Sun
Jul
5
It's Patriotic!
When the fledgling republic cast around for a flag to embody its new spirit of independence, Betsy Ross was there with her needle and her hemp. Were it not for hemp, she might have had to paint the Stars and stripes onto a deer hide. Somehow, a ragtag army of farmers waving deerskins over their heads would have been less inspiring, and the country might never have been the same.Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America were drafted on hemp paper. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and America’s other patriotic greats proudly put their names to hemp paper as no modern politician would dare to do. Washington and Jefferson grew acres of hemp, an activity that today would land them in jail for life.Though hemp was banned in 1937, the United States suddenly reversed it’s position in 1942, subsidized the cultivation of the crop, and even made a short film urging farmers to grow it! What had changed? World War II.
Since 1937 the United States had been importing its hemp from the Far East. But with that supply cut off by the Japanese, the U.S. found itself in a bind. Every Navy battleship required 34, 000 feet of hemp rope to keep running. Without hemp millions of GIs couldn’t tie their shoes, and parachutes had no webbing. So hemp metamorphosed overnight from evil weed to the patriotic crop. Hundreds of thousands of acres were grown under government contract to save the country. After the war the government flip-flopped once more, and hemp became the evil weed again. But who knows when it will be called upon next to save a person, country, or planet?(via The Hemp Manifesto)
I can buy hemp seed in my local supermarket.
