Time To Grow Hemp!

I’ve discussed the potential economical benefits of marijuana a few times on this blog but today I want to talk about the economic up sides to another plant know as hemp. Hemp comes from the same family of plants as marijuana (Cannabis) and as a result it has been demonized in the same manner (albeit not as much as marijuana).  It is true that hemp contains THC just like marijuana but it does not contain enough to cause any of the same physiological effects. Hemp contains about 0.3 percent of THC where as marijuana can contain anywhere from 6 to 20 percent on average depending on the quality of the plant. Because hemp contains trace amounts of THC and because it comes from the cannabis plant family the government has greatly restricted production and cultivation of this plant. Hemp is used in as many as 50,000 products sold in the United States. It is used in everything from clothes to dietary products yet its production in the U.S is greatly restricted. It is nearly impossible to obtain a license to grow it through the DEA, and since we can’t grow it in any significant amount we have to depend on foreign countries such as China and Canada to export it to us. This makes the U.S the number 1 importer of hemp in the world.

                Think of how many jobs we can create by loosening our restrictive laws against hemp and how much economic growth can come with it. The same types of scare tactics used against marijuana are keeping us from the economic growth that we can achieve with hemp. It makes no sense and hopefully through this blog and other informational sources more and more people will realize this fact. Yes it is true that this plant contains THC, but when was last time you ever heard of drug dealers pushing hemp or anyone being arrested for smoking it? The truth is that there is not enough THC in hemp to obtain any kind of a “high” from the plant. Marijuana smokers realize this which is why you never hear of any of them or anyone else for that matter smoking hemp trying to obtain a high. However we still treat this plant as a drug which is why one has to obtain a license from the DEA in order to grow it.

We are shooting ourselves in the foot. How can we allow our apprehensions about marijuana trickle over to hemp? We buy it from other countries and put it into thousands of products that we sell in our stores and use in our homes yet we won’t allow our own citizens to cultivate it in order to improve our economy. This is proof on how well scare tactics work in demonizing cannabis. These scare tactics have been so effective that our own government is willing to limit the potential of our own economy based on them.  It’s like I’ve said before, we have to educate ourselves on cannabis so that we can free ourselves from these myths and scare tactics. Only by looking at the facts can we realize that cannabis can become one of the largest cash crops for America and bring incredible wealth to the country.