The Marijuana Conspiracy

[MolBasser]

Then tell me where the heck it is going to go? Paper? Oil? Fiberboard? Cloth? Food? In all those markets hemp runs a distant second best as the second choice or as a product that barely fills a tiny niche.

What is your point? Seriously.

If it is no big deal and won't make a market grab, why outlaw it?

If a few farmers think they can make a buck and in so doing put a underrepresented product on the market, why stop it?

MolBasser

 

[kookbreaker]

You can't really separate the two products. Especially when you invoked the phrase 'drug paranoia' in your commments.

The government, rightly or wrongly, thinks MJ should be illegal. You can call it 'drug paranoia' but that is a gross oversimplification, on the other hand the war on drugs has overly attacked MJ.

The legality of mj is an issue for the politics forum, but if one does have pot being illegal it is no great surprise, or paranoia, that hemp becomes outlawed as well. Hemp is visually indistinguishable from a marijuana plant and that makes enforcement difficult if one is legal and unrestricted and the other isn't. You can argue the morality of that, but again that gets back to the 'legalize it' issue.

 

[kookbreaker]

What is your point? Seriously.

My point is that far too much energy is paid to this product for its net return and it has a lot of fences to mend.

If it is no big deal and won't make a market grab, why outlaw it?

As I mention in my previous post, you can't have one legal and the other illegal - at least not without a lot of restrictions (such as what the Canada farmers had to do to grow hemp, for example).

To get the market you are talking about, you need legalization of both. I suspect this is what the legalize-it crowd was hoping for. But in that case this becomes another issue.

 

[MolBasser]

You can't really separate the two products. Especially when you invoked the phrase 'drug paranoia' in your commments.

Yes, you can. The products are completely different. From start to finish.

The government, rightly or wrongly, thinks MJ should be illegal. You can call it 'drug paranoia' but that is a gross oversimplification, on the other hand the war on drugs has overly attacked MJ.

How is this an oversimplification. It is an industrial product.

The legality of mj is an issue for the politics forum, but if one does have pot being illegal it is no great surprise, or paranoia, that hemp becomes outlawed as well. Hemp is visually indistinguishable from a marijuana plant and that makes enforcement difficult if one is legal and unrestricted and the other isn't. You can argue the morality of that, but again that gets back to the 'legalize it' issue.

No, it is not visually indistinguishable. That is laughable to say. Have you ever seen the two crops? Seriously, have you actually seen a hemp fiber crop and a marijuana drug crop?

It is night and day.

MolBasser

 

[carlitos]

No, it is not visually indistinguishable. That is laughable to say. Have you ever seen the two crops? Seriously, have you actually seen a hemp fiber crop and a marijuana drug crop?

It is night and day.

MolBasser

Night and day...OK, you made me look around for photos. At harvest time, they seem to look different, but other times, not so much.

Guy in an industrial hemp field. -
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/international/canada_don/manitoba/index.shtml

Guy in a marijuana field -
http://www.greenchange.org/img/original/jd marijuana field and man.jpg

Proud guy with industrial hemp leaf -
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/international/canada_don/manitoba/images/three-1.jpg

Stoner guy with marijuana plants -
http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/archives/stoner.jpg

 

[carlitos]

According to Dandyone, a 10-20 acre parcel per person used to grow hemp would suffice to solve all problems.
It was pointed out that this would mean a world wide monoculture of hemp.
ETA: which I addressed Here
(that or we have to reduce the world population or level all mountain ranges to increase arable land mass - quite the mega-project)

Of course such a snake oil panacea is a fantasy.

Thanks for reminding me. I believe that I stundied myself over this with bad math on arable land.

 

[jaydeehess]

Thanks for reminding me. I believe that I stundied myself over this with bad math on arable land.

I wasn't going to mention that part

 

[jaydeehess]

No one in their right mind is going to say that it will solve all the world problems. That is not the issue.

Ok, not to you. It was to Dandyone.

The issue is that the government is conspiring to keep a useful product out of the stream due to drug paranoia.

MolBasser

"Conspiring"??
Will it cause problems for drug enforcement?
Yes, it looks very much like the illegal plant and would make finding illegal crops harder.
Will it produce much benefit?
No, not really since its only going to try and take some market share from other products. One would have to build an infrastructure to use the product first. Who's got that capital?

 

[PhantomWolf]

Molbasser,

Could you answer some questions for me?

1) Is it legal to import hemp into the US?
2) Does Canada currently have a glut of Hemp due to farmers producing more than is being processed?
3) Are US Companies clamouring for Canadian Hemp?
4) Assuming the answer to 3) is "No", how would growing it in the US change this?

 

[MolBasser]

Molbasser,

Could you answer some questions for me?

1) Is it legal to import hemp into the US?

Yes, with restrictions.

2) Does Canada currently have a glut of Hemp due to farmers producing more than is being processed?

Not at present that I am aware of.

3) Are US Companies clamouring for Canadian Hemp?

I'm not sure, but it all seems to be being sold, so there is a market for it.

4) Assuming the answer to 3) is "No", how would growing it in the US change this?

I think that that is a bad assumption.

MolBasser

 

[PhantomWolf]

Not at present that I am aware of.

Given that in Canada in 2006 there were 48,000 acres and in 2009 only 13,000, wouldn't that indicate that there is not a large market for it?

I'm not sure, but it all seems to be being sold, so there is a market for it.

Except that the market Canada supplies seems to only be able to sustain a 10-15,000 acre crop given the figures from 1998 to 2009, most of which seems to already go to the US (59%).

I think that that is a bad assumption.

MolBasser

Given that Canada is supplying a lot of the US's demand for Hemp, and it appartently can't currently support more than 15,000 acres or production, how do you see producing Hemp in the US changing this? From what I can find, mostly all that would happen is that US users would switch from imported to US grown, but the market doesn't appear to be likely to grow.

If you look at the stats you can see that it wasn't untill 2007 that Canada even exported more than 400 tonnes of Hemp products, and that was only because it exported 700 tonnes of seed, it only exported 99 tonnes of fibre. C.f. just Texas Cotton production, a total of 1.5 million tonnes.

Now consider that in the US alone, #3 in world cotton production behind China and India, they planted out 10.1 million acres in cotton. Hemp is little more than a Cottage industry. Again compare that in Canada they had 85 licences issued in 2008, compared to the 18,600 cotton farms in the US.

Finally, given that the US Textile industry uses over 5 million bales of cotton a year (1.25 million tonnes) if hemp truely was compeditive with it, don't you think they'd be more interested in it than a measly 40-70 tonnes of fibre a year?

 

[carlitos]

MolBasser, do those photos I posted look like "night and day" to you?

 

[dudalb]

And here is why I get annoyned with the Legal Pot advocates, despite the fact I think Pot should be legal. Rather then argue the issue on individual rights, and that over the top Laws on Pot just make the problem of drug abuse worse, they resort to Bullcrap arguments on how Hemp can lead to an economic miracle in the USA, despite the fact is has not done so for Canada.

 

[twinstead]

And here is why I get annoyned with the Legal Pot advocates, despite the fact I think Pot should be legal. Rather then argue the issue on individual rights, and that over the top Laws on Pot just make the problem of drug abuse worse, they resort to Bullcrap arguments on how Hemp can lead to an economic miracle in the USA, despite the fact is has not done so for Canada.

yup. There are plenty of compelling reasons why pot should be legal and even a few why it should not. This "miracle of hemp" thingy is not one of them.

 

[kookbreaker]

And here is why I get annoyned with the Legal Pot advocates, despite the fact I think Pot should be legal. Rather then argue the issue on individual rights, and that over the top Laws on Pot just make the problem of drug abuse worse, they resort to Bullcrap arguments on how Hemp can lead to an economic miracle in the USA, despite the fact is has not done so for Canada.

This has always been my complaint. Whatever one might have thought of the 'legalize it' movement they were pretty honest and upfront about what they wanted and how they hoped to get it. The whole hemp thing not only was them presenting a lie, but they told lies about how it was banned with stupid conspiracy theories. This meant much of the movement was now mired in deception - the polar opposite of what they stood for.

Even worse is that hemp heads started making far too many inroads into real environmental concerns. People might have enjoyed Earth Day festivals but when they were hijacked with people making a scene (these movements have never been subtle) and telling more lie about the stuff it meant a lot of mainstream was inclined to stay away from such events. This managed to get the long-term environmentalists rather ticked off. When they spent ages trying to work towards getting old farm fields to go back to their natural shurb-to-forest cycle some idiot would pipe up "Why don't we plant hemp there!!!!? SOOOPER CROP!" and they would be back to square one.

 

[MolBasser]

What really annoys me, is when a pro hemp person attempts to talk about hemp, all the doubters come in and say that it is about legalizing pot.

It isn't.

It is about legalizing hemp. Can we please get past this?

MolBasser

 

[MolBasser]

MolBasser, do those photos I posted look like "night and day" to you?

From the selective photos that you linked, you would be inclined to think that they were not night and day.

Here are some selective photos that I found.

http://www.marijuanaseedbanks.com/images/marijuana_wallpaper/images/big_bud_marijuana.jpg

Unseeded (important, as hemp crops are always seeded) marijuana bud of a female plant (again important, as drug crops are culled to be female only).

http://agronomyday.cropsci.illinois.edu/2001/tours/ind-hemp/hemp-cult.jpg

hemp grown for fiber. Note the closeness of the plants and lack of leaves and long internodal length.

Sigh.

Seriously now, can we get back to the subject of why hemp is illegal rather than implying that I am using this as a cover to legalize marijuana the drug?

MolBasser

 

[carlitos]

legalize it....don't criticize it!

What really annoys me, is when a pro hemp person attempts to talk about hemp, all the doubters come in and say that it is about legalizing pot.

It isn't.

It is about legalizing hemp. Can we please get past this?

MolBasser

In this topic we are discussing the conspiracy of the robber barons to rid the earth of the "super crop" hemp that would be an atomic bomb to industry and revolutionize the world.

If you want to talk about legalizing hemp, you want the USA Politics sub-forum. I would have thought that you had found it by now, but here is a link just in case.

ETA - Here is a link to someone named "MolBasser" saying that all drugs should be legal. Confining this topic to "hemp" seems about as disingenuous as confining 9/11 truth conversations to "building 7."

 

[ihaunter]

The question as to why hemp is illegal today is actually two questions. Why was it made illegal? Why is it still illegal? No single reason will answer both of these questions. When posters are saying that it is a non-issue, they are addressing the latter. It's similarities to marijuana address the former.
Was the law in question overzealous and based on incorrect information? I suspect many on this forum would say yes. But it's not completely illogical, either. Was this a nefarious plot by your so-called drug warriors? Well, let's just say I'm a fan of Hanlon's Razor, especially when talking about the government.
Speaking of Hanlon's Razor, changing stupidity to apathy is equally accurate when discussing government and laws. That returns us to the why is it still illegal question. Have you ever read one of the many books/articles/websites that talk about strange laws that are out there? Many exist in the law books over a century after the original need no longer existed because nobody cared enough to fix them. If you were to say that it is wrong that people are so apathetic to the laws that govern their lives, I wouldn't necessarily disagree. That doesn't change the fact, that's the way it is.

You want people to believe that hemp being illegal is some shadowy conspiracy? Prove, not assert, that the people that wrote the law knew the difference between hemp and marijuana and cared about hemp enough that this wasn't simply a case of hemp being caught in the crossfire.

 

[MolBasser]

It isn't a shadowy conspiracy, it is a conspiracy right in the open. Not all conspiracies are super secret, black helicopter and thermite.

MolBasser