Hemp Beer Is the AnswerWait, what was the question?Oh, yeah: What do paper, building products, Mercedes Benz car interiors, pancakes, shampoo, shoes, shower curtains, biodegradable plastic, fuel oil, animal bedding, rope, currency, and burgers all have in common? They can all be made from hemp.
Oh yeah, and beer too.
Hemp is one of the most useful and eco-friendly industrial crops grown. Thousands of products are made from it and it grows well without herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides.
Industrial hemp is the male cannabis sativa plant, bred specifically for its long, strong fibers, rather than for THC content, which is the stuff in the buds of the female plant that gets people high.
Hemp fiber is longer, stronger, more absorbent, more durable, and insulates better than cotton fiber. The bark of the hemp stalk contains what is called bast fibers which are among the Earth's longest natural soft fibers and are also rich in cellulose - the stuff that is used to make paper and thousands of other pulp products.
But American farmers are currently stuck in a legal gray zone that prohibits them from growing this useful, eco-friendly, and financially rewarding crop.
Meanwhile, cotton-growing chemicals continue to be dumped into the environment and farmers of all kinds struggle to make a living.
Furthermore, hemp seed is supremely nutritious. It contains more essential fatty acids than any other known source, is second only to soybeans in complete protein (but is more digestible by humans), is high in B-vitamins, and is 35% dietary fiber – the stuff that helps keep you ‘regular.’
Hemp is not psychoactive and cannot be used as a drug. Hemp seeds contain barely traceable amounts of THC, the drug that provides the high from marijuana. The U.S. hemp industry has voluntarily regulated itself in order to ensure that these levels are below that which is detected by drug tests, so as to avoid causing a false positive. These self-imposed standards ensure that the level of TCH in hemp food products is so low that even if a person smoked a hemp joint the size of a telephone pole, the only affect would be a massive headache. Visit http://www.votehemp.com/ for details.
1 comment:
Three notes on your recent posts:
1. NM may have crooked politics [has there ever been a more redundant phrase?], but at least the state's about to legalize medical marijuana. Our Oklahoma politicians are just as crooked, but most of them are waiting for an upgrade to stupid.
2. Hemp. We restrict the production af a useful plant, but permit people to use toxic ornamental plants around children. I grew up in California, where we heard regular reports of children and families sickened or killed by oleanders and castor plants. When I went to OU as a college freshman, kids were getting sick trying to get high from belladonna. Cannabis and belladonna are both pretty plants, both will get you high, but only one is truly dangerous. We have no credibility on drug policy in this country because we are myopic, irrational, and inconsistent.
3. The Cat in the Hat tribute was nice, and only a week past the late Ted Geisel's 103rd birthday anniversary (2 March 1904). Dr. Seuss's birthday was a High Holy Day in our family (along with 15 December, the Bill of Rights Day). My children would celebrate by telling extravagantly stretched tales, in the manner of And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Thanks for the refresher.
By the way, if you missed it, catch the free music of not-really-Bob performing really Dr.-Seuss at Dylan Hears a Who.
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