Industrial Hemp: A Win-Win For The Economy, The Environment & The People.
Hemp is restoring the agricultural economy, dealing with climate change, and is being used as one of the greatest medicines on the planet. Says who? In Colorado farmer Ryan Loflin’s words:
“Hemp takes half the water that wheat does, and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate change era.”
Industrial hemp was once a dominant crop on the American landscape. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper, and even the finest Bible paper today remains hemp-based. Henry Ford even built a prototype car from biocomposite materials, using agricultural fiber such as hemp. The herb was (and still is) used to make fabric, food, fuel, plastics, construction material, insulation, paper and auto parts.
All that changed in 1937 when the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in the United States, defining hemp along with marijuana as a narcotic; even though it contains nearly none of the chemical that gives marijuana its intoxicating agent — less than 0.3% THC to be precise. Hemp cultivation was formally prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which clubbed cannabis alongside heroin and LSD as a Schedule 1 substance, a category defined as “drugs with a high potential for abuse.”
However, a sustained resurgence of interest in allowing commercial cultivation of industrial hemp by a diverse, but increasingly politically influential and unified group of businesses, farmers, nutritionists, activists, and green consumers, began in the United States in the early 1990s. The US Farm Bill – signed into law in 2014 – defined industrial hemp as distinct from marijuana, allowing universities and state agriculture departments to begin cultivating hemp for research purposes in states where it was legal.
Thus far in the United States, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Virginia have adopted pro-hemp laws.
This March, members of the Pennsylvania Senate voted 49-0, a unanimous vote, in favor of industrial hemp. Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc., noted:
“Industrial
hemp is making its way back… Pennsylvania is soon to be yet another
state to become part of a new clean, green agricultural and industrial
American revolution that, based on the economics and products derived
from hemp, is set to be the next billion dollar industry.”
Hemp, Inc. observes:
“While
legalizing industrial hemp is economically advantageous for America, the
legalization of medical marijuana seems to be equally as strong
economically. The cannabis industry can reach upwards of 22 billion dollars by the year 2020
that could result from the compounded effects of legalization of
marijuana throughout the nation. As the industry becomes “more and more
palatable to communities around the nation”, job growth and tax revenues
inevitably increase.”
Despite changes in the federal policy, American farmers still can’t produce and cultivate industrial hemp. It is still considered a narcotic and farmers need to get permission from the US Drug Enforcement Administration to grow hemp, regardless of whether they have a state-issued permit. In 2014, the DEA even seized 250 pounds of hemp seed in Kentucky — the seeds, imported from Italy, were destined for research projects.
In January of 2015, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act was introduced in the House and Senate, H.R. 525 and S. 134. If passed, all current restrictions on the cultivation of industrial hemp would be removed, along with its classification as a Schedule 1 controlled substance.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you found this information helpful, please share it with your friends and family. Your support in our endeavor of sharing free information would be much appreciated.
Follow us on Facebook to stay updated with what's going Viral in the Alternative News scene. https://www.facebook.com/ViralAlternativeNews
By AnonHQ.com
This article (Why Tte United States must Decriminalize Industrial Hemp) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
