HEMP ARTICLE - GOOD

[Leslie Davis]

Information is coming out about the benefits of "Da Plant" and I'd like to share it.
In solidarity,
Leslie Davis

As Marijuana Legalization Continues, Industrial Hemp Legalization May Be Next

By  Kathleen Caulderwood @kcaulderwoodk.caul...@ibtimes.com 

February 21 2015

Hemp was once a popular crop among American farmers, but it has been outlawed along with marijuana for decades. But farmers are advocating for the crop's return based on its economic potential. Wikimedia Commons

Kentucky farmer Andy Graves recently brought his father to see the latest crop on the family farm. Moments before the 89-year-old saw the plants, he could smell them.

“When my dad walked back to see the first fields, his eyes just lit up,” Graves says. “He said the smell was so distinct. There’s no other smell like hemp.”

Hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant, once grew by the acre on the Graves’ family farm, but disappeared after authorities outlawed the crop along with its sister species of marijuana. Even though it contains nearly none of the chemical that gives marijuana its intoxicating agent, hemp has been illegal for decades in the U.S.

But Graves, who planted a small crop last year, was the first of a handful of American farmers allowed to do so under a government research program. Although his latest crop is nothing compared with the 500 acres that once stood during his grandfather’s time, it represents the beginning of a long-awaited economic revolution.

“The business that we’re talking about today is so far and above the business my father saw and knew,” Graves says.

Hemp was once a mainstay for American farmers such as those in the Graves family, but has been outlawed for generations under regulations fearing marijuana cultivation. After decades of advocacy, a boost from the growing national interest in cannabis, rapid legalization and recent bipartisan support from lawmakers, hemp could be coming back in a big, and lucrative, way.

Most people associate hemp with braided bracelets and itchy shirts worn by college students who sip organic green tea in dormitory common rooms across the country. But hemp’s biggest advocates nowadays are more interested in economics than in philosophy.

“The economics alone are enough to convince anyone,” says Eric Steenstra, executive director of the Hemp Industries Association. Despite the fact that hemp farming is illegal, the U.S. is the world’s biggest consumer of it, importing $580 million worth in 2013, with predicted double-digit percentage growth, according to Steenstra.

Hemp is legally grown in 30 countries around the world. Most of the world’s supply comes from Canada, Steenstra says. After farmers and universities started researching hemp in 1994, Canada authorized industrial production in 1998 -- and it’s been paying off.

Canadian farmers are selling hemp for CAD80 cents (64 cents) per pound, while canola sells for roughly CAD18 cents (14 cents) per pound, even though the input costs are roughly the same, according to CBC News.

The marijuana used for smoking and the hemp used for other purposes are both varieties of the same cannabis plant, but different in terms of their chemical makeup and the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is responsible for inducing a high, they contain.

Canada and the European Union define hemp as containing less than 0.3 percent THC, while marijuana can contain anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent. Generally, about 1 percent THC is considered the threshold for marijuana to “have intoxicating potential.”

When harvested, hemp can be used in a variety of ways. The seeds can be processed to create a nutrient-rich oil or a protein-rich meal, while the stalks can be turned into fiber that can be used in products such as fabric or paper.

Opponents of hemp legalization say the plants look too similar to marijuana plants used for other activities, and would give criminals an opportunity to cultivate illegal drugs in plain sight. U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, recently told Politicothat the “confusion and potential commingling lends itself to an easier path for illegal marijuana growth across the country.”

However, a recent report by the Congressional Research Service outlines a few key differences. Marijuana is cultivated to stay short and bushy to facilitate as many flowers, or buds, as possible, and the plants grow close together. Hemp farmers give their plants more space and encourage them to grow tall and produce one long stalk with just a few leaves.

Hemp plants are cultivated to grow much taller and thin, unlike marijuana plants meant to produce buds, or flowers.  Wikimedia Commons

This approach was the most common one used for the tens of thousands of tons of hemp grown every year by American farmers once upon a time.

American farmers have been growing hemp since the late 1800s,according to the Congressional Research Service, citing the Hemp Industries Association. But state governments did have a problem with people growing the flower for psychotropic reasons and sought to restrict its recreational use.

In the 1920s, it was among a handful of regulated drugs in many states. The Uniform Narcotic Drug Act noted that “there is little or no connection between the use of hemp drugs and crime, and that consuming it in moderation “very rarely” led to violence.

The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act defined hemp, along with marijuana, as a narcotic. Although it did not criminalize its production, it did require that all farmers only grow it for medical or industrial use, and register before growing it. They also had to secure a special tax stamp.

Image of a Marihuana revenue stamp $1 1937 issue from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing  Wikimedia Commons

Regardless, production still flourished. In 1943, the U.S. grew 75,000 tons of hemp fiber on a little more than 146,000 acres, and Popular Scienceestimated the crop size would more than double the next year.

In fact, it was a big part of the World War II effort. In 1942, a U.S. government film urged farmers to grow “hemp for victory,” after outlining how the plant had once been used for everything from the ships at sea to covered wagons of the pioneers, while typically being imported from abroad. But since sources in the Philippines and other parts of Asia were “in the hands of the Japanese,” “American Hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as our industries.”

According to the above video, “patriotic farmers” planted 36,000 acres of seed hemp at the government’s request in 1942, with plans for more.

Production continued into the next decade, but soon petered out. By the 1950s, the federal government had imposed mandatory jail time for possession of illegal cannabis. And in 1970 came the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, which included cannabis as a Schedule 1 substance, a category defined as “drugs with a high potential for abuse,” which also included heroin and LSD.

But that didn’t stop Americans from buying hemp products. Advocates have been lobbying to bring hemp cultivation back to the U.S. for decades, and things finally seem to be picking up steam.

“It’s becoming ever more ridiculous,” says David Bronner, CEO and president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a longtime advocate of hemp legalization. “Nobody brings up opium when they eat a poppy-seed bagel; this is a very similar situation.”

Bronner: David Bronner tends to his industrial hemp as he stages a protest inside a steel cage, in front of the White House in Washington June 11, 2012. Bronner was protesting federal policy that prevents U.S. farmers from growing industrial hemp. Bronner is CEO of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps  Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Bronner gained notoriety in 2012 when he locked himself in a metal cage outside the White House and proceeded to process a handful of hemp plants into enough oil to spread on to a piece of bread. According to the Washington Post, police had to cut him out of the cage with a chainsaw, and he was then charged with possession of marijuana.

But things are slowly changing.

“We’ve had a lot of allies doing a lot of hard work,” Bronner says. “Plus, as marijuana itself is being rescheduled, the debate is moving forward.”

As of February, marijuana is legal for use in some form in 23 states, including two, Colorado and Washington, that allow for recreational use among adults, with Alaska and Oregon planning to join them this year. The past few years have seen marijuana brought to the forefront of policy narratives and public discussion, which has been helping raise hemp’s profile.

In 2013, a majority of Americans polled by Gallup said they were in favor of marijuana legalization for the first time ever, and their sentiments keep going strong.

“They should be separate conversations, but they are influencing each other,” Bronner says.

He’s one of many who have been advocating local production of hemp for decades now. And over the past few years they’ve gotten more and more people on board -- including a few politicians.

The 2014 Farm Bill, aka the Agricultural Act of 2014, included a provision to allow some people to begin growing industrial hemp, provided it is for “purposes of research conducted under an agricultural pilot program or other agricultural or academic research,” and complies with state law.

This means that a handful of universities and small groups of farmers, including Graves, have grown their first crops this year. With special permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, of course.

But that seems to be just the beginning. And the cause has been gaining traction.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who introduced his first bill on the subject in 2007, has been leading a bipartisan movement to remove hemp from the legal definition of “marihuana.”

This January, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore, introduced the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015, and Rep. Thomas Massiel, R-Ky., introduced a companion bill with 50 co-sponsors on both sides of the political aisle.

“Allowing farmers throughout our nation to cultivate industrial hemp and benefit from its many uses will boost our economy and bring much-needed jobs to the agricultural industry,” Paul said in a press release last month.

And farmers such as Andy Graves certainly hope that’s true. While he knows the economic benefits of hemp, he’s also quick to point out that he takes a spoonful of the nutritious oil every day.

The family farm used to grow tobacco, but its owners ultimately decided against it more than 15 years ago.

“We realized that we were promoting the use of a product that could kill you,” he says. “Hemp, on the other hand, is nothing but good.”

------------------------------------------------------

[Dan Feidt]

By the way everyone next Mn Leg hemp hearing is up Feb 25! In Senate Judiciary SF618!

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?b=senate&f=SF618&ssn=0&y=2015

last hearing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEi2gaRp0Ec

http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/departments/scr/billsumm/summary_display_from_db.php?ls=89&id=2558

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[Oliver Steinberg]

There's a falsehood buried in this story which gives the whole thing away.  The 1937 law didn't "define hemp, ALONG WITH marijuana, as a narcotic."   It defined hemp, or rather re-defined hemp, AS "marihuana."   
 The  hemp profiteers are a bunch of greedy hypocrites, using the information discovered and publicized by freedom fighter Jack Herer not as he intended--to end the injustice of cannabis prohibition--but rather to make a buck while deliberately turning their backs on the human victims of Anslinger's racist laws.  
     I'm sorry to say it but the profiteers of the hemp lobby are NOT working in the common cause of cannabis liberation--but pursuing a "separate and unequal" botanical Jim Crow . . . and with an unconscious but nevertheless real racial inequity built in--- not deliberately but just as definitively.

There never was any such thing as "marihuana" or "marijuana."   It was always and still is hemp.  
     Now, there are different strains of hemp--some are better for smoking or otherwise ingesting for psychoactive results; others are more suitable for fiber, for hurds, for the seeds (which provide nutrition as well as oils extracted for solvents and so forth.)

     I don't like to waste time, effort, and attention on bogus diversions from the two basic points---cannabis prohibition must be repealed across the board (which would remove ALL obstacles to hemp cultivation without further effort!); and past victims or present prisoners victimized by that prohibition must have their records cleared and their civil rights fully restored and respected.

     The legislative promotion of hemp exploitation is an attempt by some lawmakers to seek incremental reform of cannabis laws but it is out of date and out of synch with the public,
 which even in Minnesota prefers to move to legal markets for smokeable hemp as well as for industrial strains.
 It's also an attempt by other, cynical, duplicitous or maybe just ignorant lawmakers who have no interest in ending prohibition, but who want to mislead their voters--to appear to be somewhat sympathetic to the necessary basic reform, when in fact they are hostile.
     

     -- Ollie Steinberg

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[Dan Feidt]

Oliver, you're a veteran of Capitol things. I just don't see a problem with dividing cannabis reform into three chunks: industrial, medical, personal use. Why not just try to put every chunk on the board whenever we get the chance? It shouldn't be that awkward an approach to consider. Likewise reducing enforcement in MN is not the same as full personal use, but it shifts the ground and gives us momentum again.

Also look at the lay of the land for this session. Mary Franson defeated a gonzo drugwarrior in her primary, and was attacked for being a hippie by them for going this far earlier. (GOP sponsor, who is actually connecting now to family farm world, not just corporate ag)

I was just at the New England Cannabis Convention and it was nice to see a lot of industry elements on display. I would think of this as adding an industrial / family agriculture flank onto the crowd that I saw this weekend is a move that is totally defensible and shortens the path to general legalization while also putting prohibitionists on the defensive *on another front*.

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[Oliver Steinberg]

Dan,  A lot of my outlook is based on the political philosophy developed by Robert La Follette a century ago in Wisconsin.  He was one of the most successful reformers in American history.   His analysis of issues tried to establish what the basic step was, and keep that as the focus of political and popular effort. 
     He discovered that opponents of reform often played for time by offering purported compromises that seemed attractive at first glance but really fell short of the needed basic reform; and this was an effective way to both discredit the reform and to relieve public demand, because the people mistakenly thought that the fight was won. 
       We see that this is happening in Minnesota where the majority of the public (misled of course by the news media) thinks that we've adopted medical marijuana in this state similar to the more open reforms of places like Oregon and Colorado.

      An even clearer example was the movement in the 1970's to replace severe prohibition statutes with so-called decriminalization laws which reduced penalties for possession of small amounts, but left production and distribution entirely criminalized.   This was supposed to be a stepping stone to legalization but simply turned out to be a stepping stone into the closet for consumers. 
      I am aware that there is validity to the "gradualistic" step-by-step approach to reform--but like Fighting Bob La Follette, I insist that each step must be a FULL step.   That is why I am urging us to concentrate on personal use legalization along with amnesty (if not reparations) for victims of prohibition.

     Commercial  hemp promoters and profiteers have been less than intellectually honest and I think one must proceed with caution in that kind of company.   The Hemp Association headquartered in Vermont, the promoters of Hemp History Week, produced a glossy brochure supposedly about hemp history in America, which didn't even mention the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act!

     That's like writing about World War II without mentioning Pearl Harbor.

     As was just re-confirmed by the poll conducted for MN-NORML, right now, public opinion increasingly favors personal use legalization and therefore now is the time to not get sidetracked.  
       Non-psychoactive hemp is essentially a niche crop.   Without Jack Herer's book, no one would know about it now be talking about it or be dreaming of getting rich off of it.   Fact is, hemp's popularity in food products and similar retailed items, despite its cost, is almost entirely due to its being a spinoff from the popularity of cannabis culture, and THAT is based on using the plant to get high, and on our longing for the healing of the nations which smokeable hemp portends.

      We used to say, Hemp will save the planet--and theoretically it could help wean us from petrochemical addiction (as Chris Wright explained with his "grassoline" plank on energy policy)--but the infrastructure and economic will to achieve that doesn't yet exist.

       The surest way, the simplest way, the quickest way, and the most PRACTICAL way to restore hemp as a crop would be to end prohibition on personal use.   Once that is solved, the rationale for obstructing or hobbling hemp farming evaporates overnight.

      But the hemp profiteers who want so desperately to divorce their product from smokable hemp are only reinforcing reefer madness, not reducing it.

      Pick a box of hemp cereal from the shelf--covered with cannabis-leaf art--and notice the "Drug-Free" caption emblazoned on it.    These hypocrites want to exploit the public's affection for what that leaf represents--what it really represents!--but they don't have the moral principles and convictions to stand in solidarity with the human victims of racist drug-war repression and mass incarceration.    As a lobby, as an industry-on-the-make, they don't want to get people out of jail, to rectify gross injustices, to make America a better country.   They just want to make a buck.  (I could see some of them being satisfied to set up their hemp plantations and have them cultivated by chain gangs of "marijuana" prisoners.)

      That's why I have so little use for them or interest in their schemes.   If Rep. Mary Franson was drug-baited in her primary--did that experience make her question the underlying lies that are the premise of prohibition in the first place, or did it merely make her paranoid about the supposed political peril of being identified with the righteous cause of repealing those racially-inspired and racist-enforced acts of injustice?

      Rep. Kahn, who said years ago in writing she supports full legalization, is so sidetracked by this hemp issue that she won't react to the opportunity presented for more meaningful reforms, such as the legalization bills already introduced in many other state.   I respect her but respectfully disagree with her approach.

      It is possible to disagree in politics without becoming enemies or antagonists.   This hemp contretemps doesn't mean I don't understand those whose viewpoint is different--I just draw on my own experience and memories to provide perspective.

     By the way, Minnesota already enacted a hemp-growing law way back when Jesse Ventura was Governor---but the DEA blocked its implementation.

      This reply is lengthier than one is supposed to use on the Internet, but I felt your queries deserved thoughtful responses.

     I may have missed a point or two.  Happy to polish them off if you wish--but later, because there's lots of other stuff that needs doing.

-- Ollie

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[Randy Quast]

Hear, hear! Thanks Oliver!

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[Marcus Harcus]

Hear, hear, Oliver! 

FYI: I broke the virginity of a farmer who has been meeting with authors  sponsors of both the House and Senate hemp bills and attended the most recent committee hearing which passed unanimously, and he's being recruited to testify. I've also brought my friend who was recently accepted into a PhD program to study Cannabis Genetics to advise him and we may get this guy farming hemp in the near future. 

With all that said, I feel both Dan and Oliver's positions are legit, but I'm feeling Oliver because as much as I'm personally enthusiastic about cannabusiness, I'm most concerned about ending the criminalization war against cannabis consumers like us, to end the structurally racist enforcement of prohibition and eliminate the stigmas... Let's go!

Thx for everything!

Marcus Harcus (mh) | Executive Director | 612.749.4332 | mar...@mnnorml.org

Love, peace and blessings.

My core values are #Love #Freedom and #Peace

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