COLUMN: The benefits of hemp

By Brittany Bauernfiend

Don’t you hate it when businesses and people use too much paper and just throw it away like it makes no difference?

Yeah, me too.

Wouldn’t it be stellar if there were something that was like paper and plastic but wasn’t completely dreadful for our Earth and its beautiful nature?

Well, lucky us, because there is such a thing. Too bad it’s illegal.

I’m talking about hemp, one of the oldest domesticated crops.

You’ve probably heard about it being related to marijuana. It’s illegal in the United States under the same law that bans marijuana even though it contains very low levels of tetrahydrocannabino, marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient. However, changes in marijuana law have made it accessible in several states.

Hemp shouldn’t be illegal if it could save the day and, eventually, the world. Hemp is something that we’ve forgotten about in the United States because of the laws against marijuana — that’s a completely different issue for an upcoming article. We, as citizens, should be able to have access to this plant and its uses. We’re being denied this based off laws that shouldn’t even exist.

Hemp can be used for so many things: paper, canvas, some fuels, fibers for clothing, oils, building materials and plastic objects. Hemp is a catch-all.

Hemp is considered to be a cash crop like corn. It could be massively grown pretty much anywhere in the U.S. The soil conditions that are ideal for hemp aren’t as black and white as the soil needed for other plants and food items.

Hemp has a very high fiber content, which also allows it to have a nutritional value. That’s pretty nifty if you ask me.

In a world that is being devastated by nonrenewable resources such as coal, hemp offers a better alternative. Hemp is renewable — it isn’t going to just run out one day in the future.

Thankfully, a few states — Kentucky, Oregon and Colorado — are pushing back against our leaders and laws and are starting pilot farms for hemp.

Hemp can produce more paper than its counterpart of trees. Ten acres of hemp produces more paper product than the same sized area of trees.

Why are we not funding this? Get this, paper that is produced from hemp lasts hundreds of years longer than paper from a tree. All these documents you want your super-great-grandchildren to see? Write them on hemp. It’ll last longer.

Don’t worry about people getting high off of hemp. It’s virtually impossible since industrial hemp contains less than one percent THC.

Hemp is also extremely quick to grow. It yields, on average, four crops per year. That’s a harvest every three months as opposed to trees taking hundreds of years to grow just one.

This is the future, and I don’t know why more states aren’t allowing it. It could help combat the amount of trash we see everyday. With plastic from hemp, when you’re finished with it, you can just plant it, and it will naturally decompose. You don’t get that with today’s plastic bottles.

We, not only as a state, but as a whole country, should rethink our laws and consider could benefit us hemp’s many benefits.

You can be against marijuana but stand alongside hemp. But that’s not my business.