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food source known to man. A handful of seeds can keep the body going for a great deal of time.

So, What happened?
1930's brought about big business. Those businesses placed pressure on the government. After all, money was tight, and recovery from the stock market crash hadn't quite happened as fast or as completely as everyone hoped. The government released a video called "Refer Madness". In this video fear was placed upon the people about their children smoking marijuana and getting high. The doctors on this film talked about the crazy things done while high. Through propaganda it wasn't hard to get the American people on board the fight against hemp. It then became illegal for farmers to grow hemp without a license. Licenses went through the Federal Department of Agriculture and over time growing of hemp stopped completely.

That helps the war on drugs, right?
Well, this is where it gets complicated. Hemp and marijuana aren't the same thing, they are cousin plants that are closely related, except in one area. THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) the chemical found in marijuana that gets people high, isn't in hemp to a high enough percentage to get high. In fact to get high you need a THC of 3% or more. Good marijuana has it at 10-15%. Hemp has a concentration of THC around 0.01-0.3%. It isn't enough to get high off of.

Additionally these plants can't be grown together. Cross pollination renders both plants impotent. This makes it impossible to be growing hemp legally and hiding marijuana in the fields. Top it off, they are grown very differently, so one couldn't lie about what they were growing (hemp is grown in rows 1-2" apart, marijuana needs rows that are 12-18" apart).

Big business and government control has effectively stamped out our best resource. This would also be the greenest option available making a great deal of biodegradable plastics available and a renewable resource for energy and oil that could be grown in quantities that are sufficient to meet our needs (corn can't be grown fast enough or in large enough quantities to meet our gasoline needs let alone other energy needs). The tycoons of America fear the plant that could shift industries and mean big money losses.

Learn more about this author, Danelle Karth.
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