From the diaries of George Washington

[Mental]

read number 7

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?co ... mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(mgw1b651))%23wd010398&linkText=1

yeah

[Shellie]

I'm sure thats industrial hemp...not the drug. They used it all the time for the fiber. Too bad we don't use it more now.

[Zeus]

I'm sure thats industrial hemp...not the drug. They used it all the time for the fiber. Too bad we don't use it more now.

I remember reading a long time ago (in high school) that it's a very useful item that just doesn't get used due to it being the main ingredient of a drug. Damned if I remember everything, though.

[SineSwiper]

Industrial hemp has no THC. Smoking it would only give you a headache.

[Mental]

Much as I hate to play the "stupid pothead conspiracy theorist" role, I'm not entirely sure Shellie is right. There wasn't really much of any kind of Western bias against the plant at that point, that only came later, with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1918 (?) advocated by William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire and the head of ATF at the time (which spun off the DEA with him at the head of it). Tincture of cannabis was a common pain reliever, most famously used to treat Queen Victoria's menstrual pains. The Founding Fathers would have probably been aware of the plant's more medicinal properties and many of them smoked tobacco pipes like chimney stacks, it was part of the time and culture then and for many years to come in American society that men retired to smoking rooms with pipes to discuss business and bond.

There are probably decent reasons to separate males from females that aren't related to THC production, but it must be noted that it is a required task in the process that is. Also, the cannabis wouldn't have been anywhere near as strong, then. It wasn't as strong in my parents' generation. I don't know how much of a distinction between "industrial" and "medicinal" there would have been. It's definitely possible that they just kept the leaves and stalks for fiber and threw away the flowers, but it's also possible they were aware of the flowers and their potential to at the very least be steeped to create tinctures.

There are numerous references to growing hemp in several of the Founding Fathers' records. Now - the "variety from India" Washington experimented with would have been Indian Hemp, which is not cannabis sativa. But the author of the book on Washington's diary clearly states that c.s. was indeed the main hemp crop. Really, what I'd say is that it's hard to know for sure. But it is interesting.

And Sine, you're wrong. Industrial-grade hemp has THC, just not enough to get most people high. You'll still piss green on a test.

[Shellie]

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both cultivated hemp on their farms. Benjamin Franklin started the first American paper mill, which made paper exclusively from hemp, and the Declaration of Independence was drafted on paper made from hemp fibers.

[Mental]

Oh, nobody disputes hemp was mainly grown as fiber, food or feed (the seeds), and fabric. It was a crucial cash crop. I'm just not completely convinced nobody was smoking it at the time. That seems outlandish to me. Most places in the world where hemp is grown it is also smoked.

[SineSwiper]

Oh, nobody disputes hemp was mainly grown as fiber, food or feed (the seeds), and fabric. It was a crucial cash crop. I'm just not completely convinced nobody was smoking it at the time. That seems outlandish to me. Most places in the world where hemp is grown it is also smoked.

You seem to think that she said something that she didn't say. Read her posts again.

Furthermore, I believe growing industrial hemp and growing standard Mary Jane are two different processes. You want to separate the industrial hemp from the marijuana. Otherwise, they cross-pollinate and you end up with shitty weed.

[Mental]

Absolutely true. I stand by what I said so far though, not sure I have much to add on the subject.

[Shellie]

I didnt say they didnt smoke it, who knows if they did. I was just saying the reason it was in the diaries because he was apparently a well known hemp farmer. Who cares if he smoked it. They did a lot of other things back then without pause that are illegal/immoral today.

[Shellie]

HAHA thought you would like this Replay...came across it on someones Facebook.

[Mental]

<3 <3 <3

[Mental]

(on facebook, those would be hearts)

[Shellie]

Those are hearts on the plain ol interwebs too

[Mental]

Seriously Shellie, that is hilarious. Right to my own Facebook page as well.

[Julius Seeker]

It was made illegal similar to Absinth because they thought it was toxic. I am not sure how such thought originated, I did read that it could be largely due to the growing paper industry in the western world; so they fabricated a reason to get rid of it. I would more likely guess it was similar to other drugs, the psychological effects of it were seen as bad - and it was associated with those.

With Absinth it was because people would hallucinate and sometimes die from copper poisoning. Copper was used to colour the poorly made stuff.


On its recreational usage. I don't think it was very big in the western world at least; you only ever find small traces of it in literature; and most of those are questionable as to exactly what they are talking about. Lots and lots of writing has been done about alcoholic beverages though; in both positive and negative light. There is also a considerable amount on opium. If it were often used to alter the state of mind, the artsy aristocratic ones would have written about it.

[SineSwiper]

It was made illegal similar to Absinth because they thought it was toxic.

William Henry Hurst, the Robert Murdoch of his time (and Citizen Kane), used his brand of yellow journalism to demonize the drug. They called it the "Mexican Killer Weed" and used racism to further promote his goals. And yes, it was the paper industry that he was protecting. (After all, his news was printed on that paper.) The term Marijuana came from that era.

Absinthe was a whole other category of investigation. It wasn't yellow journalism or anything that malicious that got it banned. The FDA had some serious concerns over the death rates from Absinthe. They thought that the high thujone content that killed people. Though, prohibition had a large part in banning it, too.

Later on, some of the newer Absinthe convinced the FDA that high thujone content doesn't really make Absinthe more "absinthey", so the FDA approved thujone-free absinthes and eventually real absinthes with the thujone content.

[Mental]

By "William Henry Hurst" Sine really means <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ra ... t">William Randolph Hearst</a>. But otherwise he's spot on.

[Mental]

Some interesting further reading:

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hem ... 2000/5.htm

According to this author, Shellie is probably right, and I have to eat my crow a bit - hemp was probably cultivated in the overwhelming majority of cases in the Western world for fiber, rope, and cloth, and it appears that as a medicinal or drug-like agent, tinctures were really the only thing used. It does make sense - the modern, ridiculously intoxicant varieties of cannabis are the result of about a hundred years of selective breeding or so, and it's quite likely the stuff back then would have just hurt one's throat if smoked. Also, what was called "hemp" wasn't necessarily cannabis, as there were several other plants that looked and grew similarly but weren't actually the same species. Finally, considering how often tobacco was mentioned for smoking purposes in the colonies, Seek's probably right too. If they'd been smoking it, they would have talked and written about it.

Fitz Ludlow Hugh's book "The Hasheesh Eater" was published around the mid-19th-century (I've known about this for a good bit), and apparently according to this author not only was it a record of strong cannabis intoxication but also something that sparked interest in the plant as a recreatonal drug, which led to hashish dens in 19th-century America that competed with opium dens - THAT I didn't actually know about.

I still find Washington's diary entry odd, though. I do wonder what the use of separating out the males and females is if you're growing on an industrial basis.

[Mental]

By the way, if anything, I am more furious with Hearst over stigmatizing industrial hemp than I am over the drug. Paper is an absolutely environmentally terrible thing to produce, you have to cut down trees that have been growing for years or decades in order to do it, and denude the land for years or decades to come. Hemp paper, by contrast, is as far as I know far superior in durability. The stalks and fibers can also be used to make canvas, rope and clothing. The seeds are mind-bogglingly nutritious for man and beast...I've had hempseed-based food before and it's very, very nutritious and satisfying.

And the reason this is all such a disgrace in its present form is that cannabis grows like...well, a weed. It is by scientific consensus one of the hardiest plants in the world, almost impossible to kill once you get it started, will grow just about anywhere other common garden weeds can grow, and happens to grow to its full height in about three months, usually. If you plant a hemp forest and water it right in spring, by summer the more exuberant varieties might literally be as tall as your house. It's more or less an invasive species - or would be if it weren't so consistently eradicated wherever it grows worldwide thanks to our DEA - and it really could provide an tremendous boost to food production, paper production, clothing production and other industries worldwide if only we could get over this stupid-ass Prohibitionary policy.

Instead, we have a million or so potheads in jail at horrid cost to the taxpayer, my state is overrun with illegal violent Mexican gangs that supply the stuff (who I have probably supported over the years without even thinking about it), and our forests are still being cut down, even if the Internet is blessedly helping to obliterate Hearst's rapacious paper industry legacy that has been just SO wonderful for our environment over the last hundred years.

Oh, well.