Hemp: God’s Gift to Humanity
Imagine a single cash crop that makes better paper than trees, better cloth than cotton, provides medicine for many common illnesses, and can be made into virtually anything from hamburgers to asphalt. All of these wonderful qualities lie in the demonized Cannabis plant, the source of the illegal drug, marijuana. Fear and ignorance about this plant have caused cultivation of all forms of it to be illegalized in the United States; even varieties that are grown exclusively for industrial uses like making clothing, which even the flowering tops of, have no psychoactive use whatsoever. The Cannabis plant is not the brain-killing addictive drug we have all grown up being told of, but instead is a life saver. With more complete and accurate education about this plant, the United States public would feel more secure with domestically farming and manufacturing hemp and legally providing marijuana-based drugs to patients who’s life depends one it. This high-yield cash crop would prove a stabilizing force in the U.S. economy, just as it once had in the colonial times.The American hemp plant, Cannabis Sativa, which has been bred to have only trace amounts of the psychoactive chemical THC, is amazingly effective as an alternative sou
Although the most demand for hemp is placed on the production of paper and cloth products, seemingly limitless numbers of other uses have been surfacing. Compressed hemp is twice as strong as wood. Wide use of a hemp-based wood substitute could eliminate the need to import lumber; much of which is taken from ancient rainforests. Hemp derivatives also provide alternatives to plastic, gasoline, coal, and drywall just to name a few. Hemp’s wide array of uses is due to its many useable parts. The stalk of the Cannabis plant is composed of long and short fiber, as well as cellulose-rich hurds that can be made into composite plastic alternatives. Along with the industrial uses, the hemp plant is also used all around the world as a source of protein-rich food (Kane). American farmers are the strongest pushers of a reform in the laws banning hemp cultivation. When farming wheat, barley, and canola, they make only about $25 dollars an acre, which is not even enough to get by for many, but in Canada, where industrial hemp is legally grown, farmers make about $225 per acre farming hemp, and the price continues to rise due to the seemingly exponential growth in demand for hemp products. (Ackerman) A single acre of hemp produces the equivalent of up to 3 acres of cotton, or up to 4 acres of trees. This is because hemp can be harvested a mere 120 days after being sown from seed. Within the next 25 years, the global demand for hemp is expected to double, and hemp is the only hope of saving the earth from the already crippling deforestation (Bouril). The legalization of industrial hemp cultivation in the United States would boost our global trade, increase national funds from taxation, and give new hope to poor farmers all around the country. Medicinal marijuana is also very effective in relieving chronic pain, where it provides an alternative to the dangerous and addictive opiates that are commonly prescribed. (Grinspoon 109) It reduces intraocular pressure, which helps those who suffer from Glaucoma, has anti-consultant properties, which can save lives of those with epilepsy, reduces muscle spasms, relieving conditions of Mult
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Sládek Cannabis,
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Approximate Word count = 1447
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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