The ban on growing industrial hemp in the U.S. hurts farmers and consumers

Monday, April 12, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: renewable energy, alternative fuels, hemp

https://www.naturalnews.com/000943.html

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Hemp can also be grown without pesticides and could be a highly profitable crop for many U.S. farmers thanks to hemp's ability to be grown almost anywhere.

So why is hemp still illegal to grow in the United States? Opinions differ, but the "official" explanation that hemp contains a hallucinogenic drug (THC) is utterly baseless. You'd have to smoke 40 pounds of industrial hemp to inhale enough THC to get any sort of "high," and you'd find yourself vomiting well before you could smoke all that.

The real reason behind the outlawing of hemp is that the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) wants to feel really important and control as much as possible. By outlawing industrial hemp, they can conduct cool-looking raids on people who try to grow this harmless crop, and they can claim success that results in more federal funding. Making the growing of hemp legal would require the DEA to give up control over this crop, and no government agency ever wants to give up control over anything. Rather, they all push for more control, more funding and bigger egos.

The real issue with hemp is about ego and control, not any sort of drug threat. And the cost of this needless war on hemp is tremendous: U.S. farmers are prevented from growing a highly profitable sustainable crop and U.S. consumers are denied the numerous advantages of products derived from hemp. So instead of allowing U.S. farmers to grow this crop, we buy all our hemp from Canada, where hemp is perfectly legal to grow and so far nobody has been caught trying to inhale an acre of hemp plants.

Make no mistake: the U.S. War on Drugs is really just a war on the people. There is absolutely no justification for outlawing industrial hemp. We need this crop on U.S. soil. If anything, the DEA is smoking crack.