HEMP! HEMP! HEMP!....

[Elginoid]

as the general public becomes introduced to the concept of Peak Oil, the time will be ripe to bring an honest debate about industrial hemp into the spotlight.
just about anything that can be synthesized from petroleum can be synthesized from hemp oil...diesel engines were designed to run on pure hemp oil, and Henry Ford had intended to produce model A's with "fiberglass" bodies synthesized from hemp oil, and even set up the refinery and processing plant to do so.

Whenever industrial hemp is talked about, the right(i've heard limpballs do it...) will make the claim that leftists want legalized industrial hemp just so that they can grow and hide marijuana plants in the fields of hemp- when just the opposite is true- a legal industrial hemp industry would the fastes and most effective way to stamp out outdoor marijuana cultivation- marijuana plants grown outdoors hidden among industrial hemp plants would produce utterly worthless pot- they would be pollinated by the industrial stuff, causing it to produce lots of crappy seeds, and degrading the quality/potency of the original strain.

Hemp oil isn't going to replace petroleum, but it would certainly make it possible to stretch out what we have left.

[politicat]

1. If it happens, I'll become an agoraphobic, though...

I'm allergic to hemp the way some people are allergic to peanuts.

Oh, well... it's the price that has to be paid.... but I wish we'd try to use soybeans and rape seed (canola) first.

I'm a big fan of linseed oil for exactly those reasons....

Pcat

[Elginoid]

4. i don't suppose you get to many rock concerts.

Hemp oil is one aspect, another big part of it, agriculturally speaking is the way that the roots of hemp go deep, and help break up the soil- less plowing, fertilizers and pesticides are needed when farmers add hemp to their crop rotations.

what happened to hemp in the 20th century American WORLD is one of the greatest historical blunders civilization has ever made.

[politicat]

7. Nope, and I take oxygen (the mountain climber bottles) and an epipen.

Fortunately, the music I like tends more to the Ecstasy crowd than the pot crowd.

Though I think the bigger blunder we made as a culture was putting the great plains under cultivation. But looking at Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, hemp has a fairly small seed size and relatively low oil content even for the size. Compared to, say, flax, the average hemp crop tends to be lower in oil by about 25%. Since water seems to be the limiting factor, how drought tolerant is hemp?

Flax is pretty decent on the drought tolerant scale, and has a pretty good root culture. My great grandfather planted flax on an erosion prone hill side one year... it was pretty, but then he went back to Queen Anne's lace (dacus carota) because it was a better nitrogen fixer.

So why hemp and not flax? They can both be used for textiles and cording, both make good paper, both have a high oil content in the seeds; flax is good for various ailments and is promoted for women's health. And flax makes wonderful sheets! :silly:

(Help me understand. I'm a proponent of drug legalization because I don't think prohibition works even though it's contrary to my self interests, but I know very little about industrial hemp, and what I know of flax is about 50% googling for statistics. )

Pcat

[TexasBushwhacker]

10. With hemp you can use more of the plant

You can use the seeds for oil and the stalks for fiber. The fiber can be used to make paper, cloth, rope, you name it. Honestly though, hemp isn't all some people crack it up to be. It's very demanding on the soil and either needs a lot of fertilizer, or it has to be rotated in only once every 3 or 4 years.

Personally, I would like to see a good cash crop that could be grown instead of tobacco so that we can phase that killer out.

[politicat]

11. Flax = linen. Flax seed is edible and used for linseed oil.

Linen can be used for all of the things you mentioned.... and it's not hard on the soil, or so I seem to recall. (I'm not a flax farmer....)

Understand, I'm trying to understand. If Flax does the same things, why not flax?

Pcat

[Beam Me Up]

9. "BLUNDER" You think the elimination of hemp was a "blunder"

As in an "accident"?

I don't think so. I have one word for you : DUPONT (aka PETROchemical)

Another is HEARST (aka WOODpulp)

These people knew exactly what they were doing when they maneuvered the American people into believing pot was a dangerous substance.

NOW it HAS to remain illegal because it is the MOST USED illegal substance, justifying the allocation of billions of dollars to "fight" the "war on drugs" necessary to keep the hundreds of billions of laundered dollars circulating through our economy via Wall Street.

[Elginoid]

12. "Blunder" does not mean "accident"

I know all about the history of it's prohibition...Harry Ainslinger, the stamp act, and the rest...

..."Meanwhile, William Randolph Hearst, king of yellow journalism, was going berserk. His massive timber holdings, endangered by cheaper, cleaner and more durable hemp paper, brought him face-to-face with financial catastrophe. Hence, a car wreck in which a marijuana cigarette was found stayed on the front page of his newspapers for weeks, while news of alcohol-related wrecks, which outnumbered marijuana-related wrecks by more than a thousand to one, was relegated to the back pages.

Hearst warned his readers of Negro men raping white women while under the influence of marijuana and anti-white "voodoo-satanic" jazz music. Not only that, but "Negroes and Mexicans," inflamed by the hell-spawned herb, dared to step on white men's shadows, look white people directly in the eye for more than a few seconds, look at a white woman twice, and even go so far as to laugh at white people in public. The sheer horror of it all!

According to Hearst -- and this, he said, "is not an overstatement" -- "If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana he would drop dead of fright."

Hysterical stories with headlines such as "Marihuana Makes Fiends of Boys in 30 Days: Hasheesh Goads Users to Blood-Lust" whipped readers into a paranoid frenzy. The public, which had no idea that this sensational propaganda was based on thin air and motivated by big money, began calling upon their representatives to protect their children from the "demon weed."...

the "blunder" was that of society, falling for it.

[Elwood P Dowd]

2. If the Hemp lobby would give the repukes $10,000,000

in campaign contributions, Fox News would suddenly announce a solution to our energy problems.

[The Traveler]

3. Whoa, dude

You wrote:

"marijuana plants grown outdoors hidden among industrial hemp plants would produce utterly worthless pot- they would be pollinated by the industrial stuff, causing it to produce lots of crappy seeds, and degrading the quality/potency of the original strain."

And you're in favor of this??? Have you lost your senses man????

[Elginoid]

5. the best stuff is already grown indoors.

no worries.

[The Traveler]

6. Whew!

Thanks. I had forgotten that ...

;)

[Swamp Rat]

8. Hemp is EVIL devil weed that makes terrorists win!

:smoke: