cannabisnews.com: Cannabis Was Once Held in High Esteem 





Cannabis Was Once Held in High Esteem 
Posted by FoM on December 21, 2000 at 23:19:32 PT
By Thom Marshall
Source: Houston Chronicle
Our next president, George W. Bush, struck a chord with his acceptance speech references to Thomas Jefferson and the plans he has to focus upon that forefather's ideals. Certainly, the nation owes much to Jefferson for his key role in getting us started. And a funny thing is, if today's drug war tactics had applied back in his time, and if he had been busted with all those cannabis plants at Monticello, Jefferson may well have been a convicted criminal instead of an elected president. 
The same is true of most everyone involved in agriculture back in those times, including George Washington. That is because practically everything they needed was produced on their own farms. And they needed those cannabis plants. Not to inhale. They valued the crop for its fiber more than its fumes. It makes a sturdy cloth. As a matter of fact, when prehistoric man invented weaving, he likely used strands from the cannabis plant, judging from remnants discovered by archaeologists. It makes strong ropes, too. So, from the same crop, our forebears could harvest both the sails needed to move their ships and the lines needed to rig them. It was considered such an important resource, in fact, that the first law regarding the cannabis plant in the New World required colonial farmers to grow it. When the Revolutionary War came along, the famous battleship Old Ironsides was fitted out with just such sails and rope. Betsy Ross turned out the original Old Glory using canvas made from the cannabis plant. It also provides handy raw materials for making paper, the stalks being much faster growing and easier to cut than trees. Would you care to guess what kind of paper was used for the original drafts of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Hemp vs. Marijuana:Cannabis grown for industrial uses is called hemp. Cannabis grown for smoking is called marijuana. The folks who would like to grow hemp or who would like to make products from hemp grown in the United States, say the two are different. They point out that hemp plants are selected and planted and cultivated to produce tall stalks, whereas the emphasis in marijuana production is on the leaves and blooms of plants that spread out more. Hemp fans say their cannabis plants don't contain nearly as much THC (the active ingredient prized by pot smokers) as marijuana plants. They say it would benefit American farmers to grow hemp, and point to the many thousands of products that can be made from the plant, everything from wall board and other building materials to biofuels that we could use in place of fossil fuels and nuclear power. However, officials in charge of the drug war make no distinction between hemp and marijuana. They say if growing hemp were allowed, it would be too difficult to prevent people from growing marijuana. `Ditchweed' Growing Wild:Of course, hemp can be found growing wild in parts of the country. The government drug warriors spend millions of dollars a year to eradicate patches of it that come to their attention. Commonly called "ditchweed," some of it may have descended from the vast fields of hemp grown during World War II. Just five years after the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 put an end to hemp crops on U.S. farms, the nation's supply of fiber for many military uses was cut off when Japan took the Philippines. So the government encouraged patriotic farmers to resume growing "Hemp for Victory." The U.S.-grown hemp fibers were used in uniforms, boots and a wide variety of military items. I even read somewhere that the parachute that saved the life of George Bush, the elder, when he had to bail out of his airplane over the Pacific Ocean during the war, had some hemp in it. Somewhere else I read that a U.S. farmer up near the northern border of our country made on his grain crops only about one-tenth as much an acre as a Canadian farmer only a few miles away made by growing hemp. Canadian farmers are free to grow hemp and U.S. farmers are not. Don't you wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have to say about this, if there were some way to ask him? Thom Marshall's e-mail address is: thom.marshall chron.comSource: Houston Chronicle (TX)Author: Thom MarshallPublished: December 21, 2000Copyright: 2000 Houston ChronicleAddress: Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260Fax: (713) 220-3575Contact: viewpoints chron.comWebsite: http://www.chron.com/Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.htmlRelated Articles By Thom MarshallTest for Ability, Not for Drug Use http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8063.shtmlWill Compassion Be Part of Future? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8032.shtmlMarihuana Tax Act of 1937 - Full Text of the Acthttp://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/mjtaxact.htmCannabisNews Articles - Thom Marshallhttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=Thom+Marshall 
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Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on December 22, 2000 at 04:30:36 PT:
Another interesting factoid.
After the onset of WW2, when the Guv'mint decided that perhaps its' mindless vendetta against hemp wasn't such a good idea, seeing as they needed something to replace Manilla fibers lost to Japanese occupation of the Phillipines. So, they turned again to hemp.One of the hemp products used of course was cordage. The kind used as 'risers' in parachutes, to connect the harness to the 'dome'.George Bush Senior owes his life to such fibers; when his aircraft was shot out from underneath him, he parachuted to safety. Now, his son has a chance to thank the descendants of all those farmers whose efforts saved his Daddy's hide by getting the triple-damned DEA out of the hemp regulation business. But will he? Being Big Oil and scared spitless of the industrial potential of hemp, I doubt it very much; he'll probably just continue the madness.
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Comment #1 posted by nl5x on December 22, 2000 at 01:20:47 PT
Dazed and confused
And they (the Founding Fathers) needed those cannabis plants. Not to inhale.??? Is that a fact Mr. Marshall? DNA test their pipes and teacups etc!!!The American name for marijuana is hemp. Marijuana is a Mexican name and cannabis is the Greek name for canvas, which is the Dutch word for cannibis/marijuana, or something like that. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionaryThe bottom line is that hemp is marijuana and the founding fathers called it all hemp whatever the end use.See "Let My People Grow"http://crrh.org/hemptv/docs_let.htmlSeveral original recreations of US colonial patriots discussing hemp.In 1619, America’s first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, “ordering” all farmers to “make tryal of” (grow) Indian hempseed. More mandatory (must-grow) hemp cultivation laws were enacted in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut in 1632, and in the Chesapeake Colonies into the mid-1700s.http://www.jackherer.com/EMP/01/PCH01_02.HTM#American"Hemp is of the first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country." - Thomas Jefferson`A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither'- Thomas Jefferson"Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed and sow it everywhere." George Washington"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded" President Abraham Lincoln (December 1840):`It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues'- Abraham Lincoln -`Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life'- Aristophanes –
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