Did you know we could help protect forests by growing hemp?

I came across some interesting information about why Marijuana was criminilized in 1929. First it was fueled by racism against Mexicans and next because newspapers and other journals were printed on hemp paper. William Randolf Hearst, the newspaper magnate, had an interest in the timber industry and thought by making growing hemp illegal, paper manufacturers would have to turn to timber.


"Harry Anslinger got some additional help from William Randolf Hearst, owner of a huge chain of newspapers. Hearst had lots of reasons to help. First, he hated Mexicans. Second, he had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain and didn't want to see the development of hemp paper in competition. Third, he had lost 800,000 acres of timberland to Pancho Villa, so he hated Mexicans. Fourth, telling lurid lies about Mexicans (and the devil marijuana weed causing violence) sold newspapers, making him rich.

Some samples from the San Francisco Examiner:


"Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days -- Hashish goads users to bloodlust."

"By the tons it is coming into this country -- the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms.... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him...."More..........

http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html


So, DUers, I want to start a petition here in California to dicriminalize growing hemp and using Marijuana, but I don't know how. Surely, if we can get enough signatures for Ahnold to become governor, we can do this. Hemp also is good for making cloth.

You might want to look into the work of the Soros funded Marijuana Policy Project http://mpp.org

They'd love your support.

I didn't know about this.

Hemp Revolution that talks about this. I ordered it through Netflix. The oil industry was against it too (surprise) because you can make really clean burning oil from it.

You have a good point about hemp being opposed by the timber industry, but it was opposed by others also. The most prominent were the cotton industry and the oil industry.

Cotton opposed hemp because hemp clothing is as soft, if not softer than cotton clothing, it is much more durable than cotton cloth, and can be grown anywhere in the US, and isn't near as hard on the land as cotton crops are.

Oil opposed hemp because they saw it as a rival in the fuel market. The original diesel engine ran off of hemp seed oil, ie biodiesel. Dino diesel saw a threat in that, and backed plans to criminalize hemp production.

The criminalization of hemp was a slow one, America was still growing hemp as a cash crop after WWII(in which hemp played a large role). Criminalization really took hold in the late fifties, and by the sixties you could no longer grow it.

What is interesting is that if you want to wipe out the marijuana plants somewhere, plant a bunch of hemp and the two will cross pollinate and you will be left with ditch weed.

Missouri used to be the number hemp producing state. For a long while we wasted over five million dollars a year so that our highway patrol could mount a "Marijuana Eradication Program". Ninety five percent of what this force eradicated was wild hemp, left over from the days of WWII when it was grown as a crop.

This continual ban on hemp is foolish, and hopefully will end someday.

who opposed hemp because it was stronger and cheaper than their manufactured synthetic fiber.

Really interesting.

wonderful crop. Go for it. It can be used for so many things and I believe it is environmentally beneficial.

farming. Also, I think Marijuana use should be regulated like tobacco and liquor. Making users, who are otherwise pretty law-abiding, into criminals is criminal in itself.

It has been a long time since I read about Hemp but I seem to remember that as a crop planted between other crop lives it substantially enriches the soil, like a cover crop I guess. Still there are so many uses and we are just being stupid and foolish (good ole USA) not to use it. I do have some hemp clothing and it is wonderful!

It's basically ditch weed: nearly impossible to smoke or get anything active from. It's like trying to smoke rope.

Of course, I'd have to become a hermit, but I'm one person. I believe that hemp is an important plant for cultivation. Just because I'm allergic to it doesn't mean it shouldn't be legal....

to keep those evil liberals out of elected office.

someone posted about pot and MOST of these women thought it was a waste having it criminalized.

I was shocked to see this meeting of minds.

Let's hope more of them start seeing the light about these stupid laws.

I've heard people bitch about CNN, but I just turned it on randomly today and they have some good stuff on, Donna Brazile got some good time.

A great nitrogen fixer, also good at bringing nutrients in the lower soil levels up to the top.

My father was a farmer/vo ag teacher-administrator all his life, and he despaired that hemp was criminalized. In the crop rotation it is essential to recovering nutrients other crops need, and stated that its criminalization and subsequent absence from the rotation cycle is a big part of why our agricultural land is getting played out and needing every more petroleum derived fertilizers.

I live in an agricultural area. If I manage to get a petition going, this would be a good point to present to the independent farmers. The corporate farms are probably owned by oil company subsidiaries, like Monsanto and Dupont, but the independent vintners and others and even the ranchers, might be for it if they are presented with the truth.

The Constitution are written on hemp paper. And throw this quote at them: "Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it
everywhere." -- George Washington, 1794. Good luck!

above you that I thought I remembered that. Glad I was right. I would consider giving up parts of my grass crop to plant Hemp and rotate the areas. Brome needs fertile soil and I hate having to fertilize each year, my horse manure just does not do the trick all by itself.

First off, compost, compost compost. Spread it liberally. Next spare cash I going to buy one of those barrel composters that produces a load every two weeks, but you can build a compost area with simple 2X4s.

Two crops to plant to help rebuild soil are soybeans and rye grass. Soybeans are another nitrogen fixing crop that are beneficial to the soil when you till them under. The other one is rye grass. Plant it in the early-mid fall, and let it grow over the winter, then till it under in the spring. Green manure is what the old-timers call it.

Sheep manure is better than horse manure(though both are pretty good). And bat guano is better than both of those, but that entails going finding it in a cave and carting it out. I've also heard that fish manure is good, but that would probably require dreging the bottom of your local fish farm, or zoo aquarium.

Good luck!

I would, seriously. I am all about trying to be as organic as possible. I have even considered killing off the brome and planting prairie grass but it would cost me around $10,000.00 in lost hay production in the transition and the cost of doing it (that seed is expensive!). I tried being totally organic and I ended up having to really beef up the chemical fertilizer for 2 years to save my grass. The weather has changed enough here that it is getting very hard to grow brome anyway so I may end up having to replant anyway. It is a mess.

You could still plant soybeans and rye grass though, and that would help. I had a friend of mine who got a mutual friend of ours to graze his sheep on a hundred acres over the summer, then knocked all the shit down with a manure spreader. Lovely crops next year.

Another suggestion, my cousin goes to his local turkey house and carts off all of their turkey manure and spreads it on his growing land, about sixty acres. Smells like hell in the spring, but it grows great crops.

Sorry about the fish and bat shit, yeah, you've got too much acreage for that.

not the beans because tilling would disrupt the soil and neighbor, you know how windy it gets around here! I believe the brome would not like that anyway. Thanks for the suggestions, I learn more every year I do this and I came to it without any preconceived notions or knowledge.

I have a turkey farm just down the road but I don't think they keep them anymore, they just get them to slaughter. There are so many cows around here I doubt I would notice the smell too much, at least there aren't the big pig operations!

It's part of the natural smells. If you throw it into your compost pile with the green stuff and other plant material, cover it and let it perk, with the usual turning over, you will get sweet smelling dirt from the manure. So the smell won't be that objectionable.

is about 15 feet in diameter and 4-6 feet high and has been smoking all winter. It is lovely underneath.

I get five yards of it delivered from my local agricultural college, Cal-poly every year. It costs me around thirty dollars. You may know Cal-Poly from the news as where Scott Peterson met Laci.

I have been fighting hard clay soil since I moved in here so I keep digging it in and my dirt gets better every year.

However you can compost that amount yourself, and it will cut down on the waste being tossed into the landfill. Either construct a compost pile holder, or buy one of those hand cranked barrel composters(they're real nifty, you get compost every two weeks), and then just toss all of your veggy waste in there, including coffee grounds and eggshells.

For breaking up your hard clay soil, till in a little sand, or gypsum, should help a lot.

so I am using Cal-poly less and less. I do hope my own compost will eventually meet my needs.

"The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer. Very thorough, although it could use a little editing. And the footnotes are SOLID.

which you think would be a selling point to prohibitionists, is that hemp will cross-pollinate with other marijuana crops within (I believe it was) a 20 mile radius, thereby polluting the seed and making the next generation less potent.

Since there is a precedent as hemp was grown as a cash crop at one time, I think there has to be a solution for this.

Hemp is a great resource - which should be legal.

I was just pointing that out because some of the legal MJ crowd likes to use hemp as a foot in the door strategy. But the legalization of hemp would be greatly detrimental to our domestic MJ crop.

they claim that industrial hemp fields would be used by pot growers to hide high-grade marijuana plants among the other hemp plants- which is totally ludicrous for exactly the reason you mention.

coz there really isn't any other reason. It's less harmful than dringking. You can smoke all gd day and only get so buzzed but if you continue to drink, you will become a drunken idiot.

The courts are filled with pot cases that should be reduced to a fine.

they fight against medical marijuana yet we have all kinds of opiates in our prescription drugs.

recent studies show that pot reduces the risk of heart disease and alzheimers.

Pot is a crop that can be replanted yearly. Trees take decades. Pot can be used for fuel, making clothes, rope, and even paper.

but lets cut down the trees instead

from the Shingles and Bells Palsy I am suffering from right now. Instead they have me on epileptic medication, which works, but it makes me dizzy. I don't like doing anything illegal though. Jail is the last place I want to be right now.

However, I really couldn't smoke it because of my asthma, but brownies sound good. :-)

When I was pregnant with my second, I scattered some seeds inside a circle stand of Iris. It LOVED the sandy soil and climate in Santa Monica. I wasn't into smoking so I just did a Ferdinand and S-M-E-L-L-E-D the flowers... Worked WONDERS! NO NAUSEA!!!

Too bad I never met you then.

even through the imperfect medium of cyberspace! :loveya: :hug:

that you escaped with your life. President Bush smoked pot as a "youth"; look what happened to him! His poor brain is beyond repair. For years, the only job he could get was playing the "man with the goodies" in anti-drug, life-saving commercials.

I do know friends of mine that were regular users that now tell me they suffer from memory loss, but that could be natural aging too.

I think it was the drinking and cocaine use that did the job on his brain. He wasn't very smart to begin with, so maybe we need to blame this on Barbara or as others have suggested her smoking and drinking during pregnancy.

that his brain was expelled through a pore when he coughed from a large bong hit. I find this theory the most likely.

It was definitely NOT POT that fried the *dauphin. Where the hell is that James R. Bath feller??? Copious quantities of high-priced alcohol and cocaine, with a little marijuana to take the "edge off" were the order of the day. Anyone from back then who ain't skeered of having their limbs hacked off or first-born boiled in oil will tell ya, it wasn't no secret... :evilgrin:

It was another abuse but not weed that messed that fucker up.

some day...as a food/fiber, like flax, cotton, etc.

Oh, and BTW, hemp seed is supposed to be very nutritious, rich in essential omega-3 fatty acids that help regulate cholesterol in the body.

The following 2 links have more info. You can get them at any good health/natural food store.

www.nutiva.com

www.naturespath.com

:9

black jazz musicians who smoked the demon weed could not resist white women. There were also thousands of people driven to violent crime from a single hit of "dope." Most communists and other mass-murderers use pot before attacking an unsuspecting public. Let the buyer beware.

Supposedly hemp also can be used in the manufacture of plastics and other processes that currently use petrochecmicals. Good luck with Arnold. Maybe if you donate $500,000 to his campaign he'll think it over.

How many acres of hemp would you need to grow in order to replace the fiber grown on one acre of forest (there is no one answer, because "forest" can mean many different things). So, let's use pine plantations, which are basically long-rotation crops.

Where would these acres come from? What would be replaced by the hemp?

I'm not against this, but, the hemp would have to be grown somewhere, and that land is probably being used for someting else already.

The biggest threat to forests (in the U.S.) is not utilization, where most often, the forest is regenerated, but urbanization.

unproductive because of chemical farming practices. Growing hemp could help bring them back.

Also, tree plantations do not address the fact that our natural old-growth forests are being cut down, not only for lumber, but paper, toilet paper, etc..

The raw logs are shipped to places like Japan in Asia and they come back to us in many forms, not just lumber.

I would like to know more about the results of chemical farming practices. Do you have some sources I can use? If not, I'll be happy to do the research...Don't feel like you have to go find sources for me.

and it's hard. I live in an agricultural area though and there are many complaints from the farmers about the soil becoming full of chemicals from the fertilizers. Many farmers are giving up and selling out. In the San Joaquin Valley, which many regard the breadbasket of America, salinification has become a problem because of the combinaton of artificial watering practices and the nitrate based chemical fertilizers.

And I mean anywhere. Missouri, back in the day, was the number one hemp producing state in the union. While the northern part of Missouri is pretty fertile ground, you get south of the Missouri river and you're getting into some serious red clay soil, which is good for nothing but grazing and growing trees. But hemp grows well in this soil, and many other places that are unfit for growing much else. Sandy soil, heavy clays, it doesn't matter.

As far as yields go, hemp produces about four times as much fiber as wood, acre for acre. And while yes, hemp growth would displace some other crop for a year, that is nothing new. Crop rotation is an established practice in agriculture, and adding hemp to the rotation actually would be a good thing for the soil, as it is a nitrogen fixer, and would add nutrients back to the soil, thus the farmer wouldn't have to use as much petrol based fertilizers on his fields. And like I said before, you can grow hemp in many areas where nothing else will grow.

Hemp is one of nature's truly tremendous gifts to mankind. The fact that we're not taking advantage of it just goes to show you how stupid and narrow-minded our society is.

Are the yield numbers for hemp v. wood based on rotation lengths?

In other words, if we assume that for fiber, a pine plantation must be grown for 10 years before harvest (I have no idea - just an example), do the numbers reflect 10 years worth of hemp growth (at least 10 harvests) v. 10 years of wood (1 harvest)? I hope that is clear.

From what I understand, it is a straight up, acre for acre comparison, ie 1 acre of mature hemp vs 1 acre of mature trees.

Here is a brief article that gives some information on numbers and uses of hemp, it really is a miracle plant.

forests and natural forests that are deemed state or federal forests.

Incidentally, those plantations are butt ugly if you ever saw the real thing. They lack specie diversification and are only allowed to grow a certain height before they are mowed down.

And, I would bet that they replaced a once natural forest of beauty that Georgia Pacific, Boise Cascade, Weyerhauser or whoever originally cut down.

We still have forests of natural beauty in this country. Let's keep them for posterity instead of turning them into paper products when there is a useful alternative to this hemp.

pine plantations v. old growth forests.

However, in the U.S. most of the paper is produced in the South, a lot from pine plantations, and a lot from poor quality hardwoods. The market for good quality, large hardwoods and softwoods is such that no one down here cuts them for pulp - they would not get the value out of them.

to centuries of bad practices, they are looking to the last of our forests to meet their needs. I know I lived in Idaho and traveled all over the Northwest for a decade and I saw what was going on. This was the time of the big mill closing era. The mills were where they made lumber and the by-product, sawdust. Sawdust could make paper products but if there wasn't enough, they could make sawdust for it's own sake and they did, even if they were grinding up a 300 year old cedar. Supply and demand you know.

Well, some pesky environmentalists sort of mucked this gravy train, and the lumber companies made deals for outsourcing a certain part of their operations. The mills were closed down one by one, leaving tne unemployed workers behind and now the raw logs are shipped to Asia to be converted into lumber as well as many other wood products, mostly paper.

I had no idea that the ban on hemp was so tied into maintaining status quo for a few industries.

The stupid thing is that all involved industries could just INVEST in hemp and get in on the action.

By the mid-1600s, hemp had become an important part of the economy in New England, and south to Maryland and Virginia. The Colonies produced cordage, cloth, canvas, sacks and paper from hemp during the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Most of the fiber was then destined for British consumption, although at least some was used for domestic purposes. Ironically, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence were penned on hemp paper.

Hemp fiber was so important to the young Republic that farmers were compelled by patriotic duty to grow it, and were allowed to pay taxes with it. George Washington grew hemp and encouraged all citizens to sow hemp widely. Thomas Jefferson bred improved hemp varieties, and invented a special brake for crushing the plant's stems during fiber processing



It was patriotic to grow Hemp.......

from flowing.