Cannabis (Hemp) 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 bio-fuels 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? (END)

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THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Houston, Texas

By Thom Marshall