HempWhy It Should Be Legalize Essay Research

Hemp,Why It Should Be Legalize Essay, Research Paper

Stephen Mullins

Hemp, Why It Should Be Legalized

When the subject of hemp is brought up, most of us think of an illegal plant that produces a hallucinogenic high when the flowers or leaves are eaten or smoked. A plant that corrupts our youth, causing our teenagers to drop out of school or use the drug as a stepping stone for harder drugs such as cocaine or heroin. Does any of this sound familiar.

What do you think would happen to these beliefs you have if you were to find out the information given to you was one sided. That hemp was really a commendable plant. A plant that could be used to help worldwide with the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing, and shelter. A plant that could help save our natural resources by using hemp fiber for paper instead of trees and hemp seed oil to run our cars instead of gasoline. Would you still want this natural resource to be illegal, or would you consider legalizing it after hearing both sides.

The first goal to understanding hemp and all the wonderful properties it retains is that it is not marijuana, its notorious cousin. Hemp and marijuana are varieties of the same plant, cannabis sativa L. ( Isn t Hemp ). The difference between the two varieties of plants is two cannabinoid proteins; the first called delta-9 tetrahdrocannabinol, or THC, and the second protein being cannibidiol, or CBD . These two proteins mentioned are the difference between getting high when smoking or eating the flowers or leafs from the two plants. THC is what creates the high and CBD is what lowers it. That s why you get high when you smoke marijuana, because it contains high levels of THC and low levels of CBD, while hemp on the other hand has low THC (less than 1%) and high amounts of CBD ( Isn t Hemp ).

The second difference between the two plants is their physical structure;

Hemp, grown for its fiber, has been selectively grown to produce a much thicker-stalked plant with fewer leaves and flowers. Marijuana on the other hand is grown for the THC-containing leaves and flowers, so it has been selectively bred to produce a plant which produces more foliage than stalk ( Isn t Hemp ).

Now, . . .Knowing the chemical and physical difference between hemp and marijuana, we can now look at hemp as an individual plant without the bad publicity of its cousin, marijuana.

If we look back to the early colonial times when America was starting out, we can see that hemp was an indispensable raw material used in everyday life. Hemp helped to provide the essentials for life and keep the colonies going (Roulac 32).

The long fiber of the hemp plant was used for very desirable textiles (mainly clothes and shoes). Its antimildew and antimicrobial properties were perfect for sails and rope. The medium fiber produced from the hemp plant is what produced the paper the colonies needed for such things as books, bibles and maps. They also used it for their newspaper, and eventually for the Declaration of Independence. The short core fiber of the hemp plant was used for animal bedding and animal food. It also served as a direct and sturdier replacement for wood in construction materials (Roulac 13-14).

Even the seeds of the hemp plant played their role. The seeds were used as a protein source that tasted better than soybean, and could be processed into milk, cheese, ice cream, and butter among other foods. Hemp seed oil was burned in lamps and used to make soap. Seed meal could be blended with other grains for many kinds of baking goods (flour and breads) (Roulac 14-15).

In fact, in 1619;

Jamestown Colony, Virginia enacts the New World s first marijuana legislation, ordering all farmers to grow Indian hemp seed. Mandatory hemp laws were passed in Massachusetts in 1631 and in Connecticut in 1632 (A Concise History).

These laws were enacted for the simple fact that without the proper supply of hemp it could effect the cordage needed for our ships.

Every major colonial port had a least one rope walk, which made cordage and sailcloth (or duck). Hemp was the ingredient for ropes and usually also for sailcloth (although linen and cotton were also used). For ropemaking, the natural glue was washed out of soaked, decomposed hemp; then the hemp fibers were separated and split. Spinning was accomplished by walking the fibers through a spreader, a drawing frame, and two sets of rollers. (Ward 91)

And since hemp was used for barter, farmers not complying with law could be imprisoned. Some colonies even let you pay your taxes with hemp (Ward 105).

It isn t until the late eighteenth century that we start to see a decline in the use of hemp. Technology starts to come about with new inventions such as the cotton gin (a machine that separates the seeds, hulls, and foreign material from cotton) that cuts labor costs in half, or the steam engine which started replacing the rope and sails on ships ( Cotton Gin 295).

These kinds of inventions hampered hemp crops until February 1917, when an inventor named George Schlichten invented the decorticator (Hemp 33-34). A machine capable of stripping the fiber of any plant, and leaving behind the pulp, an answer to the hemp industries six thousand year old problem. Hemp now could produce more than five thousand textile products from rope to fine la

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