CANNABIS WAS ONCE HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM

Our next president, George W. Bush, struck a chord with his
acceptance speech references to Thomas Jefferson and the plans he has
to focus upon that forefather's ideals.

Certainly, the nation owes much to Jefferson for his key role in
getting us started. And a funny thing is, if today's drug war tactics
had applied back in his time, and if he had been busted with all
those cannabis plants at Monticello, Jefferson may well have been a
convicted criminal instead of an elected president.

The same is true of most everyone involved in agriculture back in
those times, including George Washington. That is because practically
everything they needed was produced on their own farms. And they
needed those cannabis plants.

Not to inhale. They valued the crop for its fiber more than its
fumes. It makes a sturdy cloth. As a matter of fact, when prehistoric
man invented weaving, he likely used strands from the cannabis plant,
judging from remnants discovered by archaeologists.

It makes strong ropes, too. So, from the same crop, our forebears
could harvest both the sails needed to move their ships and the lines
needed to rig them. It was considered such an important resource, in
fact, that the first law regarding the cannabis plant in the New
World required colonial farmers to grow it.

When the Revolutionary War came along, the famous battleship Old
Ironsides was fitted out with just such sails and rope. Betsy Ross
turned out the original Old Glory using canvas made from the cannabis
plant.

It also provides handy raw materials for making paper, the stalks
being much faster growing and easier to cut than trees. Would you
care to guess what kind of paper was used for the original drafts of
both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Hemp vs. marijuana Cannabis grown for industrial uses is called hemp.
Cannabis grown for smoking is called marijuana. The folks who would
like to grow hemp or who would like to make products from hemp grown
in the United States, say the two are different.

They point out that hemp plants are selected and planted and
cultivated to produce tall stalks, whereas the emphasis in marijuana
production is on the leaves and blooms of plants that spread out more.

Hemp fans say their cannabis plants don't contain nearly as much THC
(the active ingredient prized by pot smokers) as marijuana plants.
They say it would benefit American farmers to grow hemp, and point to
the many thousands of products that can be made from the plant,
everything from wall board and other building materials to biofuels
that we could use in place of fossil fuels and nuclear power.

However, officials in charge of the drug war make no distinction
between hemp and marijuana. They say if growing hemp were allowed, it
would be too difficult to prevent people from growing marijuana.

`Ditchweed' growing wild Of course, hemp can be found growing wild in
parts of the country. The government drug warriors spend millions of
dollars a year to eradicate patches of it that come to their
attention.

Commonly called "ditchweed," some of it may have descended from the
vast fields of hemp grown during World War II. Just five years after
the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 put an end to hemp crops on U.S. farms,
the nation's supply of fiber for many military uses was cut off when
Japan took the Philippines. So the government encouraged patriotic
farmers to resume growing "Hemp for Victory."

The U.S.-grown hemp fibers were used in uniforms, boots and a wide
variety of military items. I even read somewhere that the parachute
that saved the life of George Bush, the elder, when he had to bail
out of his airplane over the Pacific Ocean during the war, had some
hemp in it.

Somewhere else I read that a U.S. farmer up near the northern border
of our country made on his grain crops only about one-tenth as much
an acre as a Canadian farmer only a few miles away made by growing
hemp.

Canadian farmers are free to grow hemp and U.S. farmers are not.
Don't you wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have to say about this,
if there were some way to ask him?