8 Common Misconceptions About Industrial Hemp
Hemp has gotten a bad rap over the years.It wasn’t that long ago that this plant was widely used in our society for making fabric, building supplies, and paper.
. As a matter of fact, the original Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. Of course, this was all before industrial hemp growth and cultivation became illegal. What many people do not know is that hemp is different from recreational or medicinal marijuana.
The hemp plant is non-psychoactive, meaning it will not get you high, which begs the question: Why is it even illegal in the first place? It’s crazy that there is there was a plant available to us today that could be grown in pretty much any soil, requires no pesticides and it takes very little maintenance to grow, and this magical plant could be used for a very large number of necessities and goods we use today yet we don’t use it.
These plants are and have been illegal for quite some time, and the only people who are allowed to grow it have to do so under very tight regulations. Recently, College Humor went ahead and made a pretty comical video that neatly summed up exactly how Hemp and Marijuana both became illegal. You can view that here. While all derived from the same plant, Cannabis Sativa L, hemp, and recreational marijuana are still vastly different products. Marijuana contains high levels of THC, the active component that gets you high, while hemp is cultivated to contain little-to-no THC.
The marijuana plants grown to produce the flowering buds we find on the street or in dispensaries contain, on average, around 12% THC. By comparison, hemp plants contains less than 1%. Currently in the United States, the cannabis plant is considered to be industrial hemp if it contains less than 0.3% THC. Within the U.S. it is only legal to bring hemp across state lines in its processed form. Included in this are products containing hemp like skin lotions, granola bars, etc. Hemp is also used to make a number of popular CBD products, and you can find these in most states. CBD is the non-psychoactive active component of the hemp plant, and it has a number of potentially healing properties. This makes hemp products ideal for those who can’t access medicinal marijuana or for those who want the health benefits without the high, such as children. Just because we have already researched the properties of this plant doesn’t mean that we should stop there.
There is always more to be discovered, and when something has the potential to be life-changing, to drastically improve someone’s quality of life, it definitely deserves to be given a second, third, and even fourth look. Being such a bold statement, most consider this claim false. However, hemp can be used to make food, clothing, shelter, fuel, and medicine, and considering how scarce such resources are becoming, and how unsustainably they are being produced, we should be exploring every avenue possible.
The hemp plant can help accommodate many of our basic needs, and for this reason alone we should be utilizing it much more than we are right now. Believe it or not, hemp has been being cultivated for nearly 10,000 years. Many believe this plant to be the first agricultural crop, as many ancient civilizations used the plant to make clothing, rope, and boat sails. Although textiles are a wonderful use for the hemp plant, this only scratches the surface of what this plant is capable of.
The hemp plant contains protein- and magnesium-rich seeds that are a great addition to any diet.
The plant can also be used to make fuel, biodegradable plastics, building blocks for construction, and cosmetic products. This list goes on. If you are concerned about a drug test at work, you do not have to worry that hemp seeds or CBD will show up.
These tests look specifically for THC, and if you are consuming government approved products — those containing less than 0.3% THC — then you will be fine. Unless you are going out of your way to have an all-hemp diet, and consuming tons of it, you have nothing to worry about. Because these two products come from the same species of plant, as mentioned above, they have the potential to be either male or female. THC content is determined, not by gender, but by how the plant has been bred and engineered over time. Hemp is not given the opportunity to mature; it grows quickly and is cut down much earlier than its cousin marijuana, which is allowed to fully mature. Surprisingly, this is incorrect.
The growth and cultivation of industrial hemp is only legal in accordance with agricultural pilot programs allowed to study the growth, cultivation, and marketing of industrial hemp, and in certain states only. Collective Evolution has a very large collection of articles relating to the medicinal properties, nutritional benefits, and various other uses of the hemp plant. To access these articles, click HERE. Are there some other common misconceptions that you can think of about the hemp plant? Let us know. .
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