Why Hemp Should Be Legalized Throughout The U.s.

Hemp can single-handedly improve our world 's environment by cutting down our dependency on timber, cut our use of water, and eliminate greenhouse gases. Forty percent of our forests are use to create timber stated by hempethics.weebly.com. As referenced

i. As a fiber source, hemp could be used in everything from textiles to automotive composites. The fiber is also gaining popularity as insulation.

Growing hemp is a much more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to cotton. “Cotton uses 1400 gallons of water to produce one pound of cotton, while hemp requires half that amound of water while producing 2.5 times more fiber than cotton. Cotton uses 25 percent of the world’s insecticides and 10 percent of the world’s pesticides. Hemp clothing is more durable, and when wet, the materials expand and become stronger. *Hemp also requires little to no pesticides. !!Replacing al or much of the world’s cotton crops with hemp would result in using 5 times less water to get the same yield. Replacing cotton with hemp would also remove almost 25 percent global insecticide use

For many years, there has been a war against society and the federal government on whether or not marijuana should be legal in the U.S., for medicinal and recreational purposes. There are so many positive aspects as to why it would be a highly viable asset to communities all over the U.S. Though there are some aspects to be looked at and taken into consideration when it comes to legalizing this drug, it still stands as an important fact that marijuana should be in fact legalized by the federal government, so that the development of hemp crops can be used as a valuable agricultural crop in the U.S., creating a new bio-fuel to reduce carbon emissions we consume every day, so that we can expose majority of the prohibitions on the dangers of marijuana are solely based on disinformation and lies, and so that dollars collected in tax revenue from marijuana sales can be used for bettering our communities instead of spending our earned taxed dollars on criminalization costs keeping it illegal.

On of your local grocery stores should carry Hemp Granola. They might even carry other Hemp items. The imported products are extremely popular. Americas inability to produce their own products. Forces local consumers to buy forienge items. Creating a profitable agricultural industry. Will help the local and national economy. It will also create thousands of American jobs. These improvements would decrease our need to import. From other countries and eliminate the need to import Hemp.

One major issue with Industrial Hemp is its use for BioMass fuel. Believe it or not, but the energy that Cannabis stores during its growth can be converted into fuel after harvest. Many plants can be used to make BioMass fuel, yet Cannabis is the top candidate for its supply due to it’s abundance of cellulose and ease of harvesting it. BioMass fuel can be used for absolutely any form of energy, be it fuel to power an engine (car) or to generate electricity. BioMass fuel burns cleaner than petrochemical fuels.

Lastly, hemp may also be used to produce ethanol. The United States government has developed a way to make automobile fuel additive from biomass, and hemp is an excellent source of high quality biomass. One other way to use hemp as fuel is to use the oil from the hemp seed. However, even if we could produce and press enough hemp seed to power many millions of cars, the oil is more useful for other purposes as suggested earlier. Biomass fuels are clean and virtually free from metals and sulfur, so they do not cause nearly as much air pollution as fossil fuels. More importantly, burning biomass fuels does not increase the total amount of carbon

The benefits of hemp give reasons that farmers should be permitted to grow the crop in the United States. Seed that the plant produces are very high in nutritional benefits when used in food products. The seed is high in both the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. These fatty acids are important to nutrition because the body can not produce them; they also are used to produce the hormone progesterone, which is found in the body. The plant itself is useful for many different products from clothing to car parts. The pulp from the hemp stalks is used in the place of wood on homebuilding projects. Four acres of hemp produces more pulp than four acres of trees. Trees are a very valuable renewable resource and if farmers were allowed to grow hemp, which is more efficient than trees, they wouldn’t have to timber much of the forests. Hemp is a biodegradable substitute for plastic. Some car manufactures use the hemp-fiber plastic for door panels and trunk panels. The United States already uses products from hemp that is imported from other countries. Why shouldn’t the U.S. farmers be able to grow industrial hemp and partake in economic profit?

On October 1, 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was enacted and it prohibited all forms of cannabis sativa. Although the bill was targeted towards the banning of marijuana and both forms of cannabis on separate ends of the sativa spectrum, there was no specification on which form was directed for the ban. Thus both were prohibited from being grown in the United States of America. In November of 2016, marijuana officially became legal to grow in all fifty states, yet industrial hemp is still currently legal to be grown in 13 states within the USA.  Hemp is largely exported to the US from other countries. It is imperative that hemp becomes legal to be grown around the entire country, for hemp will help retain the USA’s revenue by using hemp grown in America, has can be used for many different purposes such as clothing or food for example, has the potential to reduce American citizen’s carbon footprint as a substitute for paper and gasoline, and has no major threat to the industrialization of hemp in factories.

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.

This paper written by Ernest Small and David Marcus covers the history of Hemp (hemp is the actual marijuana plant itself) and everything its used for. They start out covering the history stating when it was first used as a textile “somewhere between 1000 and 2000 BCE”. Next they list everything hemp can be used for. They really hammer on its uses as a fiber and in textiles as they claim “hemp is a bast fiber, i.e. the most desirable”. Another big topic the cover is hemps ability to replace wood as the leading material for paper. They state how using hemp would be more beneficial because “hemp’s long fibers could make paper more recyclable” and “hemp paper is useful for specialty applications such as currency and cigarette papers where strength

Some may read the title of this section and think to themselves "is he going to talk about a drug?" No, here is my disclaimer, hemp/industrial hemp as it is sometimes called, is cannabis, but is not marijuana. It does not contain any psychoactive properties so therefore it is not a "drug" which is a common misconception or lie people believe to be true. THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) levels in hemp are too low to have any effect whatsoever and are in such low quantities that it cannot be detected by any screening. A person cannot get high by smoking hemp. There is however great potential for this plant though.

Industrial Hemp is an ancient crop, which has a multitude of diverse uses. The earliest uses of Hemp can be traced back to the Sumerians and probably even earlier in man’s unrecorded history. Industrial Hemp is not Marijuana though the two plants are of the same family and have passing resemblance to one another. Industrial Hemp’s myriad uses are being rediscovered and at the forefront of research in diverse fields. I will be attempting to dispel some of the myth, and providing history and proven uses of this amazing plant.

There are over 25,000 other economically feasible and environmentally friendly uses for marijuana including diesel fuel, insulation, paper, paint, beauty products and even food as its protein content is second only to soy (Mehling 11). With all of these environmentally friendly uses for hemp it seems almost irresponsible to not take advantage of its many advantages.

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,