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some links to backup what I posted. http://www.naihc.org/hemp_information/content/hemp.mj.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

here's a youtube clip of the original hemp car, in 1941

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rgDyEO_8cI

among other hemp facts:

ford and diesel intended their cars to run on hemp oil

jefferson drafted the declaration of independence on hemp paper

much of the founding fathers grew hemp or processed it

read more:

http://naihc.org/hemp_information/hemp_facts.html

Seen enough families having to put up with that one guy whose stoned all the time, stealing money for dope, to say that drugs are not a victimless crime.

Stealing is the crime that causes victims, drugs use is not. And drug prices are high because of the fake War on Drugs, which is really a war on liberty. If drugs were legal then most of the profit would be out of drugs reducing drug related violence as well, with a lot of it being between gangs trying to control the distribution of the drugs.

With the laws politicians and drug warriors have been pushing of decades, they'd imprison many of the USA's Founding Fathers as well. Hemp aka marijuana was grown on the farms owned by, or was advocated by, the first three presidents of the USA, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson wrote the "Declaration of Independence" on hemp paper. Benjamin Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper.

Hemp was never made illegal because it was dangerous or bad, but for other reasons. Hemp or marijuana was called the devil weed from Mexico, when it was not from there, to stroke racist fears and fear of violence. However there is not one medical or scientific study that has shown it to cause violence or drive user to become violent, at least I have not found any that have not been discredited and I dare anyone to find one. Most studies conclude the opposite. So why was it made illegal? Because wealthy and powerful industrialists thought hemp was a threat to them.

Setting free those who were convicted of non-violent drug offenses then many will become tax paying employees...

Um, and these jobs are coming from where?

Legally selling drugs for one thing. People could, and did, farm hemp aka marijuana. During World War II the US government made the movie "Hemp for Victory" to encourage farmers to grow it. Hemp was grown and or used by many of the USA's Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson was a big supporter of hemp, at one point he even said farmers should be required to grow it. Of course he never did propose such a law because he knew it would deny farmers the right to grow what they wanted. TJ made even have written the "Declaration of Independence" on hemp. An MIT study concluded an acre of hemp could produce as much paper as 3 acres of forest. Henry Ford designed and built a car that used hemp for parts such as the dash. It was also fueled with hemp, he made alcohol from hemp. One of the fuels the designer of the diesel engine, Rudolph Diesel, used to power it was hemp oil. Hemp can also be used as a feedstock for plastic, bioplastic. Actually originally plastics, such as cellophane was made from plants. It wasn't until DuPont received a patent for making plastics from petroleum before petrol was used for this.

Have you tried to find a job with a felony conviction on your record lately? We've got people with Masters degrees slinging coffee at Starbucks, and I don't mean just the MFAs.

That's because drugs are illegal. If drugs hadn't been illegal they never would have been convicted of a crime.

The sort of jobs these people could hold no longer exist in our economy.

Sure there are. People with all sorts of jobs and at all levels of education, including those with PhDs use, or would use if legal, drugs. Before hemp was made illegal via the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 when congress was debating the act Dr James Woodward, who was a lawyer as well as a doctor, testified before congress for the AMA that hemp was a medically useful plant. He said the AMA didn't find out what drug was being made illegal until just before the congressional debate, otherwise the they would have spoken out in support of hemp earlier.

But don't think that closing the War on Drugs is going to be the end of the problem.

Legalized drugs will end some of the problems we have now, unfortunately like legal alcohol there will be other problems. Those problems can be dealt with the same way alcohol problems are dealt with. Even though marijuana is legal in the Netherlands they have a lower rate of it's use than the US does. If legal it could be taxed, then if someone addicted to it wanted therapy for the addiction they could go and ask for it. The tax would pay for it.

Falcon

while marijuana was something that was first encountered as something brown-skinned people used, and therefore, exotic and scary and somehow more dangerous

Wrong, the first and third presidents of the USA, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their farms. The second president John Adams wanted to use hemp as a cash crop.

Falcon

Yea, it's paper made from hemp.

Do you have a source for that? :-) I actually have an interest in traditional inks and writing, but cannot find any source for the material of the Constitution. As far as I know it was written on parchment (skin) like many legal documents of the time. I have a friend who makes paper the (really) old fashioned way out of linen rags in the style of Europe, but I know that hemp was a popular fiber here.

Perhaps I misspoke. When I answered I was thinking of the "Declaration of Independence". Thomas Jefferson wrote drafts of the DOI on hemp paper. Here's are links for that. However the Jefferson Monticello says more than likely the paper was made from flax or linen rags.

Richard Stallman has a document on his website that says the USA Constitution was written on hemp paper. Another link says the drafts of the Constitution were written on it. There's one simple way to tell what paper was used for both the DOI and the Constitution, simply test them. However I can easily imagine the government not wanting to test them because if they are written on hemp paper then that would stengthen the hands of those who want to legalize hemp.

We just need to plant massive amounts of biomass to soak up all the excess carbon. We just need to turn the United States into a temperate rain forest- with enough variety to ensure tree survival and food production from the rain forest itself. Lock up that carbon in wood-

My original source was NPR, (but keep reading for the summary of a google search). My understanding is that the THC won't disappear or be shut off like a light, but will be diluted by half in the next generation. THC is found in hemp, just in amounts that are vanishingly small. Further, THC appears to be created by the interactions of multiple genes, so you don't have a simple 4-box Punnet square to predict outcomes (more similar to eye color than blood type).

Perhaps I should rephrase my original phrasing from "destroying" to "diluting" or "eroding". In any case, the next generation of marijuana won't be as good as the grower intended, which will reduce it's street value dramatically and force the grower to find new, uncontaminated seeds for his next crop.

When I google for "hemp marijuana pollination", there are 14,700 total results from that search. On the first page are these interesting sites:

Here's been a cross pollination study done in Canada described here which basically says it's an even split in the next generation.

You may not like the heritage of the next reference, but the "North American Industrial Hemp Council" has a Myths and Realities paper which discusses this point briefly.

Here's a marijuana seed supplier which suggests (down in the fine print) keeping a reserve of seeds in case your crops accidentally get cross pollinated with ditchweed (the hemp that grows naturally all over the country) and you can't plant the next generation.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Ross

Yeah, I caught it after I posted. Sadly though, no take-backs on/.: once it's posted: I really do wish you could delete or at least edit your posts.

The funny thing is, reading it in that context and in relation to this post, my estimation of your intelligence (and knowledge of history) jumped ten-fold.

Although I will have to disagree about the similarities between hemp and marijuana - it has nothing to do with breeding, they're two different species in the same genus. The similarities are about the same as that between a house cat and a lion.

For those interested in further reading:

Hemp and Marijuana: Myths & Realities It's a great article that illustrates the distinctions between hemp and marijuana and a little bit of history as well.

As an aside, the strange thing about this whole thread is that it's turning me into the "NORML activist". While I'm supportive of both legalization of hemp and marijuana (I don't smoke it, I just don't really care what people put in their bodies so long as they aren't hurting anybody else), I wouldn't say I'm that passionate about it.

Random links about the amount of pesticides and herbicides used, and don't forget that 85% of california's water is used for irrigating crops. Cotton is *not* an easy plant to grow. Compare with hemp (called weed for a reason) which grows 4x as fast as your typical pulp-producing trees with no pesticides and herbicides, and you have a pretty convincing product.

There are quite a few places growing hemp commercially in the UK, even with all the regulatory hoops they have to jump through (fencing requirements to keep "pot-heads" from getting ahold of something with no THC content).

Do a little research before trolling next time?

Wide acceptance of low-emissions vehicles is almost completely dependent on the existence of a, for lack of a better word, refueling infrastructure. People don't want to have to drive across town to the one electric recharge station (or hydrogen station, or whatever) when they could drive their combustion car 2 blocks. And they dont' want to run out of whatever fuel they're using out in the middle or nowhere, or in a bad neighborhood, etc.