Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills
Hemp
Dakota Kid:
Marijuana with a THC content of over 1%(or equally small amount, memory ::)) is illegal to cultivate. Industrial hemp has an almost negligible THC content and can be grown. However it cannot be harvested until it is dead and dry. At that point the oils are not worth extracting or evaporated completely, but rope from the fibers can still be made. So over half the commercial value of the plant is wasted. At least that's the way it was before the changes in pot laws began.
It was a hot button issue in South Dakota about 12 yrs ago. The Lakota reservation fought a heck of a legal battle over the restrictions surrounding growing hemp. Industrial hemp was about the only profitable crop that could be grown in the awful barren ground we were generous enough to stick them on after we kicked them off all the good bits. The ridiculousness went as far as they had to have each plant individually tested and tagged with that plants THC content on it. Funny part is, industrial hemp is an awful thing to have around if you're growing the medicinal strains. It will fertilize them from dozens of miles away. In addition to making the plant go to seed those seeds will be a industrial cross and be of no use to a medicinal grower.
JoJoDapyro:
Hemp is a variety of cannabis — and thus a cousin of marijuana — that contains 0.3% or less of the psychoactive component THC. (Marijuana plants typically contain 5% to 20% THC.) You can't get high from hemp, but starting in 1937, U.S. drug laws made cultivating it off-limits.Jun 25, 2014
http://www.ncsl.org/research/agriculture-and-rural-development/state-industrial-hemp-statutes.aspx
Dakota Kid:
In an attempt to keep the US paper production lumber based if I remember correctly. At least the timber companies lobbied/paid for the laws from what I've read.
Improvement of function, effect, efficiency, or quality in general matters little when profit and loss are involved.
stickbender:
It also makes a superb cloth. We could not manufacture it here, but could import it. I wonder how much kick back went some where in the land of Deceitful Cohorts? Anyway, whatever variety it is very useful. I will not go into areas, that might involve Big Pharma, and other strictly for profit, mega business, as to why Hemp, or Pot is illegal, but it rather obvious, especially after the big propaganda movie, in the late forties. I had some natural hemp, some with wax, some without, from India, and it was a bit pathetic, as far as strength, and uniformity, goes.
Wayne
riverrat:
i like hemp for my bow strings. and sewing as well. i even backed a bow with strands of it once. had to retiller as it was way to hard to pull. . Tony
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