Industrial Hemp is officially legalized in the US

[Chip]

Hemp is officially legalized with President Trump’s signature on the Farm Bill


President Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalizes industrial hemp after decades of the crop being caught up in broader cannabis prohibition, into law on Thursday.

The signing ceremony represents the culmination of a months-long debate over various provisions of the wide-ranging agriculture legislation. But after the House and Senate Agriculture Committees reconciled their respective versions, the final Farm Bill easily passed in full floor votes last week.

Hemp legalization, a provision of the bill championed by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, received bipartisan support, with members on both sides of the aisle celebrating its inclusion in the now signed law.

While the move has been widely characterized as outright legalization, it’s important to note that strict regulations still apply. Although hemp will no longer be in the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, prospective growers will have to submit cultivation plans to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), either through the state government or the USDA itself.



https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/mar...z6I/story.html


Industrial Hemp: A Win-Win For The Economy And The Environment

Logan Yonavjak (@Loganyon) makes a case for allowing farmers in the United States to grow hemp.

Industrial hemp was once a dominant crop on the American landscape. This hardy and renewable resource (one of the earliest domesticated plants known, with roots dating back to the Neolothic Age in China) was refined for various industrial applications, including paper, textiles, and cordage.

Over time, the use of industrial hemp has evolved into an even greater variety of products, including health foods, organic body care, clothing, construction materials, biofuels, plastic composites and more (according to one source, more than 25,000 products can be made from hemp).

In the U.S., the first hemp plantings were in Jamestown, Virginia, where growing hemp was actually mandatory. From then on hemp was used in everything from 19th century clipper ship sails to the covers of pioneer wagons. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper, and even the finest Bible paper today remains hemp-based.

In the early 20th century, hemp-derived cellulose was promoted as an affordable and renewable raw material for plastics; Henry Ford even built a prototype car from biocomposite materials, using agricultural fiber such as hemp.

After that things started to go downhill. In 1937, the passage of “Marihuana Tax Act” occurred, and, despite the U.S. government's “Hemp for Victory” campaign during World War II, misplaced fears that industrial hemp is the same as marijuana combined with targeted harassment by law enforcement discouraged farmers from growing hemp. The last crop was grown in Wisconsin in 1958, and by 1970 the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) formally prohibited cultivation (although the state of Hawaii is home to the first industrial hemp crop to be cultivated since the passage of the CSA).

The Situation Today

Sustainable hemp seed, fiber and oil are still used in raw materials by major companies, including Ford Motors, Patagonia, and The Body Shop, to make a wide variety of products. However, most hemp product manufacturers are forced to import hemp seed, oil and fiber from growers in Canada, Europe, and China because American farmers are prohibited by law from growing this low-input sustainable crop.

In 2012 the U.S. hemp industry was valued at an estimated $500 million in annual retail sales and growing for all hemp products, according to the Hemp Industries Association, a non-profit trade organization consisting of hundreds of hemp businesses.

Not only can hemp be used for an astonishing number of products, its net environmental benefit is impressive. Among the more salient features, hemp grows in a variety of climates and soil types, is naturally resistant to most pests, and grows very tightly spaced allowing it to outcompete most weeds. A natural substitute for cotton and wood fiber, hemp can also be pulped using fewer chemicals than wood because of its low lignin content. Its natural brightness can obviate the need to use chlorine bleach.

Why is this incredible plant illegal?

Because it is erroneously confounded with marijuana, and many policymakers believe that by legalizing hemp they are legalizing marijuana, which is not true. Canada, Britain, France, Germany, and Spain, along with over twenty other countries, cultivate and process industrial hemp without affecting the enforcement of marijuana laws. (More common misperceptions about hemp and factual rebuttals.)

In fact, industrial hemp and marijuana are different breeds of Cannabis sativa; hemp has no value as a recreational drug. Actually smoking large amounts of hemp flowers can produce a significant headache, but not a high.

To delve further in the details, in most western countries industrial hemp is distinguished from marijuana on the basis of THC (the chief intoxicant in marijuana) content, which allows the growing of industrial hemp for fiber and seed. Regulations in the E.U. and Canada (31 countries currently grow industrial hemp) limit THC levels in hemp flowers to 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively, and prevent attempts to camouflage marijuana in hemp fields. Comparatively, THC levels in marijuana flowers are generally between 3 percent and 15 percent.


A hemp revival is beginning to gain momentum. Perception is beginning to shift in the U.S. Over the past several decades, there’s been a resurgence of interest in hemp by a diverse but increasingly politically influential and unified group of businesses, farmers, nutritionists, activists, and green consumers.

What has to occur is a change in the federal policy to essentially revise the definition of “marijuana” so that the term excludes industrial hemp, and then enact specified procedures and requirements relating to growing industrial hemp and those who cultivate industrial hemp.

“A change in federal policy to once again allow hemp farming would mean instant job creation, among many other economic and environmental benefits,” says Tom Murphy, the National Outreach Coordinator of Vote Hemp.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/.../#5fad1284289b

[Carmody]

Hemp is like the broiler chicken of useful fibers.

[Justplain]

Hemp is a marvelous plant for human usage. Biodegradable plastic can be made based on hemp (look at the huge problem that non-biodegradable plastic causes to the world's oceans and land). Biofuel can be made from hemp, so that the net carbon footprint of this type of fuel consumption is 0. Hemp clothing lasts multiple times as long as cotton or polyester based ones. Hemp used in paper does not require the destruction of trees and is annually renewable, and this same quality gives great value for utilizing hemp for other building materials instead of wood. And apparently, hemp can be grown in a wide range of environments and with less pesticides.

The media is saying that the US Congress legalized hemp because a new agricultural crop was needed to replace the declining demand for tobacco. Just figures that farm profits would force this issue rather than environmental sustainability. Well, whatever works. By all indications, hemp will be a big shift in the right direction for a sustainable future.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Posted by Carmody (here)
Hemp is like the broiler chicken of useful fibers.

Yes, this will bring an industrial revolution of its own right to the United States.

Hemp was one of our main cash crops for a long, long time. George Washington grew it along with his tobacco crops. This is a major blow to many industrial oligarchs, like DuPont and other chemical makers, big pharma, textiles, etc...

Trump will have marijuana itself decriminalized and turned over to the states to regulate next. It was another thing he campaigned on, if only to take profits out of Mexican cartels' pockets and put it into American pockets. It fits with the original interpretation of our Constitution too, of a loose union of sovereign states.

[Bob]

Can anyone explain what the aroma from a field of let's say 600 acres will be like?

I know what it is like driving by (next to) an "industrial scale" grow-house in Boulder, CO for instance. Even with the carbon filters it is intense.

Water use: The cotton plant needs about 50 percent more water per season than hemp, which can grow with little irrigation. Replacing cotton crops with industrial hemp would save water.

Largest reported commercial US growhouse operation: 100,000 square feet and consist of three greenhouses on seven acres.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Posted by Bob (here)
Can anyone explain what the aroma from a field of let's say 600 acres will be like?

I know what it is like driving by (next to) an "industrial scale" grow-house in Boulder, CO for instance. Even with the carbon filters it is intense.

Since hemp doesn't have the flower (buds), I doubt it would smell quite the same as what you guys have been growing in Colorado.

They're probably growing some kind of industrial-strength frankenweed out there.

[amor]

It is high time we moved to the genius of creation in the natural world of substance to unpolluted our health and environment. Manufacturing from hemp is a great start.

[Franny]

I had a teacher in high school whose last name was Hemphill, students certainly appreciated that. The story told was that their farm was called Hemphill several hundred years ago when farmers in many areas were required by law to devote part of the farm to hemp production.

I have suspected that the main reason for stopping the cultivation of industrial help had more to do with competition with other industries such as timber, cotton, oil and others.