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Eco-Friendly
(Yet Controversial)
Hemp Comes Home
EYE ON APPAREL
INNOVATE
14 •
PPB
• FEBRUARY 2016
W
HILE HEMP IS A VARIETY of
the cannabis plant, it is not the
same thing as marijuana. Hemp
contains 0.3 percent or less of the psychoactive
component THC. (By contrast, marijuana
plants contain five to 20 percent THC.) Even
though you can’t get high from hemp, U.S.
drug laws—greatly influenced by propaganda
campaigns developed by financial tycoons
whose holdings in plastics, oil and paper were
threatened by the wide-ranging uses of indus-
trial hemp—doomed the production of hemp
with high taxes starting in 1937. In the 1950s,
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics lumped
industrial hemp with marijuana and banned its
production. While the U.S. couldn’t produce
hemp, it could legally import hemp products
made in other countries such as China,
Romania, Hungary and India, as long as the
products contained no THC.
Compared to cotton, hemp is much more
eco-friendly to produce, growing in a variety
of climates and soil types and using only half
the water of cotton and requiring no pesticides
or herbicides. A provision in the 2014 farm
bill signed by President Obama removed
hemp grown for research purposes from the
federal Controlled Substances Act, leading the
way for the farmers to import hemp seeds and
begin limited cultivation here at home. In
2015, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators intro-
duced the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of
2015, which would allow American farmers to
produce and cultivate industrial hemp. The bill
would remove hemp from the controlled sub-
stances list as long as it contained no more
than 0.3 percent THC. You can follow the
bill’s progress at
www.govtrack.us.
Five
Facts About Hemp
1
It used to be illegal
not
to
produce hemp in the
American Colonies because of its
importance in making sails and
ropes for ships.
2
The word
canvas
is rooted in
the word
cannabis
.
3
Thomas Jefferson drafted
The Declaration of
Independence on hemp paper.
4
Hemp is legal to grow in 30
industrialized countries,
including
Canada.
5
Fabrics
made
of at least
one-half hemp
block the sun's UV rays more
effectively than other fabrics.
Source: North American
Industrial Hemp Council, Inc.