Years ago I saw an Australia doco called 'The Billion Dollar Crop' about the industrial uses of dope, and apparently the shit is fantastic. What struck me was that it can be used as a substitue for wood in the production of chipboard and all those other pressed wood products, without modification to the factories that make it. The building industry alone could use tons of hemp based building materials, saving miles of forest and plantation trees. With some clear headed direction industrial hemp could be both a gold mine for farmers, and an environmental godsend.
this is kind of what the original post was about
i know attempting to dictate the direction of information exchange in a place like this is a bit of a paradox, but this is kind of the direction i intended the discussion to take, perhaps i should of formulated the original post question differently
obviously more people would smoke, on average, and perhaps a few people would smoke too much, as they do now
its just that that particular application of cannabis seems to me the least functional and more importantly, the most inconsequential and irrelevant
in fact so inconsequential it need not even be seriously discussed, other than for health issues, let alone sanctioned by law
so people smoke, they smoke tobacco too, dont they
i mean hey you can buy bottled hard liquor with 50% alcohol in most supermarkets, so what in the name of the bodily liquids of Christ on wood, is the big problem?
yea people would smoke grass, good for them, god knows i never say no to the occasional smoke amongst old friends, or the occasional drink, or a strong cup of coffee for that matter, but what consequence is that to anyone?
what of other uses? especially after more than 70 years of technological and industrial development? pressed wood substitute is a good example, but apparently you can form much tougher and elastic material than chipwood and maediapan from cannabis fiber, such as biocomposite mass
or the use in the paper industry
here something from the omnipresent Wikipedia;
"In 1916, USDA Bulletin No. 404, reported that one acre of cannabis hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/4 to 1/7 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or none at all using soda ash. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp paper making process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp paper making process requires) but instead safely substitutes hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process. ... If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags."
is this real or is the information problematic?