HEMP: THE 'MIRACLE PLANT' THAT CAN SAVE THE PLANET

(Third in a series)

What would the world be like if birds didn't sing? It's a frightening
thought - an unearthly scenario - but one that the US Congress had to
contemplate during hearings for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the law
that made marijuana illegal in the United States and in the process
also banned hemp, the industrial form of the marijuana plant.

During those hearings, American hemp companies testified against the
proposed law, presenting arguments that were both reasoned and
convincing. Attorney Ralph Lozier, representative for the National
Institute of Oilseed Products, whose members produced the hemp seed
oil used to make paints, varnishes, soap, linoleum and a number of
other oil-based products, argued that hemp seed and oil should be
exempted from the ban. "The drug is found only in the flowering tops
of female plants," and not in the seeds and oils that his clients
depended on for their livelihoods, Lozier said. In Russia, the people
even used the seeds for food. "It is grown in their fields and used as
oatmeal," he told the committee. The owner of the Rens Hemp Co.,
suppliers of hemp fiber to the US Navy, voiced his objection to the
use of the word marijuana in the bill and asked that references to
hemp in the "narcotic sense" be discontinued. He also complained that
the law was overly complicated and the tax so high that it would put
small hemp producers out of business. But it was the seed companies
that got the committee's ear. Their representative insisted that there
could be no replacement for hemp bird seed. In 1937, hemp seed was the
primary birdseed for both wild and domestic birds and in that year
alone over 4 million pounds of hemp bird seed was sold in stores
across the US. The birds loved it and wouldn't sing without it. "We've
never found another seed that makes a bird's coat so lustrous or makes
them sing so much," he said.

It seemed that even Congress couldn't imagine a world without song
birds, and they agreed to amend the Marijuana Tax Act to allow bird
seed companies an exemption. They could continue using hemp seeds for
birdfeed provided they were "denatured," meaning the seeds must be
sterilized so they could not form plants. Unfortunately, all the other
hemp companies would have to find a new line of business. On Aug. 2,
1937, with the stroke of a pen, marijuana and hemp were officially
outlawed in the US.

America 'Just Says No' to hemp

The United States is the only developed country in the world today
that prohibits its farmers from growing hemp, and our economy is
suffering because of it. Once a staple of US agriculture, hemp is
indeed a miracle plant that can be used for textiles, paper, food,
fuel and - hold on to you hats - can produce eco-friendly versions of
any product currently made from petroleum, including gasoline.

While the rest of the world is ramping up hemp production, in the US,
where it remains illegal, companies must import the thousands of hemp
products grown, processed and manufactured in more than 30 countries
across the globe. Britain, Germany and Canada have all lifted their
bans, and China, the source of most of the hemp fiber used by the US
clothing industry, has planted nearly 2 million acres of hemp. In the
European Union, farmers are subsidized to grow hemp, which is legally
recognized as a commercial crop by the United Nations Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

Most of America's imported hemp products come from Canada, where hemp
has been grown commercially since 1998 and has become one of the most
profitable crops for its farmers. Agriculture expert Ray Hansen notes
that while America farmers struggle to survive on less than $50 per
acre for soy and corn, Canadian hemp farmers are raking in an average
of $250 per acre.

Hemp is not a drug

There is still some confusion about the differences between hemp and
marijuana, and I hope I can clear it up. Marijuana and hemp both come
from the same species of plant, Cannabis sativa L., but from different
varieties. Industrial hemp is grown for its seeds and fiber, not its
drug potency, and so industrial hemp varieties are naturally low in
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical in marijuana that gives
smokers a high. Industrial hemp also contains fairly high levels of
another chemical, cannabidiol (CBD), that Dr. David P. West of the
North American Hemp Council says actually "blocks the marijuana high."
Even though industrial hemp by its nature is already low in THC,
Canada and the European Union strictly regulate the THC levels of
their industrial hemp, requiring it to be less than 0.3 percent. By
comparison, marijuana that consists of the flowering tops of plants
that have been selected over time for their drug potency can have THC
levels ranging anywhere from about 2 to 20 percent. The THC levels in
industrial hemp are simply too low for anyone to get high from smoking
it.

The DEA 'Just Says No' to hemp

DEA spokesman Rusty Payne makes it clear that the government does not
distinguish between hemp and marijuana. "If it contains any amount of
THC, then it is illegal," Payne told me in a telephone interview last
month. Among the DEA's arguments against legalizing hemp is that
criminals will hide real marijuana in hemp fields where kids might get
it and where the DEA will have difficulty finding it as they fly over
during aerial eradication sweeps. "Are we going to ask them to go
through row by row, field by field, to distinguish between legal hemp
and marijuana?" Tom Riley, of the White House Office on National Drug
Control Policy, was quoted as saying. The answer to that question is,
"Don't be ridiculous!" For those in the know, which includes the DEA
and the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, the idea
of hiding marijuana in a hemp field, where male and female plants
would cross-pollinate and ruin the potency of the marijuana, is
absurd. Besides, any child or adult making a foray into a hemp field
to pilfer some pot will be sadly disappointed when instead of getting
high they end up with a throbbing headache. While we are on the
subject of DEA eradication efforts, it might interest you to know that
the DEA may have another reason for defining hemp as an illegal drug.
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook, nearly 98
percent of all the marijuana seized under the DEA's "Domestic Cannabis
Eradication/Suppression Program" is feral hemp, a non-psychoactive
variety of marijuana that grows plentifully throughout the Southern
and Midwestern United States. Many of these feral plants are remnants
from government-subsidized plots grown during World War II. As Allen
St. Pierre, executive director of the National Association to Reform
Marijuana Laws (NORML), points out, "The government is literally
spending tens of millions of dollars to pull up weeds." By including
these millions of harmless roadside weeds to the number of marijuana
plants seized and eradicated, the DEA can justify the millions of
dollars spent on their eradication program while at the same time give
the false impression that the War on Drugs is a success.

Passage of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 put control of hemp
into the hands of the DEA, rather than the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA), and the DEA has denied every permit for
large-scale hemp farming within America's borders for the last 40 years.

Hemp for Victory

America's ban on hemp was temporarily suspended during World War II,
when hemp imports from the Philippines were disrupted by the war.
Necessity, ordinarily the mother of invention, became the mother of
forgiveness at this point in time. The dangers of the hemp plant were
suddenly forgotten as the government stepped in to ask "patriotic"
farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. The government provided
subsidies for farmers to grow hemp, exempted their sons from military
service so they could work in the hemp fields and even produced a film
called, "Hemp for Victory" that was shown to farmers around the country.

"This is Manila hemp from the Navy's rapidly dwindling reserves," the
narrator explains as the camera pans across coils of rope in the
shipyards. "When it is gone, American hemp will go on duty again: hemp
for mooring ships, hemp for tow lines, hemp for tackle and gear, hemp
for countless naval uses both on ship and shore . hemp for victory."
Under this program, hemp was allowed to be grown from 1942 to 1945,
and somehow during that time the problems associated with the
"marijuana scare" never materialized. Hemp producer Matt Rens
testified again at a Senate hearing in 1945. "In the 30 years we have
operated and grown large acreages, we have never heard of one instance
where there was an illicit use made of the leaves of this hemp plant."
Still, In spite of the fact that industrial hemp posed no drug
problem, when the war was over, hemp was again prohibited.

Hemp v. Oil

In 1937, our nation was at a crossroads not unlike what we face today.
The two most respected journals in the United States, Popular
Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering, were readying articles about the
wonders of the hemp plant, the "Billion-Dollar Crop ... that can be
used to produce thousands of everyday items ... from dynamite to
Cellophane." Mechanical Engineering echoed the excitement, calling
hemp "the most profitable and desirable crop that can be grown." It
seemed that America was headed toward an innovative new "green"
economy that would "provide thousands of jobs for American workers
across the land." Unfortunately, behind the scenes other forces were
at work (See my article "The Marijuana Conspiracy," Oct. 9). As the
government was busy outlawing the "miraculous hemp plant" the DuPont
Chemical Co. was cranking out patents for synthetic products to be
made from petroleum. On the road to a green economy, America got
hijacked and instead ended up with an oil-based economy and all the
problems it would bring.

Plastic is not fantastic

From the 1930s until today, the synthetics industry has grown
exponentially until practically everything you can name is made from
petroleum-based plastic. Still, most people never consider the source
of their CDs, mobile phones, tennis shoes and other products made from
plastic. When oil prices skyrocket, our first worry is about the price
of gasoline. But in reality, less than half of a 42-gallon barrel of
oil is used for fuel. The other half is chemically altered to form the
raw material used to make plastics to create more than 6,000 products.
The good news is that just about any product - from nail polish to
footballs - made from petroleum can be made from the environmentally
friendly hemp plant (see chart below).

The problems arising from our use of petroleum-based plastics are
numerous and serious. A major predicament is that once these plastics
are created, they are pretty much here to stay. For instance, plastic
bags and water bottles made from polyethylene (a combination of
petroleum and natural gas) take 1,000 years to decompose on land and
450 years in the water. Producing one 16-ounce polyethylene bottle
creates more than 100 times the toxic emissions to the air and water
than it once took to make that same size bottle from glass. Ninety
percent of all trash in the world's oceans is plastic and it's the
cause of most of the death and illness of marine animals and birds who
become entangled in or ingest the debris.

Today, two enormous islands of ever-accumulating plastic debris have
amassed in the Pacific Ocean, containing garbage from all over the
world. These swirling masses of refuse are larger than any landfill in
the world, so huge in fact that they have come to be known as the
Eastern and Western Pacific Garbage Patches, which together form the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The overall size of this ocean junkyard
is not fully known. However, the size of the Eastern Patch that floats
between Hawaii and California has been estimated at twice the size of
Texas.

An attempt to ban plastic bags in California earlier this year was
defeated after the American Chemistry Council spent millions of
dollars in lobbying fees, radio ads and even a primetime television ad
attacking the measure. The council represents the Dow Chemical Co.,
ExxonMobil Corp. and other plastic bag manufacturers.

Getting rid of the waste from petroleum plastic is not the only
problem. Manufacturing petroleum plastic has its own set of
difficulties. For one, the plastics industry is a giant polluter,
contributing about 14 percent to the national total of toxic
emissions. Producing plastics can also be hazardous to workers and the
people living in neighborhoods surrounding its manufacturing plants,
where explosions, chemical fires, chemical spills and clouds of toxic
vapor are a constant danger.

Consumers can also be unwittingly exposed to these toxic chemicals
when chemicals in plastic packages migrate from the packaging to the
foods they contain.

This is a sampling of the estimated 6,000 items currently made from
petroleum that can be made from hemp: Solvents

Diesel fuel

Motor Oil

Bearing Grease

Ink

Floor Wax

Ballpoint Pens

Football Cleats

Upholstery

Sweaters

Boats

Insecticides

Bicycle Tires

Sports Car Bodies

Nail Polish

Fishing lures

Dresses

Tires

Golf Bags

Perfumes

Cassettes

Dishwasher parts

Tool Boxes

Shoe Polish

Motorcycle Helmet

Caulking

Petroleum Jelly

Transparent Tape

CD Player

Faucet Washers

Antiseptics

Clothesline

Curtains

Food Preservatives

Basketballs

Soap

Vitamin Capsules

Antihistamines

Purses

Shoes

Dashboards

Cortisone

Deodorant

Footballs

Putty

Dyes

Panty Hose

Refrigerant

Percolators

Life Jackets

Rubbing Alcohol

Linings

Skis

TV Cabinets

Shag Rugs

Electrician's Tape

Tool Racks

Car Battery Cases

Epoxy

Paint

Mops

Slacks

Insect Repellent

Oil Filters

Umbrellas

Yarn

Fertilizers

Hair Coloring

Roofing

Toilet Seats

Fishing Rods

Lipstick

Denture Adhesive

Linoleum

Ice Cube Trays

Synthetic Rubber

Speakers

Plastic Wood

Electric Blankets

Glycerin

Tennis Rackets

Rubber Cement

Fishing Boots

Dice

Nylon Rope

Candles

Trash Bags

House Paint

Water Pipes

Hand Lotion

Roller Skates

Surf Boards

Shampoo

Wheels

Paint Rollers

Shower Curtains

Guitar Strings

Luggage

Aspirin

Safety Glasses

Antifreeze

Football Helmets

Awnings

Eyeglasses

Clothes

Toothbrushes

Ice Chests

Footballs

Combs

CD's & DVD's

Paint Brushes

Detergents

Vaporizers

Balloons

Sun Glasses

Tents

Heart Valves

Crayons

Parachutes

Telephones

Enamel

Pillows

Dishes

Cameras

Anesthetics

Artificial Turf

Artificial limbs

Bandages

Dentures

Model Cars

Folding Doors

Hair Curlers

Cold cream

Movie film

Soft Contact lenses

Drinking Cups

Fan Belts

Car Enamel

Shaving Cream

Ammonia

Refrigerators

Golf Balls

Toothpaste

Gasoline

- - Source: Everyday Simplicity, online at:
http://everydaysimplicity.blogspot.com/2007/06/products-made-from-petroleum-yikes.html/accessed
7-31-10

Henry Ford and George Washington Carver:
Cars made from plants

Industry makes strange bedfellows, or so it would seem when looking at
the relationship between American automobile industrialist Henry Ford
and African-American inventor George Washington Carver, who was born
into slavery in 1864. When these two men from vastly different
backgrounds came together, it was Ford who came away inspired by
Carver's genius. Carver's prescient hypothesis was that the world's
dwindling natural resources (remember, this was almost 100 years ago)
could be made in the laboratory using raw materials grown endlessly by
farmers. When Carver suggested that plant cellulose could replace
steel, the idea was scoffed at by everyone but Ford, who embraced the
concept and put his researchers to work. In 1941, after 12 years of
research and development using Carver's hypothesis, Ford unveiled what
he predicted would be the "automobile of tomorrow," a plastic car made
from plant cellulose fibers of wheat, straw, hemp and sisal. Not only
was the plastic car body much stronger (Ford liked to prove this fact
by publicly striking the car trunk with an ax to show it wouldn't
dent) but it was also 1,000 pounds lighter than its steel counterpart
and therefore much safer and fuel efficient. A Popular Mechanics
article that year noted that "no hint has been given as to when
plastic cars may go into production." In fact, Ford's cellulose cars
would never be produced. The Marijuana Tax Act had eliminated hemp,
the best raw material for producing cellulose plastic, and besides,
oil was plentiful and cheap.

Today, major car manufacturers GM, Chrysler, Saturn, BMW, Honda,
Mercedes and Ford are using hemp composite door panels, trunks and
head liners in their new models, and it seems that Ford's dream of a
hemp car can't be too far off. When that happens, I would like to
suggest that the first hemp car be named the "Carver," for George
Washington Carver, a man who achieved so much but received so little
recognition. On Nov. 2, Californians will have a chance to vote yes on
Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act, which will
allow adults to grow and possess small amounts of marijuana for
personal use. If passed, it will be the first step toward a green
economy that has been so many years in the making. Just imagine what
the world could be like today if we had chosen the path that makes the
birds sing. There's still time.

Alaine Lowell, is the producer and director of "Grow Dutch" (growdutch.net),
a documentary about marijuana in the Netherlands. She is also the author,
along with Dutch marijuana expert Wernard Bruining, of the
soon-to-be-published "Going Dutch: How Marijuana Can Save the Economy."
Excerpts from "Going Dutch" will be appearing at pasadenaweekly.com until
the week of the election.