Got Hemp?

[MsRedEye]

Well, you might have a bit more if Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) get their way. The two lawmakers have plans to reintroduce legislation to legalize the domestic farming of industrial hemp, a genetic but non-psychoactive relative of marijuana.

Hemp advocates (yes, there are hemp advocates out there) argue that the change would benefit the economy at a time when it could certainly use the boost.

“Hemp is a versatile, environmentally-friendly crop that has not been grown here for over 50 years because of a politicized interpretation of the nation’s drug laws by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),” Eric Steenstra, president of Vermont-based Vote Hemp, said in a statement. “Jobs would be created overnight, as there are numerous U.S. companies that now have no choice but to import hemp materials valued at $360 million in annual retail sales and growing.”

Any number of domestic businesses — from soap makers to auto suppliers — use industrial hemp in their products, but the hemp must be farmed overseas and imported. (Nearly every other industrialized country in the world already produces the crop.) The Frank-Paul bill, Steenstra said, “will return us to more rational times when the government regulated marijuana, but allowed farmers to continue raising industrial hemp just as they always had.”

The Obama administration has already shown some signs that it plans to move the country’s drug policy away from the “war on drugs” mentality that’s marked the last few decades. Support for the Frank/Paul bill would be another signal that it’s serious.


News Hawk: MsRedEye: http://www.420magazine.com/
Source: The Washington Independent
Author: Mike Lillis
Copyright: 2009 The Washington Independent
Contact: The Washington Independent Contact us
Website: The Washington Independent Got Hemp?

[usseR]

I heard that hemp can be used to make ethanol. If so we need to make ethanol from hemp instead of corn. When corn became the choice to make ethanol, the price of all foods made from corn went up because the farmers could make more money from selling their crop to the ethanol producers. Lets keep the corn to make food products and hemp could be used to make ethanol fuel.

In Georgia they want to make ethanol from the fast growing southern pine. They say that the yield for the pine into ethanol is larger than corn into ethanol, but the pine tree takes years to produce. I think hemp grows to it's full height in one season. Wouldn't it be better to make ethanol from hemp because it grows so quickly?

They also want to make ethanol from sugar beets, but this would make any foods made with the sugar beet more expensive. Hemp would also be better here.

If we burn hemp produced ethanol in our cars, will the exhaust smell like burning pot ? Kinda like the cheech & chong (Up in Smoke) movie, where the Van they were driving from Mexico to San Diego was made from pot.