Source: coloradoan.com
The cannabis plant, in its industrial and medicinal form, could easily solve a whole host of environmental and social issues that plague our society today. The history of the cannabis plant in our country is a long and convoluted story that deserves not only examination, but also our full attention. It is a history that has most recently marched right into the political arena that exists today.
Cannabis’ history on the North American continent began innocently enough with our nation’s founding fathers and the earliest European colonists who brought it here and cultivated it to be used in a wide variety of ways. Cannabis was used to produce paper, clothing and cloth, fibers for ropes, oils for burning and cooking, and medicine — it was even used as a method of payment for some goods and in some cases, even government taxes. It continued to be used extensively until the turn of the 20th century, when cannabis production began to slowly decrease due to new technological discoveries and newfound financial prospects. It was the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 that finally pushed cannabis far underground and committed it to become the demonized plant that it has so unfairly become today.
Many argue that the catalyst for the Marihuana Tax Act was an agreement among a few of the biggest business tycoons of the time, in an effort to protect their investments in wood based pulp as opposed to hemp based paper pulp, and new synthetic, petroleum fibers that would replace the hemp fibers that had been produced for so long. The medical community in 1937 was largely unaware of the attempt to make cannabis illegal — the term “marihuana” was an unknown slang term that doctors of the time did not associate with medical cannabis — as a result, they did not oppose the Tax Act that essentially made cannabis a federally illegal substance in the U.S. until it was too late.
The forces that caused cannabis to become illegal in the first place are the same forces that strive to keep it federally illegal today. One acre of hemp can produce far more paper than an acre of trees and the hemp plant grows and matures in a four- to six-month period compared with the years it takes a tree. And the paper produced from cannabis lasts so much longer than wood pulp paper — our original Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. The seeds can be used for salad dressings and cooking oils that are full of all the essential amino acids necessary for a balanced, healthy diet. The long fibers of the plant can be used to make plastic products that currently require petroleum. The fibers can also be used to make extremely strong construction materials that could replace wood, bricks and fiberglass insulation.
We could completely eliminate the need for petroleum-based synthetic fibers and return to the natural fibers of the cannabis plant, which is much more environmentally friendly to grow than producing petroleum. The whole plant can be used as essential oils for medicines that could eliminate hundreds of common diseases using a natural plant that does not have the side effects that most pharmaceuticals produce. The history of the cannabis plant is in our hands now and the possibilities are truly endless.
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