1 of 8

Write now Article Tools

Page 2 of 3

It is economically a crop of great importance, yet farmers may not grow it. This is of course quite an irony, as hemp was encouraged by the US governemnt in 1942 in a "Hemp for Victory" campaign. Now try to get your victory - you will go to jail! Monson is suing the DEA over this, as they are slow in granting him his papers to plant hemp.

While economic reasons are to be found for cultivating it, the financial structures are skewed in favour of a few, who make laws to protect themselves and prohibit the people from making use of the natural world around. Big business does not get to sell Monson lots of chemicals pesticides if he grows hemp, and if he does, he may process it locally. In some countries they still make clothes out of hemp, which does not do much for the international cotton trade, which, in addition to using tons of pesticdies, is depleting the water (so do NOT think that this organic cotton craze is good for the farmers).

These financial structures must be dealt with, or else we will see the rich getting richer and the poor getting 'polluted and lied to', as Paul Benhaim writes in one of his own books on hemp.

One way to deal with it all is hemp, which would provide the materials we need for clothing, paper, food and medicine. The use of hemp for the last application would be worth billions, and is why the tycoons in power fear it. They are so embedded in the government that they can almost force people to use their drugs, and then walk away from lawsuits when the drugs fail. Cannabis medicines would be an axe to their roots.

One last utilisation of the hemp plant, however, remains to be mentioned, and that is a big one. I left it to this point as it demands careful discussion. Earlier on I mentioned the word cellulose, and this is really a very simple concept. It is the most common vegetable compound in nature, and animals even eat it. It is a carbohydrate, and can provide energy. Most simply it can be burned, raw or as charcoal, as already mentioned, but more realistically it can be turned into ethanol - and whilst that would be a simple discussion, these days the waters have been muddied and one must pay attention to some details in this.

The chemical change from cellulose to ethanol is one of them, and this is not hard to understand; it goes on naturally, and on a large scale in brewing - it is how we get our alcohol to drink.

However, what has made this equation complex is one variable, which is not the X factor, but the idiot factor. For anyone

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Why the tycoons fear hemp: From drugs to oil?
We want to hear your view. Write now!