DU THIS CMTE - pilot program to grow industrial hemp in 5 counties: Mendo, Yolo....

[ourbluenation]

Imperial, Butte, and King

As goes California, so goes the rest of the nation...

I can't tell you how irrational it is to NOT allow our farmers access to this profitable crop. I cant tell you how irrational it is to cut down a 50 year old tree for paper when you can turn an acre of hemp over for paper beginning to end, in one growing season. A pilot program is a perfect way to PROVE all the naysayers wrong. Please support this idea by contacting the Cal State Senate Ag Cmte at...


phone: [phone]
fax: [phone]
address:

Senate Agriculture Committee
Legislative Office Building, Suite 244
Sacramento, California 95814


Here's the proposed bill...
http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_0651-0700/ab_684_cfa_20070629_150225_sen_comm.html

[spanone]

1. K&R

[wildhorses]

2. second

:patriot:

[ourbluenation]

3. of the local opposition listed in the bill, none are from these counties..

I've just started to look it up and the county sheriff from mendo is on the record in support of this. it's not viable to grow a crop of "hidden" marijuana in a hemp crop. the whole crop would die.

[John Q. Citizen]

19. Why?

[BlackHawk706867]

4. In addition to the above.. Hemp is very profitable being sold as...

a health food (Hemp Bits). In Canada it sells for approx. $10.00 per pound and I use it on a daily basis for it's nutritional value as do many others.

ww

[Kajsa]

5. K&R., Bluenation.

I'm calling them tomorrow.
( they are closed today).

:thumbsup:

[glowing]

6. I'd love anyone to go smoke hemp.

[ourbluenation]

7. industrial hemp facts you could use in your communications with the Ag Cmte

Industrial hemp can replace cotton. Cotton is typically grown with large amounts of chemicals that are harmful to people, wildlife and the entire environment. Close to 50% of all the world's pesticides are sprayed on cotton. Hemp grows well in a wide variety of climates and soils. It requires far less fertilizer and pesticides than most commercial crops.

All parts of the hemp plant are useful. Hemp can be used to produce everything from fuel to soap. The oil from hemp seeds has the highest percentage of essential fatty acids and the lowest percentage of saturated fats.

Industrial hemp can yield 3-8 dry tons of fiber per acre. This is four times what an average forest can yield. It can replace wood fiber and help save our forests. Trees take approximately 20 years to mature - hemp takes 4 months. Paper made from hemp lasts for centuries, compared to 25-80 years for paper made from wood pulp.

Hemp is the world's strongest natural fiber.
It has been used to make cloth and rope for over 10,000 years.
Hemp was the first crop ever cultivated for textile production.
Hemp cloth is stronger, longer lasting, more resistant to mildew, and cheaper to produce than cloth made of cotton.
Hemp ropes are known for their strength and durability.
The original Levi Strauss jeans were made from a hempen canvas. Even Old Glory was made from hemp fiber.
A 44 gun frigate like “Old Ironsides” took over 60 tons of hemp for rigging, including an anchor cable 25 inches in circumference.
Hemp can be used to make virtually anything that is currently made of cotton, timber, or petroleum.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp.
Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper.
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper.
Until 1883, more than 75% of the world's paper was made with hemp fiber.
In 1937 Popular Science magazine called hemp "The New Billion Dollar Crop."

Then the big money people struck out to protect their interests. Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst led the crusade to ban hemp. Hearst owned millions of acres of prime timber land and a machine that simplified the process of making paper from hemp had just been invented. Hearst used his power as a publisher to create public panic about the evils of hemp and marijuana. Another big money player Pierre DuPont held patent rights to the sulfuric acid wood pulp paper process. In 1937 DuPont patented nylon rope made from synthetic petrochemicals. Along with Duponts backer Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon the big money people prevailed and near the end of 1937 Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. By placing a prohibitively high tax on hemp production it destroyed the industry. This was done to protect these big money interests of the timber, petrochemical, and cotton industries.

Hemp was briefly re-legalized during W.W.II.
The U.S. government produced the movie Hemp for Victory to encourage farmers to grow hemp.
Even 4H clubs were asked to grow hemp to help their country in wartime.
The parachute that saved George Bush's life in World War II was made of hemp fiber.

Henry Ford dreamed that someday automobiles would be grown from the soil. In 1941 the Ford motor company produced an experimental automobile with a plastic body composed of 70% cellulose fibers from hemp. The car body could absorb blows 10 times as great as steel without denting. The car was designed to run on hemp fuel. Because of the ban on both hemp and alcohol the car was never mass produced.

Hemp is the perfect source for fuel. It produces more biomass than any other plant. If we had to pay at the pump for all the military costs to keep the oil flowing clean burning alcohol fuel produced from hemp would be a bargain. Today industrial hemp is cultivated in Canada, China, Russia, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, England, Poland and many other Eastern European countries.

source: http://hemporganic.com/whyhemp.html

[snappyturtle]

9. Thanks for posting this. It's concise. I've seen a program on

industrial hemp and think it's an answer to many issues. It's going to take time to overcome the gov't.'s propaganda on hemp. So many people equate it with marijuana....good luck to California!

[donsu]

8. kick

nt

[Mabus]

10. Good luck, they keep cutting down the industrial hemp on Pine Ridge

Believe me, if there is money to be made, the government will allow non-Indians the right to cultivate industrial hemp before they will allow Indians to do it.

An Exercise of Self-Government

On the 28th day of July 1998, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, exercising its sovereign right to prescribe laws applicable to tribal members and enforce them through criminal sanctions,<1> adopted Tribal Ordinance 98-27,<2> which authorizes Oglala Sioux tribal members to grow industrial hemp as a cash crop on reservation land. The ordinance begins with the recognition that, today, industrial hemp is a profitable international commodity that is grown in more than thirty countries including Canada, France, England, Russia, China, Germany and Australia.<3> Next, invoking the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the ordinance states that both the tribe and the United States government acknowledge that the tribe retains the right to grow food and fiber crops from the soil.<4> Having established that industrial hemp is an internationally recognized commodity, and that the United States government acknowledges the tribes’ retained treaty right to engage in agriculture, the ordinance then creates a nexus between the present and the past by stating “that industrial hemp was a viable and profitable crop grown in the Pine Ridge region when the treaties were entered between the United States and the Oglala Sioux Tribe.”<5>

Having averred a present treaty right to grow industrial hemp, the ordinance then distinguishes industrial hemp from its cousin plant, marijuana,<6> based on the amount of tetrahydrocannabinal present in the respective plants,<7> which, according to the ordinance, is a genetic difference between industrial hemp and marijuana that is both consistent and predictable.<8> Thus, the ordinance is consistent with, and furthers the tribe’s policy of prohibiting the use of marijuana on the reservation.<9> While maintaining the Oglala Sioux Tribal Penal Code’s<10> proscription against planting, growing, cultivating, harvesting or gathering, selling, or possessing marijuana,<11> the penal code was amended by the ordinance to provide a definition of “marijuana,” and a separate definition of “industrial hemp” in order for tribal members to legally grow industrial hemp on reservation land.


***

The Planting of the Field

Under the auspices of Ordinance 98-27, and attorney Thomas Ballanco’s<17> offer to represent any person or entity prosecuted for cultivating industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Reservation,<18> Alex White Plume, along with members of his tiyospaye, Wa Cin Hin Ska,<19> in early May 2000, planted an acre and a half field of industrial hemp along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.<20> Prior to planting the crop, Mr. White Plume invited U.S. Attorney Ted McBride and BIA Superintendent Bob Ecoffey to the planting.<21>

However, nearly four months later, under the auspices of the Controlled Substances Act, early in the morning on August 24, armed Drug Enforcement Agency agents and FBI officers destroyed Mr. White Plume’s field. <22> According to one account, twenty-five federal agents wearing bulletproof vests surrounded the field, while two small-engine planes and one helicopter flew reconnaissance overhead. By 8:30 a.m. the agents had confiscated virtually all the hemp plants.<23>

http://nativesunite.org/hemp/

edited to correct formatting.

[ourbluenation]

11. That is frigging ridiculous, infuriating, and illegal? right? n/t

[Mabus]

17. They have planted hemp since then

and its THC level is almost non-existent but it still gets destroyed. It is industrial hemp, not smoking hemp, but it is always destroyed.

Is it it illegal? The feds are doing it. Apparently they feel they have jurisdiction to take matters into their own hands. As to if they have actual jurisdiction to take such action I'd have to look into in further to find out how they are justifying it. To tell you the truth, I didn't know about this until the other day. A friend of my husband's, a Lakota from Pine Ridge, was telling us about it the other day. When I saw your OP I looked it up because I thought it was pertinent to your post.

To me, it all boils down to the question of sovereignty. How much sovereignty do we Indian nations actually have? How much can we exercise? More and more the government is trying to reduce tribes to the level of municipalities. They keep adding to the list of crimes that they can prosecute and they've given states too much say in what can happen on tribal land.

[ourbluenation]

12. not a shameless bump

off to do the home improvements but wanted to kick this before I'm out.

[Fly by night]

13. The best way to ruin the local marijuana crop is to allow hemp to be grown.

Any pot grower (and there are lots of them in northern California) works very hard to remove male plants from their plantings so that the female plants will not be fertilized, produce seeds and stop producing buds. If those counties allow industrial hemp to be grown, the air will be so filled with hemp pollen that every female marijuana plant within 50 miles will be pollinated, will stop producing medically (or recreationally) useful buds and will produce very poor quality seeds to boot.

I very much favor allowing industrial hemp to be grown AND I also support allowing marijuana to be grown for medical purposes and for recreational use by responsible adults. It's just very difficult to do both things in the same area.

[Phrogman]

15. Maybe you can convince the government of this?

Tell em' that if they grow hemp it'll spoil the smokers herb and Uncle Sam might legalize hemp just to piss em off.
Seems like the only way to get the government to move these days is to point out how they can fuck a group over.

[Fly by night]

16. Not that I'd want to help the current cabal do anything. But I am qualified.

See this link to learn why:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Cover_Story/2007/04/26/Marijuana_Martyr/index.shtml

[Phrogman]

18. Are you a friend of this man Bernie?

or are you Bernie Ellis?

[Fly by night]

20. Yes.

[faithnotgreed]

14. kicking

[ourbluenation]

21. Thx to DU Roody for the update - it's out of cmte and now with the full senate - CALL!

thx.

:hi: