Hemp - the maligned plant

Hemp For Victory

1942 - U.S. gov't documentary

Hemp For Victory - A Global Warming Solution

Richard Davis of the USA Hemp Museum speaking on the need to use hemp to help solve the problem of global warming. The hemp plant makes a clean burning fuel and scrubs the air of excess CO2 gas.

Ford Hemp Car

Industrial Hemp can be used to produce many unexpected products. Most people know it is the sustainable alternative to cotton, but very few know it can also be used as building material or to make plastics out of. Henry Ford's hemp car is a great example of the many ways in which Hemp could be used as a sustainable alternative to petrochemical plastics.

Hemp Powered Car debuts in Washington, DC

Biodiesel from hempseed powered car rolls out at the 2001 NORML conference in Washington, DC., with tour from the owners.

Hemp History


Jack Herer explains why hemp is the #1 Natural resource


The Truth of Cannabis ( True Facts )


The Truth About Marijuana: When a Good Plant Got a Bad Name

How marijuana cures ailments, and how the lies about this plant have prevented people from seeing its true potential. "We are not talking about legalizing drugs,we are talking about giving another option to doctors who are educated enough to know what to suggest to patients" Contributing common sense advice about marijuana.

Ron Paul & Hemp for American Farmers


Ron Paul on marijuana, prohibition, and personal freedom

John Stossel's interview with Ron Paul. Ron talks about the failed War on Drugs, public perceptions , and solutions for returning to a sane policy in handling this issue.

Barack Obama Supports Marijuana Decriminalization

This is a video from 2004 in which Barack Obama expresses his support for marijuana decriminalization. Asked about this, the candidate has said this is still his position.

(Economist - 6/23/07)
Nowadays farmers are banned from growing hemp without a permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which usually refuses to grant one. So many hemp products in America—food, lotions, clothing, paper and so forth—are imported from China or Canada, where farmers have been allowed to grow hemp commercially since 1998.

Hemp grows so easily that few pesticides or even fertilisers are needed. "Feral" hemp is said to grow by the roadside in Iowa and Nebraska. Barbara Filippone, owner of a hemp fabric company called Enviro Textiles, says demand has rocketed—sales are growing by 35% a year. Nutiva, a California-based hemp company that sells hemp bars, shakes and oils, saw sales rise from under $1m three years ago to $4.5m last year. "Hemp is the next soy," predicts John Roulac, Nutiva's founder.

American farmers would love to grow hemp. North Dakota, which in 1999 became the first state to allow industrial hemp farming, has taken the lead. This week two farmers from the state filed a lawsuit to force the DEA to issue permits to grow hemp; the farmers had applied for permits back in February, thus far to no avail. Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and presidential candidate, could win over farmers in Iowa because of his pro-hemp lobbying. In February he introduced a bill in Congress that would allow Americans to grow it.

---------------------------------------- --

(Economist - 7/14/07)
Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House of Representatives, set up a special committee to come up with a solution to the nation's energy woes by July 4th, so that America's new political masters could declare "energy independence" on the same day their forebears renounced the colonial yoke.
But July 4th has come and gone, Ms Pelosi as yet has no energy bill and America is still just as firmly yoked to expensive, dirty, imported energy as ever. The price of oil is near the nominal record reached last year, and petrol costs well over $3 a gallon. Not only have the Democrats shelved any plan for limiting greenhouse emissions; they have also embraced two of Mr Bush's more pernicious ideas: using greenery as an excuse to dole out subsidies to ungreen lobbies; and claiming a bogus link between climate change and energy independence.

Sadly, however, the Senate's energy bill weds sensible steps on fuel economy and energy efficiency with all manner of less helpful, populist measures, including new anti-price-gouging rules aimed at big oil companies and hand-outs for farmers in the form of new incentives for expensive (and ungreen) corn-based ethanol.

The Democrats hold at least two suspect truths to be self-evident. Most obviously, they think that politicians should micro-manage energy policy, encouraging some technologies and neglecting others. That ignores most of the lessons of economics, but it is decidedly well grounded compared with the Democrats' other verity: that slowing global warming and reducing dependence on imported fuels go hand-in-hand. What sense does it make to give preference to American ethanol over the cheaper and more climate-friendly Brazilian sort? (Indeed, if you embrace the goal of "energy security", bigger imports of Brazilian ethanol might help, by reducing America's demand for oil from more hostile lands.)

The Democrats' leaders might calculate that it is worth dressing up an energy bill with patriotic talk and weighing it down with subsidies in order to buy political support for more contentious measures.