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Often lost in the debate over marijuana legalization is the role that industrial, commercialized hemp production could potentially play in mainstream American society, as well as in our economy. But because all cannabis varieties, including hemp, fall under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the many industrial and even medical uses for hemp-based products here in America depend almost solely on foreign imports – mostly from China.
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Good news on the industrial hemp front this week. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear reluctantly allowed a bill allowing for industrial hemp in that state to become law over the weekend.
Interestingly, he didn’t sign the bill – but that wasn’t required for it to become law.
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| Industrial hemp. |
Did Henry Ford really make a car out of hemp? Was the Declaration of Independence written on hemp paper? Did Abraham Lincoln use hemp oil in his lamps?
The hemp plant, a variety of Cannabis sativa that’s the subject of this week’s cover story “Green Acres,” is steeped in lore. Some hemp legends are true. Others are half-true, and some are completely false. Denver Westword presents ten hemp myths culled from the Internet — and attempt to separate the fact from the fiction.
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| Tim Gabor for Westword.com |
Last week, Denver Westword writer Melanie Asmar took a closer look at what recent marijuana legalization laws have done for industrial hemp in Colorado and what that could mean for the rest of the country.
In it, she details “a merry band of hempsters, a small but dedicated group of supporters that includes a retired Yellow Pages saleswoman, a self-described mad scientist, the victorious defendant in one of Colorado’s landmark medical marijuana cases and a handful of stone-cold sober lawmakers who represent the type of places where people have dirt under their fingernails and make their living off the land. Together, this group is determined to create a hemp industry and position the state at the leading edge of an agricultural boom.”
Read Asmar’s story “Can hemp escape the role of marijuana’s sober stepsiter” in its entirety over at Westword.com