This had nothing to do with smoking weed or getting high. This is about our earth. This is about our future. This is about the future of our race as humans.
I am all for hemp. Hemp is the cure for so many things wrong in this world. Hemp can make such a difference!
kitsunebaba, look what appeared on my dash :D
IT USES 5 TIMES LESS WATER THAN COTTON
AND PRODUCES LIKE 10 TIMES MORE
AND IT HAS TWO SEASONS IN ONE YEAR AND IT IS STRONGER
WHEN YOU MAKE IT INTO PAPER IT DOESN’T YELLOW
YOU CAN MAKE FREAKING CONCRETE OUT OF IT THAT GETS HARDER OVER TIME AND BREATHES SO IT DOESN’T CRACK
THE OIL IS SUPER GOOD FOR YOU
IT WAS THE ORIGINAL FUEL FOR CARS
YOU CANNOT GET HIGH FROM IT!!!!
THEY USED TO MAKE SAILS OUT OF IT
YOU CAN USE 80% OF IT FOR PAPER RATHER THEN 20-30% FOR TREES
IT WAS ONLY BOYCOTTED BECAUSE THE COTTON INDUSTRY WAS GOING DOWNHILL
I used to be so confused by the difference between marijuana and hemp because they’re both cannabis. Apparently, they are different species of the same plant genus, but hemp is bred for its industrial use and is grown in tall stalks to produce more fiber. Hemp has so little THC that you would have to smoke at least ten hemp cigarettes in a row to feel anything, and hemp also contains CBD which blocks the effects of THC. Marijuana is bred for its high THC content, obviously, and is allowed to grow bushy to produce more leaves and flowers.
It’s just like corn. To the layperson, corn is well CORN. But you have many different cultivars that look superficially similar, but have very different requirements for how to grow them and very different end uses. You wouldn’t use popcorn to make chicha or cornmeal! and if you’re growing it for silage, you’ll plant it and harvest it in a different way than you would if you were growing sweet corn for sale as whole ears.
So to layperson it seems like all cannabis cultivars will get you high because its the only one laypeople know anything about. Plus with the restrictions, the overall number of cultivars has been greatly reduced so the THC ones are the only common ones. If hemp was grown as a regular crop, you’d have loads and load of different cultivars, all bred and planted, to optimize different aspects. and all the fiber focused ones would be VERY different because they’d be bred for longest fibers. the majority of smokable marijuana is actually a DWARF variety of the plant! This is why the argument “well if people grew hemp, they’d hide marijuana in it” is silly. If the two cultivars hybridize, they totally ruin each other’s primary use! You’d get weak, shitty smokable variety AND an inferior, unsalable fiber crop.
anyway, to the other uses. One of its really AWESOME other uses is that it will take up HEAVY METALS from soil, including radioactive elements. Normally that’s a really tedious process involving scraping all the topsoil off an area (which can make radioactive dust airborne…) and then burning it to try and extract the heavy metals. Plant hemp, it uptakes it and stores it in the fiber. You do have to do multiple crops, but you never actually strip the topsoil. (plus hemp is a nitrogen fixing crop, so it’s like applying fertilizer!)
well then what the hell do you do with radioactive fibers? Conveniently mixing hemp fiber into concrete with make it stronger and earthquake resistant. You can also make it up to 1/3 lighter than you would with just concrete and rebar.
How do you normally shield radioactive items? entombing it in concrete. Make the core with radioactive hemp fiber, apply an outer sheathing with non-radioactive fiber to prevent direct contact or fragmenting into dust or coming into contact with ground water. (only a few inches is needed as a shield) Use it in something like skyscraper foundations or subway tunnels where it won’t be directly contacted by people very often.
So you can clean up many old industrial sites that are NOT currently safe AND use it to build infrastructure that’s extra strong and earthquake resistant. Or use it to extract radioactive waste from radioactive water.
It IS in use for that purpose within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. And remember that earthquake resistant part? I can think of a country that has to remove a lot of radioactive waste from soil and water AND rebuild structures ravaged by an earthquake.
It does a LOT of cool things, but the possibilities with bioremediation are probably the absolutely coolest because there aren’t many other options in that area that are as efficient and cost effective.
I’mma learn today.
It sometimes boggles my mind that any one crop can be THIS useful. But fuck yeah hemp!
Mind. Blown.
(Source: woodwose-radio)
