NO LONGER THE STAPLE OF WISHFUL HIPPIES

A recent article by David Bienenstock offers an interesting perspective on why governments are so slow on the uptake of hemp, and makes a case for taking the stigma away from this plant.

Times have changed since most people looked down their nose at all issues related to cannabis. In the past few years four states have opened up to retailing marijuana over the counter, and cannabis has been prescribed to sickly children as concentrated oil.

Bienenstock writes: “…it shows tremendous efficacy in preventing and treating cancer, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other serious conditions.” The hippies from the sixties were on to something, we realise now. No longer are we shrugging off their claims of healing, happiness and health. Perhaps their name for it, the ‘miracle drug’, invited the scepticism.

But what if that scepticism was bred by commerce?

Trillions of dollars have been burnt, and a century spent trying to suppress this ‘drug’, yet that may have been to hide it’s benefits, rather than any perceived harm it could cause.

“Ask yourself: Do the pharmaceutical companies really want me to grow my own medicine? What happened to Henry Ford’s hemp car?…” questions Bienenstock.

Growing your own medicine? Hemp is high in vitamins A, C, E and rich in protein, carbs, minerals and finer. Backing up our earlier piece about hemp milk, physician, author and integrative health guru Dr. Andrew Weil claims: “what’s more, a recently published study from Spain’s University of Seville found that hemp has an ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, in addition to providing some compounds thought to lower high blood pressure…”. Dr Weil goes on, but the basic message is that hemp is extremely nutritionally balanced - our bodies and minds love it.

We’ve been consuming hemp since 6,000 BC actually, archeological evidence proves. Hemp played a role as a fibre used in textiles, and as seeds used in cereals. But hemp back then was simply left over material from other industries, so it didn’t carry the premium price tag you’ll find on a bag of hemp seeds in your local whole foods store. By 1619 a law was passed requiring every farm within Virginia to produce hemp. “It would later help make the American War of Independence possible by supplying the revolutionaries with a homegrown source of rope, sails, and other vital resources, plus food, medicine, and textiles with enough of the crop left over to trade to France for arms” Bienenstock tells us.

It’s only around 1937 that the cannabis plant was completely outlawed by congress. Your favourite medicine? Banned, “setting us all up for a future of booze, pills, petroleum, and plastics”.

Now though, we realise our forebears’ mistakes. The 2014 US Farm Bill will be remembered as iconic, as it allowed farmers and students to experiment with hemp for the first time in decades.

Author Doug Fine, writer of Hemp Bound, loves the stuff. “I eat hemp seeds and hemp seed oil nearly every morning… some days into the hemp seed gruel my sweetheart makes to start our day. Never felt healthier.”

Hemp can be grown almost anywhere, as Bienenstock rightly points out,”in poor soil and drought conditions, without the use of fertilizers and pesticides”.

What if this plant were grown in devastated nations in a state of disaster, as an alternative to the logistically-challenging aid packages usually given out? What if it could kick-start an independent local economy? “… one that’s independently self-sufficient in terms of food, clothing, medicine and even low-cost, high-quality eco-friendly shelter made from hemp.”

And lastly, what if the introduction of hemp fuel could stop us fighting over petroleum?

Original article by David Bienenstock, Munchies - Vice.