impact on the environment.

Many knowledgeable people who know and understand the potential of industrial hemp are convinced that it is one of the world's most perfect products. Its fiber makes rope and cloth which is very strong and resilient and when used to make paper products, the production is far tidier and much more efficient than using wood to make paper. Hemp is indeed considered one of the world's oldest agricultural products and hemp has a history in the United States that includes the fact that the Declaration of Independence and the original St. James Bible are actually printed on hemp paper. The list of practical uses is lengthy and impressive, but due to drug laws in the United States the growing of cannabis for industrial hemp uses is illegal; this has been a source of considerable controversy in the United States. The uses of industrial hemp and the debate as to whether industrial hemp farming should be allowed in the U.S. will be reviewed and critiqued in this paper.

As the issue of legalizing marijuana remains complicated and highly controversial, a lesser-known yet increasingly significant side effect continues to transpire in the background: the suppression of its incredibly useful and diverse distant cousin, industrial hemp. Both marijuana and hemp have a long history in the United States. Unfortunately, because both plants are from the cannabis species, hemp was pigeonholed into a “dangerous drug” classification along with marijuana, representing the beginning of the end for hemp as a major agricultural asset to the United States. Industrial hemp contains no psychotropic qualities that create a “high” like marijuana. Considering that hemp’s

Industrial Hemp has received an extensive amount of legislative attention in the past 20 years. Early Vermont legislation on the subject includes ACT176 (1996) requesting the commissioner of agriculture, food and markets as well as the University of Vermont do research into the viability of the industry, ACT222 (1998) urging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to review the new Canadian hemp policies, and ACT333 (2000) “urging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to reconsider federal policies that restrict the cultivation and marketing of industrial hemp and related products.”

Hemp has many ways it can put oxygen back into the air. One of the best ways it can give us cleaner air, other than through the automotive industry, is by replacing wood made paper with paper made from hemp. According to George Antonio from Drexel University, “until the 1880’s between 75% and 90% of paper was made with hemp fiber.” Many major documents such as the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and even Benjamin Franklin’s newspapers were made from hemp paper. They utilized hemp for many reasons, and one of those was to save us from deforestation, which is becoming a big problem for endangered species and the state of our air. Hemp takes 90-120 days to mature while trees take 20-80 years. Since hemp was banned in 1937, 70% of America’s natural forests have been destroyed, and the demand for paper is only growing and is expected to double in the next 20-30 years.

Even our flags were from cannabis fibers. Best of all they come pesticide free! 75-90% of all paper in the world was made with cannabis hemp fiber including paper for books, Bibles, maps, paper money, stocks & bonds, newspaper, etc. Hemp paper lasted 50 to 100 times longer.” (DigitalHemp)

Throughout American history our country has come to rely on many different natural resources. With technology and the population increasing, the number of fossil fuel reserves and natural forests are going down. What America needs is a renewable source of fuels and fibers that will meet the growing needs of the future, but will not damage our environment. One of the most promising sources of fiber, fuel, and natural oil is hemp. Hemp, also known as Cannabis Sativa L, has been used in our country since the early 17th century (Schreiber 160). Although hemp is considered an illegal drug, many people forget that it is a part of our country’s history. Despite its negative connotations, hemp has the potential to revolutionize the paper,