Pretty much the best thing

[Kiid]

Hemp.
Don't buy cotton. Buy hemp
Don't buy petrol. Hemp can provide a cleaner alternative
Don't buy paper unless it is made from hemp. It's way stronger than paper made from trees.
Plant hemp cos in your garden it revitalizes the soil.

I don'y see why this renewable resource is not being utilized.

Sad face at society :frown:

[darunzahn]

Industrial uses of hemp is insanely useful in so many ways. Medical uses of canabis has been growing immensely. However, whatever name it goes by, I am just a huge supporter. I've pretty much abandoned alcohol because of my use of marijuana, and I think it's much more preferrable.

[Kiid]

It's like the miracle plant!
Save the world with weed and hemp!
Canibanoids can cure cancer!
Gah the world is a stupid place filled with stupid people all making it more and more stupid.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Oh look, the potheads found a new way to justify their addiction to the Devil Weed. We all know what weed does, who of my generation didn't see the stern warnings and horrors in the documentary "reefer madness".








Actually all that I said above is pretty much the sentiment that drove pot and hemp into the under ground and denied at least two generations of all the stuff hemp could provide.

Fear and propaganda pretty much keeps all the drugs illegal, when in many cases only the worst case scenarios are flaunted and no one talks about the hard working regular users of 'illegal' recreational drugs.

Its like talking only about the gutter sleeping winos and ignoring the millions of others who drink sociably and responsibly. that was done before and during the American Alcohol Prohibition and history shows how well that went and ended.

Hemp was pretty much made illegal out of fear, fear based on myth, fear propagated and expounded on purpose to make a prohibition against pot and all sorts of other drugs.

[Pix]

I don'y see why this renewable resource is not being utilized.

Because the industries that would be replaced by it (and many banks also depend on people in those businesses paying back their loans) are wealthy and we have the best democracies that money can buy, and the same people who fortify politicians with their money own the majority of the news (creating all sorts of conflicts of interests) which make sure a lot of ideas threatening to their profits only get minimal exposure.

There's also that hemp often gets mixed up with marijuana, and marijuana got tagged into social conscience as evil (originally as a drug for debauched and colored folk that then became an evil of Communism/Capitalism, that is the bad guys) so that doesn't help either. There's such a hysteria over anything even remotely related to drugs that our VP Biden (back when he was a senator, and btw, in America he's considered liberal, and I think progressive!) even tried to legally restrict massage oil and even potentially life saving glow sticks because some people on E liked to use them! (He was forced to back down on that to get the next rewrite of the bill passed, but he had a lot of support for the initial proposed bans, too, which should illustrate just how insane the anti-drug crowd can be, and if even glow sticks are demonized you can bet hemp will be.) I think this is a minor point, however.

Btw, in case you haven't heard of it, I thought this was cool (and one of those things not reported by the news, along with similar things):

http://hempcar.org/

[Genersis]

There are multiple varieties of hemp.
The hemp mass cultivated and used in paper, housing, and even traditional clothing, isn't the same as the hemp used to produce cannabis.
It has been selectively bread to reduce the Tetrahydrocannabinol content.

It does, unfortunately, still fall under most anti-drug laws in the US.

[Eromir]

Hemp is awesome!

Hemp seeds are very nutritious. They have a high energy value and lots of protein and other nice things as well. My granny grew hemp and made butter out of it (or with it).

Lime-Hemp composite materials can be used in construction, although such building are not structurally sound and shouldn't have a second floor or a heavy roof. Can be a bit brittle. This can be used in some developing countries where better materials are easily not available.

Hemp is also used in more eco-friendly plastics.

The drawback, again, is that it needs lots of space to grow and consumes a lot of water.

Where I used to live, hemp was grown in almost every household, but now it's frowned upon because of the association with drugs. :/

EDIT: It's not always just companies that are responsible for such products not taking off. Sometimes the consumers are just not willing to accept this. I know a few people who wouldn't buy hemp pants, because it's hemp and they want something less weird like cotton or wool or even some synthetic material.

Bio-fuel requires a massive change and investment in infrastructure and you have to know that it will take off. Hydrogen station are now appearing all over the world, but most people would dismiss the idea of buying a hydrogen car for a variety of reasons, ranging from ignorant like - "Oh, but i wan't to have real MAN fuel in my car" to more practical reasons like having to go out of your way to tank it.

[Kiid]

The drawback, again, is that it needs lots of space to grow and consumes a lot of water.

Compared to plants like cotton heap uses relatively little water and space and grows a lot faster.

[darunzahn]

Speaking of the social aspect of the war against marijuana, I'm fairly open about my smoking pass time and as such I have found a large amount of positive feedback. However there has also been some pretty strong claims against it and its "destructive" uses. Other than the psudo-science that some throw around, I'm more focused on the stories of "Pot ruined someone's life" stories. Have many of you found similar stories of these first hand accounts of how pot destroys.

My personal experience with these stories seem based off of the fact that the users were actually abusing the drug to handle other situations or avoid them altogether, which is rarely a healthy thing to do.

[Eromir]

I have never heard of pot ruining someones life, but it's usually just the first step to heavier drugs, which then cause heavy addiction. Another problem is irresponsibility of the users. Poor Dutch have to suffer irresponsible Germans going on a bender, while they themselves remain relatively composed. Likewise, I had some friends who were close to death several times not because of an overdose, but because their stupidity ballooned after smoking.

It's true that hemp is easier to grow than cotton, but when it comes to replacing petrol-based products, large new fields have to be planted. Yes, in certain ways this is better than drilling, but agriculture also has a huge negative impact on the environment. Europe has been completely ruined for a long time and we take that for granted and now there is nothing much left to save. Take Madagascar for example. Most of the land has been cultivated and wildlife has retreaded to small isolated parts of the forest and a lot of species are on the brink of extinction because of this. Planting new crops that replace oil would reduce these already small areas even further. The same situation occurs all over Africa, Asia and South America. The only place where planting these crops wouldn't have a major impact is somewhere in the middle of Russia.