What material can be used to make over 25,000 products,
including clothing, cordage, fuel, plastic, jewelry, paper, building material,
food, cosmetic products, and weed deterrent?
I’ll give
you a hint; it’s a plant. It can be grown in many climates, requires little to
no pesticides, has a short growing season and a fast turnout, is drought
resistant, is resistant to UV rays, and has minimal impact on the soil.
Sounds
too good to be true, right?
Well, it's real. The plant is called hemp, and despite its many uses and soft impact on
the environment, it has a bad reputation because of its close relation to
marijuana. Hemp does have THC (the chemical that causes the high) in it, but at
significantly smaller levels compared to marijuana. It is cultivated to have
very low THC levels; to receive a high, a person would have to smoke ten to
twelve hemp cigarettes in an extremely small amount of time, which would be
very difficult to withstand. Despite this, it is still illegal to grow it in
the United States, and therefore hemp must be imported, which is unfortunate
because this increases the cost of hemp and the environmental impact from
transporting it. Notably, hemp has the ability to replace many current
industries, such as cotton, fossil fuels, and tree fibers, which is important
to keep in mind when asking “why isn’t hemp more popular?”
