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| Hemp -- Myth and Possibility |
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Posted by CN Staff on August 04, 2006 at 11:12:45 PT Editorial Source: San Francisco Chronicle 
San Francisco -- Two years ago, a federal appellate court cleared the way for goods and foods containing hemp seed and oil to be sold and consumed in the United States. Today, hemp is used in a wide array of popular products, from soap to snack foods, from paper to shower curtains, from jeans to auto parts. Yet the cultivation of industrial hemp remains illegal in this nation. Why? Two words: mythology and confusion. Industrial hemp suffers discrimination by association with its cannabis cousin -- marijuana. The federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 effectively banned the production of all cannabis plants regardless of the level of the psychoactive ingredient THC. The levels of THC in industrial hemp are so low that it would be almost impossible to smoke or digest enough to give someone even a mild buzz. Even so, the irrationality that sometimes characterizes our "war on drugs" has allowed foreign hemp farmers to exploit the vacuum created by the prevailing ignorance about its clear distinctions from marijuana. Canada lifted its 50-year ban on industrial-hemp cultivation in 1998. It took a few years for Canadian farmers to refine their techniques, but today their industrial hemp is considered "the best in the world," according to David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magical Soaps, an Escondido-based company that uses hemp to make its soaps smoother and milder on the skin. Snipped: Complete Article: http://tinyurl.com/hb62p Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) CannabisNews Hemp Archives Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 04, 2006 at 18:40:31 PT |
| Mid-Daily Items: Where Did I Put Those Pretzels? *** By John Finnerty,The Daily Item August 04, 2006 A funny thing happened this morning. Yesterday, I ate half a bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels I’d gotten at the Pennsylvania Preferred trade show held Thursday afternoon in Northumberland. Naturally, this morning, I thought I’d finish those pretzels. But I couldn’t remember where I’d put them. Which was, after all, only natural: the pretzels were Hempzels (pretzels made from hemp flour). I did find them eventually. They were one of the more interesting products on display at the show. The pretzels are the flagship product, but not the only one produced by Hempzels. They also make mustard and baklava, both using industrial hemp. They also sell toasted hemp seed. The products are made in Lancaster County, but they are made using hemp grown in Canada, because hemp farming is illegal in this country due to the product’s association with marijuana. But proponents like Hempzels proprietor Shawn House, maintain that industrial hemp is different from the cannabis plant used to smoke marijuana. At the trade show, he had a copy of a 1938 Popular Mechanics article touting the benefits of industrial hemp, as well as a copy of legislation that would legalize industrial hemp production. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005, introduced in Congress last summer, would differentiate between cannabis and industrial hemp and allow states to decide if industrial hemp production should be allowed. But hemp farming would not exactly be a new thing if it were reinstated in Pennsylvania, Mr. House notes, displaying a photo, dated 1908, of a farmer harvesting hemp in Lancaster County. “Oh yeah, they didn’t teach us this in school,” he said. Complete Article: http://www.dailyitem.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060804/NEWS/60804004 [ Post Comment ] |
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