Hemp Is Not Pot

[SHRED]

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No way do pot growers want to be anywhere near a hemp field.
No way do they want their precious buds pollinated and especially by industrial grade hemp plants.
In fact hemp pollen travels miles and is "anti-pot" in many ways.

The argument that pot growers would "hide" their plants in hemp fields is asinine, ignorant, and illogical.
But isn't that how the "war on weed" people are?

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Hemp Is Not Pot: It's the Economic Stimulus and Green Jobs Solution We Need
By Dara Colwell, AlterNet
Posted on March 26, 2009, Printed on March 26, 2009

While Uncle Sam's scramble for new revenue sources has recently kicked up the marijuana debate -- to legalize and tax, or not? -- hemp's feasibility as a stimulus plan has received less airtime.

But with a North American market that exceeds $300 million in annual retail sales and continued rising demand, industrial hemp could generate thousands of sustainable new jobs, helping America to get back on track.

"We're in the midst of a dark economic transition, but I believe hemp is an important facet and has tremendous economic potential," says Patrick Goggin, a board member on the California Council for Vote Hemp, the nation's leading industrial hemp-farming advocacy group. "Economically and environmentally, industrial hemp is an important part of the sustainability pie."

With 25,000 known applications from paper, clothing and food products -- which, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal this January, is the fastest growing new food category in North America -- to construction and automotive materials, hemp could be just the crop to jump-start America's green economy.

MORE:
http://www.alternet.org/story/133055/

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[Merlot]

1. Thanks for clearing that up!

I wondered why my morning serving of granola with hemp was not giving me a buzz..

[Enthusiast]

2. True!

When I was youngster we actually smoked hemp that grew wild in Indiana-Kentucky. Where we lived we were having a tough time acquiring quality pot. We would put 1/4 ounce of the stuff in a four hose hookah and light it with a high flame bic lighter. Four of us could smoke an ounce in an evening and BARELY cop a buzz. Besides, it nearly burned your lungs up from the high fiber content.

[lfairban]

3. Canada did it.

But growing hemp remains illegal in the U.S. The Drug Enforcement Administration has lumped the low-THC plant together with its psychoactive cousin, marijuana, making America the planet's only industrialized nation to ban hemp production. We can import it from Canada, which legalized it in 1997. But we can't grow it.

Why can't we?