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can produce a soft cloth) but it is much stronger and longer lasting. (It
does not stretch out.)
For the same reasons mentioned above, hemp is a better crop to grow
than cotton. In the United States, the cotton crop uses half of the total
pesticides. (Yes, you heard right, one half of the pesticides used in the
entire U.S. are used on cotton.)
Cotton is a soil damaging crop and needs a lot of fertilizer.
5a) How can hemp be used as a medicine?
Hemp has thousands of possible uses in medicine. Just one of the 400+
chemicals in hemp, THC, could replace up to 30% of the pharmaceutical on
the market today.
Marijuana, actually cannabis extract, was available as a medicine
legally in this country until 1937, and was sold as a nerve tonic.
Marijuana appears in almost every known book of medicine written by
ancient scholars and wise men. It is usually ranked among the top
medicines, or `panaceas.' It was used as a pain reliever and in childbirth
(oxytoxant).
The most well known use of marijuana today is to control nausea and
vomiting -- one of the most important things when treating cancer or AIDS
with chemo-therapy or AZT. Other well known uses are for glaucoma (an eye
disease that makes you go blind), multiple sclerosis, and a wide range
of other diseases which involve involuntary muscle spasms.
b) What's wrong with all the prescription drugs we have?
They cost money and are hard to make. In some cases, they do not work
as well, either. Some prescription drugs which marijuana can replace have
very bad side effects. Cannabis medicines are cheap, safe, and easy to make.
6a) How can hemp be used to make paper?
Both the fiber (bast) and pulp (hurd) of the hemp plant can be used to
make paper. Fiber paper was the first kind of paper, and the first batch
of that was made out of hemp in ancient China. Fibre paper is tough,
brittle, and a bit rough, and does not hold together as well as pulp paper,
especially when it is wet.
Pulp paper is softer than fibre paper. It is the kind of paper we use
most today. The pulp works like glue, holding small bits of fiber
together. Sometimes fiber is added to pulp paper to add strength.
An acre of cannabis hemp will replace four acres of trees in pulp
paper production.
b) Why can't we just keep using trees?
In order to make paper out of tree pulp, a substance called `lignin'
must be broken down. In order to do this, the pulp must be soaked in
powerful acid. These acids contaminate the environment. Some paper
companies clean the acid out with zinc oxide, but zinc oxide is also
dangerous. Paper made from trees is often whitened with chemicals which
are alleged to be dangerous, like dioxin. Hemp pulp has no lignin and
whitens with much less difficulty.
A simpler answer to the above question is:
Because we are running out! Way back in the 1930's, the USDA was
already worried about our `tree supply.' That is why they went in search
of plant pulp to replace wood. They found hemp, but could not use it until
someone made a machine to strip the pulp from the fibre -- but that is
another story -- See the next section.
Today, only 4% of America's old-growth forest remains standing -- and
there is talk about building roads into that for logging purposes!
7) What other uses for hemp are there?
One of the newest uses ts seed -- most of them eat it
as `greul' which is a lot like oatmeal. Hemp is competitive to soy in
protein production.
Hemp seeds have a nutty taste. Hemp leaves can be used as roughage,
but not without slight psycho-active side-effects. Hemp seeds do not get
you high.
b) What are the benefits of hemp compared to other food crops?
Hemp requires little fertilizer, and grows well almost everywhere. It
also resists pests, so it uses little pesticides. Hemp puts down deep
roots, which is good for the soil, and when the leaves drop off the hemp
plant, minerals are returned to the soil. Hemp has been grown on the same
soil for twenty years in a row without any noticeable depletion of the
soil.
Using less fertilizer and agricultural chemicals is good for two
reasons. First, it costs less and requires less effort. Second, many
agricultural chemicals are dangerous and contaminate the environment -- the
less we have to use, the better.
c) How about soy? Is hemp competitive as a world source of protein?
Hemp seed protein more closely resembles that of the human body than
soy; it is also easier to digest. Hemp contains a richer source of essential
fatty acid oils than soy. These oils prevent heart disease and build the
immune system.
Hemp also resists UV-B light, which is a kind of sunlight that is
blocked by the ozone layer. Soy beans do not take UV-B light very well.
If the ozone layer were to deplete by 16%, which by some estimates is very
possible, soy production would fall by 25-30%. We may have to grow hemp or
starve -- and it won't be the first time that this has happened. (Hemp has
been used to `bail out' many populations in time of famine.)
3a) How can hemp be used as a fuel?
The pulp (hurd) of the hemp plant can be burned as fuel or processed
into charcoal, methanol, methane, or gasoline. The process for doing this
is called destructive distillation, or `pyrolysis.' Fuels made out of
plants like this are called `biomass' fuels.
b) Why is it better than petroleum?
Biomass fuels are clean and virtually free from metals and sulfur, but
more importantly, the carbon dioxide which is released when you burn biomass
fuels did not come from under the ground, it came from the air. This way,
the total amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere does not
change. When petroleum products are burned, carbon is added to the air,
this may contribute to global warming through the ``Greenhouse Effect,'' (a
popular theory which says that certain gasses will act like a blanket over
the entire Earth, preventing heat from escaping into space.)
4a) How can hemp be used for cloth?
The fibre (bast) of the hemp plant can be woven into almost any kind
of cloth. It is very durable. In fact, the first Levi's blue jeans were
made out of hemp for just this reason.
b) Why is it better than cotton?
The cloth that hemp makes may be a little less soft than cotton,
(thouubstance than marijuana.
You may have heard that `one joint is equal to 10 cigarettes' This is
based on studies which measured the tar content of cannabis and tobacco
leaves. Marijuana smokers prefer the bud, though, which is much cleaner.
