Kinda long, but uh... feel free to skim through the following:
Until 1883, more than three quarters of the world's paper was made from Hemp fibre.
In Elizabethan times, farmers were fined for not growing Hemp.
80% of English wood pulp is imported, destroying the forests and their delicate eco-systems in Canada and Scandinavia.
A Hemp crop produces nearly four times as much raw fiber as an equivalent-sized tree plantation.
Trees take approximately 20 years to mature. Hemp takes 4 months.
Hemp needs no pesticides because it is unpalatable to insects.
Hemp needs no herbicides because it grows too quickly for any weed to compete.
Hemp paper does not need chlorine bleach, which heavily pollutes rivers near wood-pulp paper mills.
Environmentally-sound Hemp paper is stronger, finer and longer-lasting than wood-based papers.
Hemp paper is used for bank notes and archives.
"You would have to smoke at least a field of this stuff to even get a smile" said Mr. Scott.
"The earliest-known woven fabric was apparently of Hemp, which began to be worked in the eighth millennium (8,000-7,000 BC)", says Columbia History of the World 1981.
For more than a thousand years before the time of Christ until 1883 AD, Cannabis/Hemp was our planet's largest agricultural crop and most important industry for thousands upon thousands of products and enterprises, producing the overall majority of the earth's fibre, fabric, lighting oil, paper, incense and medicines, as well as being a primary source of protein for humans and animals alike.
The war between America and Great Britain in 1812 was mainly about access to Russian Hemp.
Napoleon's principle reason for tragically invading Russia in 1812 was also due to Russian Hemp supplies!
Hemp uses the sun more efficiently than virtually any other plant on the planet.
Hemp can grow in virtually any climate and soil condition, and is excellent for reclaiming otherwise-unusable land.
The word 'linen', until the early 1800s meant any coarse fabrics made from Hemp or flax.
Cannabis oil was mentioned by name in the Bible. Apparently, etymologists at Hebrew University, Jerusalem confirmed that 'kineboisin' (also spelled 'kannabosm") referred to cannabis used in a holy ointment. See Exodus 30:23. N.B. King James mistranslated the word as 'calamus' in his version.
Hempseed oil is said to burn the brightest of all lamp oils, and has been used since the days of Abraham. Scythians used to purify and cleanse themselves with Hemp oil, which made their skin "shining and clean".
Much of the world's paper was made from Hemp until about 1850. Since the 1900s, all newspapers and most books and magazines were printed on wood-pulp paper. Cheap throwaway paper, fitting in with a disposable economy.
Our forests, what is left of them, are being cut down 3 times as fast as they can grow.
Hemp offers a valuable and sustainable fuel of the future, "growing oil wells". Hemp has an output equivalent to around 1000 gallons of methanol per acre year (10 tons Biomass/acre, each yielding 100 gal. methanol/ton). Methanol used today is mainly made from natural gas, a fossil fuel. Methanol is currently being studied as a primary fuel for automobiles, hopefully reducing CO2 levels.
Henry Ford dreamed that someday automobiles would be grown from the soil. The Ford motor company, after years of research produced an automobile with a plastic body. Its tough body used a mixture of 70% cellulose fibres from Hemp. The plastic withstood blows 10 times as great as steel could without denting! Its weight was also 2/3 that of a regular car, producing better economy. Henry Ford was forced to use petroleum due to Hemp prohibition. His plans to fuel his fleet of vehicles with plant-power also failed due to Alcohol prohibition at the time.
The first bible was printed on hemp paper.
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were both written on hemp paper.
Almost any product that can be made from wood, cotton, or petroleum (INCLUDING PLASTICS) can be made from hemp. There are more than 25,000 known uses for hemp.
Rag paper containing hemp fiber is the highest quality and longest lasting paper ever made. It can be torn when wet, but returns to its full strength when dry. Barring extreme conditions, rag paper remains stable for centuries.
Hemp particle board may be up to 2 times stronger than wood particle board and holds nails better.
From 70 to 90% of all rope, twine, and cordage was made from hemp until 1937.
Hemp plastic is biodegradable; synthetic plastic is not.
Hemp is softer, warmer, more water absorbent, has 3 times the tensile strength, and is many times more durable than cotton. Hemp production uses fewer chemicals than cotton.
A strong lustrous fiber; hemp withstands heat, mildew, insects, and is not damaged by light. Oil paintings on hemp and/or flax canvas have stayed in fine condition for centuries.
Farming 6% of the continental U.S. acreage with biomass crops would provide ALL of America's energy needs.
Hemp is earth's #1 biomass resource; it is capable of producing 10 tons per acre in 4 months.
Biomass can be converted to methane, methanol, or gasoline at a cost comparable to petroleum, and hemp is much better for the environment. Pyrolysis (charcoalising) or biochemical composting are two methods of turning hemp into fuel.
Hemp can produce 10 times more methanol than corn.
Hemp fuel burns clean. Petroleum causes sulfur pollution.
The use of hemp fuel does not contribute to global warming.
Hemp seed can be pressed into nutritious oil, which contains the highest amount of fatty acids in the plant kingdom. Essential oils are responsible for our immune system responses, and clear the arteries of cholesterol and plaque.
The by-product of pressing the oil from hemp seed is high quality protein seed cake. It can be sprouted (malted) or ground and baked into cakes, breads, and casseroles.
Hemp seed protein is one of mankind's finest, most complete and available-to-the-body vegetable proteins.
The history
The history of the plant includes some very suprising and enlightening facts about its original uses.
Also known as cannibis, was once very much legal. What also may strike you as odd, Is that it was also one of the largest agricultural crops in the world, including the U.S.
Cannibis can also be hemp, which does not produce a high when smoked. Hemp is the most durable, natural, soft fiber on the face of the earth.
Up untill 1883, Cannibis was the largest agricultural crop in the world. It had thousands of uses, and products. The majority of fabrics, lighting oil, medicines, paper, and fiber came from hemp.
The first marijuana law to be pased in the states, in 1619, was a law ordering farmers to grow hemp.
Benjamin Franklin used it to start his first paper mills.
The first two copies of the declaration of independence were writen on hemp paper.
Up untill the 1800s, most of the textiles in the states were made with hemp. 50% of the medicine marketed within the last half of the 19th century was made from Cannabis. Even queen victoria used the resin extracts from hemp to eleviate her menstrual cramps.
A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres, incase you didn't know.
Although, the funny thing about industrial hemp was, you could not get high from it, yet it was lumped in with the following which also made a little sense:
Reefer Madness. In the early 20th century, yellow journalism had surfaced, and depicted blacks and mexicans as frenzied beasts who would smoke marijuana, play devils music, and heap disrespect and viciousness on the readership - a majority of which were white.
Some offences included looking at a white woman twice, laughing at a white person, or even stepping on white mans' shadows.
This ended up leading to a law in 1937 called the Marijuana Tax Act: a tax stamp that would not only include marijuana, but also hemp and Cannibis medicines.
It's speculated that hemps potential for an abundance of new products was going to be in direct competition with other sources. This, added with the Reefer Madness, led to the eventual downfall of all forms of Cannibis.
Popular Mechanics Magazine had actually prepared an article entitled New Billion-Dollar Crop. Hemp was boasted being able to produce more than 5,000 textile products from its thread-like fiber and more than 25,000 products from its cellulose, ranging from dynamite to cellophane, which is a transparent paperlike product that is impervious to moisture (used to wrap candy, cigarettes, etc.).
Its superiority as a source for paper was also becoming known, especially with the development of hemp-processing equipment.
The new marijuana tax act was fine, except for one thing - if you wanted to grow hemp, you needed to buy a stamp, but the government was not giving any out, to anybody.
And so, in effect, all forms of cannibis became illegal. The first conviction encompased a man with two joins, equalling four years in jail.
Things pretty much stayed that way untill world war two, when the government decided that hemp, once again, was a good thing, and even produced a video called Hemp for Victory. But by the time the war was over, hemp again, became bad.
In 1948, when the marijuana law once again came into question, congress recognized marijuana was made illegal for the wrong reason - it didn't make people violent at all, it made them pacifists. The communists would use it to weaken America's will to fight. Congress now voted to keep marijuana illegal for the exact opposite reason they had outlawed it in the first place.
And all through the years, report after report, commisioned by everybody, from the major of new york in 1944, to the president of the united states in 1972, has come back with a view that marijuana should have no illegal penalties atached to it.
Yet, marijuana remains as illegal today as it did 70 years ago...
Marijuana has become big business, both in Canada and in the United States. But why has it become such a big business?
In British Columbia alone it's speculated that the illegal marijuana trade brings in upwards of seven billion dollars annualy. Up to 85% of that product heads south, to the states.
Having become an international issue, when did the lines blur?
How does a massive underground market like this survive while remaining illegal?
Why is marijuana illegal in the first place?
And if prohibition is ment to protect us, does it work?
Senator Larry Campbell, Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005, Former member of RCMP drug Squad: "If prohibition worked, if you could just wave a magic wand and say this is gone away, I'd be all over it. The fact of the matter is that prohibition has never worked."
Jack A. Cole, Director of L.E.A.P., Former undercover narcotics agent - 14 years: "You know we've been here before. You remember the first prohibition right? [the prohibition of alchohol?] No, no, I'm talking about the FIRST prohibition. Thou shalt not partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Who was the big cop? *points up* And how many people did he have to watch? Two."
What are the goals of this prohibition?
I assume the goals of prohibition are to reduce the ammount of drugs available, and to reduce the demand for those drugs. In both instances, Cannibis prohibition is an utter failure.
Has the prohibition stopped people from using marijuana?
Jeffrey Miron, Visiting Professor of Economics, Harvard University:
"You get a phone call and it says, 'I'm from the federal government, I wanna know whether you've been using cocaine or marijuana recently.' - Pressumably you might be getting a little bit of an underestimate."
Ed Rosenthal, Grow Expert - Faced 100 years in prison:
"In 1937 there were estimated to be 55,000 marijuana users. Now there are an estimated 50,000,000+ users. That is a 100,000% increase."
Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia Provincal Health Officer:
"Whether the drug is criminalized or decriminalized does not effect the rates of smoking of Cannibis. Either of uptake or discontinuation."
Common thoughts regarding marijuana:
Marijuana kills your brain cells:
Joe Rogan, Comedian, Fear Factor & UFC Host:
"I thought the same thing. I didn't start smokin' pot until about 5 years ago. I thought pot made you stupid. I bought into it just as much as anybody did. I realized when I was like 30 years old that I was tricked. I was like you gotta be f*cking kidding me."
1974 - The Heath/Tulane Study:
Ronald Regan announces: The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the innevitable results of the use of marijuana.
Monkeys pumped full of marijuana, apparently 30 joints a day, had begun to average die after 90 days. Brain damage was determined after counting the dead brain cells of both monkeys that had been subjected to the marijuana, and those who had not.
This study became the foundation for the government and other special interest groups claiming that marijuana kills brain cells.
Here is what they DIDN'T tell you:
After six years of requests, how the study had been conducted were finally revealed. Instead of administering 30 joints a day for one year, Dr. Heath used a mask method of pumping 63 columbian strength joints through a gass mask within five minutes over three months.
Todd McCormick, Author of 'How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana':
"They suffocated the monkeys. What they did is they put these gas masks basically on their face and they pumped pot into it, but without additional oxygen. So after X ammount of time, the brain shut down. Well, if you suffocate, the first thing that is going to happen is your brain cells are going to die due to lack of oxygen. So what they did is they suffocated the monkey, showed all these dead brain cells, and then went on to associate it by saying that Cannibis use causes your brain cells to die. And how many people, not knowing the origin of the study, have gone to quote it, and re-quote it, and now people believe it."
Studies since have shown no signs of any brain cell damage.
Xia Zhang, University of Saskatchewan, Repoted in the Journal Of Clinical Investigation:
In 2005, new research suggested that marijuana could possibly stimulate brain cell growth.
This new study did not recieve the same attention.
Another common belief - Marijuana causes lung cancer:
Todd McCormick, Author of 'How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana':
"In the 1999 study produced by the institute of medicine that was payed for by the United states government, they had to use words like may, and should, cause cancer."
Rielle Capler, Policy Analyst - BC Compassion Club Society:
"We've been hearing for years, them trying to say that it causes lung cancer, and we say 'really that's interesting, because you can't even show us one case of cancer being caused by Cannibis use alone.'"
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"You definitely have to do it moderatly because it does paralyse the cilia, but if it's not radioactive, you're probably not going to get cancer from it."
Dr. Paul Hornby, PhD, Biochemist & Human Pathologist:
"Smoking can be harmful because of the properties of smoke..."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"...Not as a result of anything in the Cannibis plant, but because they're intaking heated plant matter into their lungs."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"People said, well you don't know, we haven't been smoking it long enough. Look at what happened with cigarettes. We have had more than four decades of experience. If this was gunna show up, it should have shown up by now."
Rielle Capler, Policy Analyst - BC Compassion Club Society:
"Finally the study came out, just in the last month, verifying that Cannibis smoke does not cause cancer, it's different than nicotine. And the elements in the tobacco smoke do cause cancer, and elements in the marijuana don't."
The study mentioned above was performed by Dr. Donald Tashkin, UCLA: Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study.
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"There's no cases of marijuana only smokers getting brown lung syndrome. There's no cases of marijuana only smoker getting emphysema. Strange for a plant that's so dangerous."
Dr. Donald Tashkin, M.D., UCLA:
"Marijuana use does not cause or potentiate emphysema in any way."
Stephen Bloom, Former High Times' Editor:
"Marijuana is bad for you or worse than tobacco, IMPOSSIBLE. If they had the evidence, they'd be putting emisiated bodies, or emphysema, or lung cancer, black lungs; they would be parading them throughout the media. They don't have one, yet people somehow are to think that it might cause the same thing."
Infact, if you look at the straight gaps from substances, a different type of picture starts to appear. The number one killer in the country - it beat out AIDs, heroin, crac, cocaine, alchohol, car accidents, fire, and murder COMBINED - was tobacco.
With an average of 430,000 deaths per year, considering it's the number one killer, it's interesting to know that tobacco recieves government subsidies and is grown with radioactive fertilizer.
Number two on the list, if we don't include poor diet and physical inactivity, with well over 85,000 deaths a year, is alchohol.
As we continue to look further down the list there are others that may suprise you. Caffeine weighs in with 1,000 to 10,000 deaths a year, and some of our most popular pain-relievers such as aspirin still make an appearenc with over 7,500 deaths annualy.
Where does Marijuana lie in this? What kind of staggering number do we find?
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"THERE ARE NO DEATHS FROM CANNIBIS USE ANYWHERE, YOU CAN'T FIND ONE."
Joe Rogan, Comedian, Fear Factor & UFC Host:
"In 10,000 years of known use of marijuana there has never been a single death attributed to marijuana. There's 400,000 annual deaths in america alone that are directly attributed to tobacco."
Dr. Paul Hornby, PhD, Biochemist & Human Pathologist:
"I've heard that you have to smoke something like 15,000 joints in 20 minutes to get a toxic ammount of Tetrahydrocannabinol. I challenge anybody to do that."
Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia Provincal Health Officer:
"And even in the animal studies where people have loaded the animals up with doses that would be hundreds of times what a human could possibly be exposed to."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"I mean, you can die from ingesting too much aspirin. You can die from ingesting too much coffee."
Jack A. Cole, Director of L.E.A.P., Former undercover narcotics agent - 14 years:
"The drug warriors who say we have to protect society and save these people, are being just a little bit disingenuous."
Not one university or medical facility has ever recorded a single death directly attributed to marijuana. But forget about that, there are other reasons to fear it. Take addiction for example:
There are more kids in addiction clinics for marijuana than any other substance. This must mean that marijuana is the most addictive substance today.
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"It's undoubtedly true that more teenagers and kids are in treatment for marijuana than all the other drugs combined. What the DEA never tells you is WHY that's true."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"A kid is caught possessing or smoking marijuana. He is taken to court. He is given a choice: either some horrible penalty or you go to a treatment center - obviously chooses the treatment center and goes to treatment where he is considered an addict."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"But then the DEA goes to point to that stat and they look at all these kids in treatment for marijuana - it must be because todays marijuana is not the marijuana that your parents were smoking."
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"As far as I understand, only 3% of the people in treatment for marijuana are there voluntarily. The other 97% were told to by their guardian or told to by a judge - 'you can choose between jail or treatment,' and people would choose treatment."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"It provides no basis for speaking about addiction. Anybody who is at all sophisticated about marijuana would rate them the way two researchers were asked to rate drugs in order of addiction. Nicotine was one, alchohol was two, then heroin, and cocaine, and then coffee, and then marijuana. There may have been a couple of other drugs, but marijuana was at the very bottom [laughing], below cofee."
"Subject Narcotic",1951, presented by The Narcotic Educational Foundation of America:
"This narcotic, unlike the opiates, the synthetics, and cocaine, is non-addictive. By non-addictive it is ment that the user of marijuana, when deprived of the drug, will not experience the agonies of widthdraw. Its use can be discontinued."
Then what is its danger?
Dr. Tod Mikuriya, MD, Former national administrator of the U.S. Gov's marijuana research programs:
"It's used as a scape-goat for covering up underlying problems in people, especially young people. 'Here I am, don't ignore me'."
Neil Boyd, Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Author of 'High Society':
"If you use marijuana on a daily basis for a year or so, and you stop using it, your going to notice some differences, but NOTHING like the kind of widthdraw people will experience with tobacco or heroin."
The Gateway Theory:
"Subject Narcotic",1951, presented by The Narcotic Educational Foundation of America:
"It's greatest lies in the fact that it is a stepping stone to the harder drugs such as morphine and heroin."
'Brink of Disaster', National Education Program Film - 1972:
"That's why there are people that want to legalize marijuana. They figure they can can get the young people of this country onto drugs, they can destroy your generation, and the current generation."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"You know, in the days of harry onslaught, it was called the stepping stone hypothesis - if you stepped on this stone , marijuana, you were bound and determined to go onto the next stone which would be one of the so-called hard drugs."
John Conroy, QC, Criminal Defense Lawyer:
"Every time it's been studied and looked at and so on, they have never ever found that there's anything in marijuana that makes you want to go to anything else."
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Professor Ementus, Harvard Medical School:
"There's is no inherent cycle/pharmacological property of the drug which pushes one toward another drug."
Norm Stamper, PhD, Seattle Chief of Police, 1994-2000:
"I drink alchohol, that's my drug of choice. It could be said I started on milk. I mean this is crazy. If I use marijuana why does that automatically make me a canidate to black-tar heroin. It's a non-sensical argument."
Infact, only 1 out of every 104 marijuana users use cocaine, and less than 1 use heroin.
David Malmo-Levine, Vancouver Drug War History School:
"The black market throws the dealers of soft drugs together with the dealers of hard drugs."
John Conroy, QC, Criminal Defense Lawyer:
"So if you have a black market, and a dealer dealing with marijuana and lsd and everything else, then the dealer might say to you, 'hey you want to try something stronger?' Well in that sense BECAUSE of the black market, BECAUSE of prohibition, people may be more suseptible to seeing these other drugs and become willing to try these other drugs."
Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager:
"And so what you see is that there is a gateway effect, but it's a gateway effect caused by prohibition and the blending of the hard and soft drug markets."
What about laziness?
You will be useless to society if you use marijuana, but if that's true, well there are about 50,000,000 people who smoke marijuana in America, and over half of the Canadian population who has tried it, and yet both societies seem to flourish.
Just look who some of these people are:
Steven Jobs developed apple computers while smoking pot.
Tedd Turner developed CNN news smoking pot, and still smokes a joint every day.
Marc Emery, Seed Retailer/Activist - aka 'Prince of Pot':
"You go through every musician you like from the rolling stones to led zeppelin; they all smoke pot."
Virtually every presidential candidate has now admitted to using marijuana at some point in his or her life.
Joe Rogan, Comedian, Fear Factor & UFC Host:
"The people that have personallity problems, and the people that are going to be lazy and lose their job - they're going to lose thier job anyway. They're not losing their job because of marijuana. That's just a lie."
Todd McCormick, Author of 'How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana':
"I love tommy chong episodes where people, not knowing that he wrote and directed the movies, thought that that's what a stupid stoner looks like. No actually that's what a really brilliant creative genious looks like acting like somebody you think's a stoner."
Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun Columnist, Author of 'Bud Inc.':
"And none of this is born out in the research or when you look at people who are long-term users and happen to be lawyers, judges, doctors, and writers."
But what about the potency of the drug?
Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun Columnist, Author of 'Bud Inc.':
"Anytime you got a bag of Columbian dope 20 years ago was way better than the mexican that you normaly got. So there's always been a range of THC in plants, and the fact that we can now grow stuff that's equivalent of what Columbian was 20 years ago - it doesn't mean that we are boosting thc to unheard of levels, it just means that there are some new things that people should be aware of in this discussion."
Todd McCormick, Author of 'How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana':
"I actually think it's a real stroke of our own ego to think that for the 50 or so years of prohibition that we've improved upon varieties that have been cultivated for drug use in places like India and such for thousands of years."
Joe Rogan, Comedian, Fear Factor & UFC Host:
"People say, 'well you can abuse marijuana.' Well sh*t you can abuse cheeseburgers too. You don't go around closing burgerking because you can abuse something. I can take a fork and jam it in my eyeball, does that mean forks should be illegal? I could jump off of a bridge, should we outlaw bridges? Let's nerf the world."
But what about all the crime and violence associated with marijuana?
Norm Stamper, PhD, Seattle Chief of Police, 1994-2000:
"From beat-cop to police chief, I saw ample evidence of the harm caused by alchohol and the ABSENSE of evidence of harm from marijuana use. And I made the complete absense - I can not recall a single case in which marijuana contributed to domestic violence, crimes of theft, and the like."
Norm Stamper, PhD, Seattle Chief of Police, 1994-2000:
"There are far more crimes commited under the influence of unadulterated emotions if you will - anger, rage, jealousy."
Dr. Time Stockwell, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of Victoria:
"A lot of our understanding is driven by what's in the paper, what's on the television and the radio these days and we get extremes of the black and white thinking being reinforced by that."
If only there was something to compare it to, something that was once prohibited at one time but is now regulated, so we could see what the difference might be...
Under the prohibition of alchohol, EVERYTHING got worse, EVERYTHING.
Alchohol prohibition birthed and gave rise to massive organized criminal groups within the United states. It led to a general disregard for the law, and a general disregard for police activity because it was a law that most people didn't obey.
Alchohol poisoning went up 600% during prohibition. There were more speak-easys in New York City under prohibition than there are taverns and liquor stores today.
Senator Larry Campbell, Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005, Former member of RCMP drug Squad: "This brings crime into it, that's why the ability to make money in it is so huge."
*All information obtained comes from The Union, The Business Behind Getting High, individual interviews, and recorded historical events*
