Hemp Potential Billion Dollar Industry

I must start by saying that I was taught early in life that "hemp" was an evil thing. Bearing this in mind, I stayed purposely oblivious of hemp, thinking it was cannabis, or marijuana. Someone had told me of hemp rope, but I regarded that an issue of the past, and that the alternate, nylon rope I commonly utilised was a greater product, mainly because I regarded hemp as "old fashioned"...I could not have been more mistaken. Had I been able to make the clear distinction between the two , I would have realized that there is only a tiny resemblance involving hemp and cannabis.

The only concern here was that we would no longer be producing cheap materials that didn't last out the year-something hemp would eliminate. Cars that would withstand crashes far better, longer lasting clothing, hemp protein in our diets containing all the essential amino and fatty acids to sustain human life. The list goes on, it's not just another rope, your jeans would outlast the current jeans, what to do? Actual good quality merchandise that was worth the money and lasted.

Why was hemp blacklisted andproferred the worst status placed on any plant on earth? What was so 'evil' about hemp that it had to be decimated or our planet would fall apart?
They also used to think that the world was flat . They used to say eggs were bad due to the cholesterol present in the yoke, and it took years to restore the harm they did to the egg industry- after finally figuring out that there is more than one type of chlorestoral. Had they NOT found that fact out in time, theyin all probability would have destroyed a perfectly good industry. ironically, because they DID wipe out an industry (hemp). That industry didn't just cover one element of our economy, it would have revolutionized how we made things; what we ate, our clothing and our buildings. Hemp could also have given us a far greater alternative to gasoline

Hemp was supressed because of the industries that sought to take it's place -or, that wanted to make sure no one took their place. They, meaning the leading industrialists of their day , which happened to be around the 1930's. Understanding that a low cost, plentiful source that covered more than one area that effected our economy would be radically difficult to handle. Logistically, their only recourse was to "hex" hemp by use of it's cousin: cannabis. They removed hemp as a legal source of energy, food, clothing and building materials.
You may be thinking ...marijuana, terriblething, stoned people wandering around aimlessly in life, hippies getting high and living worthless lives. What a picture that has been painted.
As we delve deeper here, there is a whole lot of cover-up happening here; manipulation of the public, misinformation in the extreme, a campaign to demonize a plant, and it wasn't even the right plant. Actually, hemp is not marijuana(cannabis sativa -sativa means "useful" in Latin), you couldn't "roll up" enough hemp to get high( Think of smoking a field full of hemp in order to get a "high").
Why then is it illegal to grow hemp in your back yard garden? Who remembers? You would have to have a permit right now, to grow hemp in your own back yard, or you could be considered a criminal.Really makes you think what they are really up too..
Let's take a look backwards. In 1937 Popular Science magazine (founded 1872, with 1,312,175 bi-annual distribution) regarded hemp "the worlds next billion dollar industry", in the good old days yet.

Here's some quick facts:
Henry Ford used hemp to manufacture the body of one of his first cars. Here's the difficulty, how often do you fix a door that absorbs over 10 times the stress of steel? What would the steel industry do?

Levi Strauss Jeans were made from hemp . Problem: they out-wear cotton by a long time.

Benjamin Franklin grew his own hemp, for a paper mill he owned- , and we all know how evil he was.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp, imagine the scandal? you would think that men like this would be smart enough to see problem if one existed...

Hemp cloth resists mildewing, it's stronger and outlasts cotton, as well as being less expensive to produce,
Big names caught on that hemp could be used not only to make cloth better. Hemp was a better source of material for many things , the likes of; William Randolph Hearst (American newspaper magnate), Pierre DuPont (Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours...DuPont Chemicals-nylon) and his backer in the government, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, could get a handle on. Our government actually requested we grow hemp as a crop years ago.
In fact, if you will notice, most of our society is made up of things that don't last very long. These Corporate Magnates knew how much competition they already had if they allowed hemp to succeed and didn't stomp it out quickly. Hemp wasn't "evil", it was competition.

More facts:

Hemp is cultivated in almost every other country with the exception of the United States , etc.

George Bush's parachute, that saved his life in WWII was made from hemp canvas .

As it turns out, hemp also makes a great alternative fuel (big oil companies), The seeds from hemp are very nutritious and can be made into a variety of things, including hemp milk, instead of soy milk, and it contains essential amino and fatty acids, necessary to maintiain human life. Are you nonetheless fearful to consume hemp seed? Even if hemp can come from your trustworthy market? Don't fret, I was also, thing is, it is ok, We just have to think about it as something new, that has modern research, and that can help our bodies.

If anything, we should be getting a picture that hemp is the total opposite of the add campaign used to destroy it's purpose.
Hemp is NOT marijuana. This is one of the most difficult things to overcome, it is beneficial in the extreme, it could even improve our economy.
THC is what makes marijuana give a person a high, and gives a "drug-like" effect, Hemp has so little THC that it would take a boat load of the stuff, smoked in a few minutes to get high.
The substitutes that have been made are all derived from sensimilla, that is the female version of the Cannabis sativa plant (marijuana). This has absolutely nothing to do with hemp, which cannot make anybody high. As it turns out, the substitutes are just patented forms of the same thing-that's big-brother pharmaceutical companies trying to take over the market, legalize it for recreational use so they can make a profit and our government could legally tax those who use it.
So, hemp, can't do what marijuana does, and, marijuana can't do what hemp does. You don't want to eat marijuana seeds-I don't recommend doing it, and you CAN eat hemp seeds, in fact, it's good for you.

Hemp farming was mandatory in the 1600's, in fact, through most American History hemp has been the popular crop to grow. The first American Hemp law was passed in Jamestown colony, out of Virginia. That law made farmers grow hemp, without exception, or be hauled off to jail...what happened? If something is considered beneficial for hundreds of years, and kept without trouble or complaint, what made it go off of the range? Was it something as ludicrous as prohibition, which only fueled the fires of alcohol as an illegal trade? If you prohibited all alcohol, you couldn't even cook with it.
In the 1600's you could use hemp as currancy, you could even pay your taxes directly with hemp. In fact, for over 200 years hemp was popular, and remained so and profitable as a crop until hemps counterpart-cannabis sativa, was "demonized" into a recreational drug in the 1900's.

"Marijuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." - 1930 Harry J. Anslinger Head of the bureau of narcotics. I can only imagine what kind of world Harry lived in, this and McCarthyism, prohibition, The Great Depression. Imagine being African American in those days and not being allowed to step on a "white" mans shadow...These men created the laws out of their own imaginations, and this needs to change.

Around the Mexican-American War, the mexicans smuggled marijuana over the border, no distinctions were made between hemp and marijuana, and it was, after all, the wild west, so they simply banned both substances. Worse things in history have been done. Our job is to educate the differences, as hemp could even stand the potential to turn our economy around, and send farmers back to farming.

Henry Ford said to a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future", this happened back in 1925, and his opinion was broadly accepted in the automotive industry.

"The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust - almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

Ford knew what the hemp plant could do, in fact, he made his car from the stiff hemp fiber, and ran the car off of ethanol created from hemp. He also knew what hemp could do for the economy-were it put to even part of it's uses. But, what would have happened to certain emerging industries that didn't want to go down because of hemp?