If California legalizes Marijuana - The commercial uses of hemp

[lunatica]

Commercializing hemp will lead to beneficial cottage industry which also means jobs.

The benefits of hemp:



Industrial uses of hemp include
*textiles,
*pulp and paper,
*Plastic Composites for the Automobile and Other Manufacturing Sectors,
*Building Construction Products like thermal Insulation in houses which cuts down on the use of heating oil,
*Molded fiberboard products like plywood boards,
*hemp fibers added to concrete increase tensile strength while reducing shrinkage and cracking. Whole houses have been made based on hemp fiber
*The woody core (hurds, sometimes called shives) of hemp makes remarkably good animal bedding
*“Geotextiles” or “agricultural textiles” include (1) ground-retaining, biodegradable matting designed to prevent soil erosion, especially to stabilize new plantings while they develop root systems along steep highway banks to prevent soil slippage (Fig. 32); and (2) ground-covers designed to reduce weeds in planting beds (in the manner of plastic mulch)

More at the link:

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html

[lunatica]

1. Self kick

Trying to promote hemp's commercial uses is a pretty good idea methinks.

[Warpy]

2. Maybe when grass is legalized as a first step in ending

the futile, wasteful, and stupid war on drugs, we can finally end the silly proscription against growing industrial hemp.

[lunatica]

4. Calif. lawmaker proposes legalizing marijuana

A California legislator today proposed making the state the first to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

The legislation, by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco, would allow people 21 and older to grow, buy, sell and possess pot. It would be sold, regulated and taxed similar to alcohol. The state would collect $50 an ounce from sellers, and growers, too, would be taxed.

He estimates that the cash-strapped state could reap more than $1 billion a year.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/02/calif-lawmaker.html

[pleah]

3. K&R

[lunatica]

5. kick

[Le Taz Hot]

6. Der Gropenator

already vetoed a bill legalizing industrial hemp. We may have to wait for a Dem. governor on this one OR perhaps he's gotten a little religion on this seeing as how this might be a tax source. We'll see.

[MichellesBFF]

7. Check this out!

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2008/07/lotus-eco-elise-concept-with-hemp-body.html
It's a hemp Lotus Elise. Body panels made of hemp, seats made of eco wool, carpets made of sisal, and solar panels on the roof. It's also lighter than a regular Elsie, so it saves on gas.

[SammyWinstonJack]

14. Nice! nt.

[RedCappedBandit]

15. I want one!

[cboy4]

8. I don't see how this is going to work as long as it remains

against federal law.

That's how the DEA currently circumvents the state's medicinal marijuana law and raids dispensaries and homes.

I'm all for legalization .. but..

[cpamomfromtexas]

9. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I've read that if you smoke hemp

and then smoke marijuana there is no effect. Is this true?

[TlalocW]

10. Is it pretty much a given that all hemp has less THC than marijuana

So that you would pretty much have to smoke a hay bale of it to feel anything, or is it just certain strains? In either case, I'm sure various big-names - particularly the wood industry - utilize the hemp = marijuana type of thinking to keep a monopoly on their industry.

TlalocW

[IDemo]

12. True

Myth: Smoking Industrial Hemp gets a person high.

Reality: The THC levels in Industrial Hemp are so low that no one could get high from smoking it. Moreover, hemp contains a relatively high percentage of another cannabinoid, CBD, that actually blocks the (THC) marijuana high. Hemp, it turns out, is not only not marijuana; it could be called "antimarijuana."

http://www.industrialhemp.net/#faq

[IDemo]

11. As much as I am for the legalization of both marijuana and industrial hemp

These are two separate issues, and need to be addressed as such.

http://www.industrialhemp.net/#faq

3. Q: Is Industrial Hemp marijuana?
A: No. Even though they both come from Cannabis sativa L., the varieties that are used to make Industrial Hemp products (seed, fiber, etc.) and those that are used to make marijuana (flowering tops and leaves) are distinctly different. They are scientifically different and are cultivated in very different ways.

[OneBlueSky]

13. here, here . . . we're wasting some HUGE potential by not legalizing . . .

the growing of hemp and fostering all the businesses that could result . . . we're also missing the boat by not declaring a Manhattan Project for alternative energy and energy conservation . . . and we continue to piss away billions of dollars every day in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .

drastic times demand drastic measures . . . legalizing hemp (and marijuana, for that matter) is way overdue . . . there was never a good reason for the ban in the first place -- and there still isn't . . .

[madokie]

16. Its the medicine and textiles I eagerly wait for

[tabbycat31]

17. I've also heard that hemp would make great ethanol

I think I heard it on Thom Hartmann's program.

That would sure as hell be better than corn ethanol.

[Ghost in the Machine]

18. Rudolph Diesel first designed his engine to run on hemp oil...

Diesel expected that his engine would be powered by vegetable oils (including hemp) and seed oils. At the 1900 World's Fair, Diesel ran his engines on peanut oil. Later, George Schlichten invented a hemp 'decorticating' machine that stood poised to revolutionize paper making. Henry Ford demonstrated that cars can be made of, and run on, hemp. Evidence suggests a special-interest group that included the DuPont petrochemical company, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon (Dupont's major financial backer), and the newspaper man William Randolph Hearst mounted a yellow journalism campaign against hemp. Hearst deliberately confused psychoactive marijuana with industrial hemp, one of humankind's oldest and most useful resources. DuPont and Hearst were heavily invested in timber and petroleum resources, and saw hemp as a threat to their empires. Petroleum companies also knew that petroleum emits noxious, toxic byproducts when incompletely burned, as in an auto engine. Pollution was important to Diesel and he saw his engine as a solution to the inefficient, highly polluting engines of his time. In 1937 DuPont, Mellen and Hearst were able to push a "marijuana" prohibition bill through Congress in less than three months, which destroyed the domestic hemp industry.

A Mystery:

Diesel died under mysterious circumstances in 1913, vanishing during an overnight crossing of the English Channel on the mail steamer Dresden from Antwerp to Harwich. Diesel's death might have been suicide, accidental or an assassination. Proponents of the assassination theory point out that shortly after Diesel's death, a diesel-powered German submarine fleet became the scourge of the seas. Diesel had been friendly to France, Britain and the United States.

http://www.hempcar.org/diesel.shtml

[OnionPatch]

19. Hemp seed has more omega 3s than flax seed.

The potential uses are real and many. It's pathetic that we've had to wait so long for legalization. There is no basis for it to be illegal. You can really boil it all down to discrimination against "hippy-types."