FYI

[Nathan Fisher]

A history lesson:

In the late 1930's (culminating in 1937) interests from the Petrochemical, Cotton, Paper (from Trees), and Pharmaceutical companies conspired to eliminate competition from the fully sustainable pesticide-free crop Hemp.

Harry J. Anslinger (Temperance, Racist, Prohibitionist)
William Hearst (Paper Baron, Yellow Journalist)
Both shared the same banker as Du Pont Chemical, which just filed a patent for Nylon that year (a petrochemical synthetic fiber which they did not want to compete with histories oldest, best natural fiber, Hemp)

So goes the history of the conspiracy of the devil weed marijuana.

Since the repeal of that law in the 1960's, Nixon put into federal law the Control Substances Act of 1970, which introduced the federal drug schedule, which classifies marijuana as Schedule 1, while it's less effective pharmaceutical counterpart, Marinol, is Schedule 3.

The federal drug schedule is not based on medical science. It is a directed, political attack on the poor, youth, and ethnic minorities of this nation by the Nixon administration. The same man that later resigned over being impeached for interfering with an election.

We have let it grow to be the costliest domestic war in this nations history. Regulation reduces harm. Prohibition promotes violence. In all cases. Regulation worked for tobacco, which still kills more people than all illicit substances combined every year. Cannabis has killed 0 people in 10,000 years of recorded history.

End the madness.

Restore the American Hemp Industry for a clean sustainable economic future for America.

"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?"
~ Henry Ford ~

Cannabis hemp - indeed the plant we denigrate with the slang name marijuana - will become known to future generations, as it was known to past generations for millennia, as the number-one annually renewable, fully sustainable, non pesticide-requiring and most abundant source of paper/fiber/fuel/food/medicine on the face of the Earth; with more overall uses than any other known plant.

Hemp seed oil is 3x more productive per acre than other seed oil crops like soybean and rapeseed (canola). Hemp requires no pesticides and is beneficial to soil, so it is excellent in a crop rotation.

300 gallons of seed oil per acre based on wild hemp in illinois.

Those same seeds also produce 6,000 lbs of the healthiest plant protein for humans...

End World Hunger! 

End Oil Wars and Support Clean Sustainable Domestic Industry!

“God makes the Earth yield healing herbs, which the prudent man should not neglect.” Sirach: 38:4 (Catholic Bible.)

Please print this information as soon as possible or respond with editorial suggestions :-)

Flax and Hemp

by George A. Lowry

1938, MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/FAH 02-00-1938.pdf

Hemp Produces Large Crops with Little Attention

Hemp, the strongest of the vegetable fibers, gives the greatest production per acre and requires the least attention. It not only requires no weeding but also kills off all the weeds and leaves the soil in splendid condition for the following crop. This, irrespective of its own monetary value, makes it a desirable crop to grow. In climate and cultivation, its requisites are similar to flax and, like flax, should be harvested before it is too ripe. The best time is when the lower leaves on the stalk wither and the flowers shed their pollen.

Like flax, the fibers run out where leaf stems are on the stalks and are made up of laminated fibers that are held together by pectose gums. When chemically treated like flax, hemp yields a beautiful fiber so closely resembling flax that a high-power microscope is needed to tell the difference and only then, be- cause in hemp, some of the ends are split. ~Wetting a few strands of each fiber and holding them suspended will definitely identify the two because, upon drying, flax will be found to turn to the right or clockwise and hemp to the left or counter- clockwise.

Before the war, Russia produced 400,000 tons of hemp, all of which is still hand-broken and hand-scutched. They now produce half that quantity and use most of it themselves, as also does Italy from whom we formerly had large importations. In this country, hemp, when planted 1 bu per acre, yields about 3 tons of dry straw per acre. From 15 to 20 per cent of this is fiber and 80 to 85 per cent is woody material. The rapidly growing market for cellulose and wood flour for plastics gives good reason to believe that this hitherto wasted material may prove sufficiently profitable to pay for the crop, leaving the cost of the fiber sufficiently low to compete with 500,000 tons of hard fiber now imported annually. Hemp being from two to three times as strong as any of the hard fibers, much less weight is required to give the same yardage. For instance, sisal binder twine of 40 lb tensile strength runs 450 ft to the lb. A better twine made of hemp would run 1280 ft to the lb. Hemp is not subject to as many kinds of deterioration as are the tropical fibers and none of them lasts as long in either fresh or salt water.

While the theory, in the past, has been that straw should be cut when the pollen starts to fly, some of the best fiber handled by Minnesota hemp people was heavy with seed. This point should be proved as soon as possible by planting a few acres and then harvesting the first quarter when the pollen is flying, the second and third a week or ten days apart, and the last when the seed is fully matured. These four lots should be kept separate and scutched and processed separately to detect any difference in the quality and quantity of the fiber and seed.

Several types of machine are available in this country for harvesting hemp. One of these was brought out several years ago by the International Harvester Company. Recently, growers of hemp in the Middle West have rebuilt regular grain binders for this work. This rebuilding is not particularly expensive and the machines are reported to give satisfactory service.

Degumming of hemp is analogous to the treatment given flax. The shards probably offer slightly more resistance to digestion. On the other hand, they break down readily upon the completion of the digestion process. An excellent fiber can, therefore, be obtained from hemp also. Hemp, when treated by a known chemical process, can be spun on cotton, wool, and worsted machinery and has as much absorbency and wearing quality as linen.

SCUTCHING MACHINERY

Several types of machine for scutching the hemp stalks are also on the market. Scutch mills formerly operating in Illinois and Wisconsin used the system that consisted of a set of eight pairs of fluted rollers, through which the dried straw was passed to break up the woody portion. From there, the fiber with adhering shards or hurds, as they are called, was transferred by an operator to an endless-chain conveyor. This carries the hurds past two revolving single drums in tandem or between two opposing pairs of drums in tandem,all having beating blades on their periphery, which beat off most of the hurds as well as the fibers that do not run the full length of the stalks. The proportion of line fiber to tow is 50 per cent each. Tow gr short tangled fiber then goes to a vibrating cleaner that shakes out some of the hurds.

In Minnesota and Illinois, another type has been tried out. This machine consists of a feeding table upon which the stalks are placed horizontally. Conveyor chains carry the stalks along until they are grasped by a clamping chain that grips them and carries them through half of the machine. A pair of inter-meshing lawn-mower type beaters are placed at a 45-deg angle to the feeding chain and break the hemp stalks over the sharp edge of a steel plate, the object being to break the woody portion of the straw and whip the hurds from the fiber. 

On the other side and slightly beyond the first set of lawnmower bearers is another set, which is placed 90 deg from the first pair and breaks the other end of the straw over a similar sharp-edged steel plate and whips out the hurds. The first clamping chain transfers the stalks to another to scutch the fiber that was under the clamp at the beginning. Unfortunately, this type of scutcher makes even more tow than the so-called Wisconsin type. This tow is difficult to reclean because the hurds are broken into long slivers that tenaciously adhere to the fiber.

Another type passes the stalks through a series of graduated fluted rollers. This breaks up the woody portion into hurds about 3/S in. long and the fiber then passes on through a series of reciprocating slotted plates working between stationary slotted plates. Adhering hurds are removed from the fiber which continues on a conveyor to the baling press. Because no beating of the fiber against the grain occurs, this type of scutcher makes only line fiber. This is then processed by the same methods as were described for flax.

Paint and lacquer manufacturers are interested in hempseed oil which is a good drying agent. When markets have been developed for the products now being wasted, seed and hurds, hemp will prove, both for the farmer and the public, the most profitable and desirable crop that can be grown and one that can make American mills independent of importations. Recent floods and dust storms have given warnings against the destruction of timber. Possibly, the hitherto waste products of flax and hemp may yet meet a good part of that need, especially in the plastic field which is growing by leaps and bounds.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/CCI 00-08-1937.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/HWA 10-31-1921.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/HTB 01-27-1923.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/GHS 05-30-42.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/HXX 01-00-1943.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/AHO 00-00-1951.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/MXX 12-00-1969.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/638274/Hemp Research/OSU_Hemp_Study.pdf

~Nathan Fisher~

http://osu-ssdp.info/

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

On Jun 1, 2010, at 1:15 PM, Barometer_Forum wrote:

Hey Nathan,

If you want to write a letter we could probably get it in, but no guarantees. It should be below 300 words.

Jon


On 5/28/10 10:50 PM, "Nathan Fisher" <natha...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/cancerstudy.htm

Please consider printing this vital information for students to read. I would also consider writing a letter to the editor if you think it will be printed before the end of the term.

Nathan Fisher
Students for Sensible Drug Policy
fis...@onid.orst.edu
ss...@lists.oregonstate.edu
http://osu-ssdp.info/