Progress for hemp in North Carolina

We have been following on this site states' progress in making hemp legal; there has been little progress, despite the federal ban being lifted. Mainly a handful of southern and western states are fighting for their rights. This just in from North Carolina:           

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Gavin Stone

Hemp

Andrew Klein (left), senior in natural resource policy and founder of the Raleigh Hemp Society, and Linda Booker, co-producer and co-director of the documentary, "Bringing It Home," posing behind a display of the many applications of hemp. Raleigh Hemp Society organized the screening in Witherspoon Student Cinema Sunday. The documentary highlights the struggle to get industrial hemp legalized in the US. 

 

Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:27 am | Updated: 12:29 am, Thu Oct 23, 2014.

Students strive to legalize hemp Gavin Stone, Staff Writer technicianonline.com

NC State students are advocating for the legalization of hemp, arguing that the misunderstood dichotomy between hemp and marijuana has inhibited the U.S.A. from receiving the benefits from mass-producing hemp. 

The Raleigh Hemp Society screened the award-winning documentary, “Bringing It Home,” which emphasizes the benefits that hemp can have on our society and the struggle to get it legalized in the US on Sunday in the Witherspoon Student Cinema.

About 30 students attended the screening to hear the film’s message that hemp’s benefits are being ignored by American society due to the fundamental mischaracterization that the hemp plant is the same as recreational marijuana. 

“You can smoke a field of hemp, and you would die of CO2 poisoning before you got high,” said Andrew Klein, a senior in natural resources policy and administration and founder of the Raleigh Hemp Society. “Hemp and marijuana are both cannabis sativa, but the point is that they are completely different. It’s like comparing a house cat to a lion.” 

The documentary presented one of the Drug Enforcement Administration’a (DEA), arguments against hemp, stating recreational marijuana can be hidden among hemp stalks because the plants look similar.

Hemp supporters, however, argue this is unlikely due to the special, climate-controlled conditions needed to produce “smoker’s” marijuana.

Hemp is widely produced in 31 other industrial countries including France, China and the U.K. 

The THC content of industrial hemp is 0.3 percent or lower, which, according to the documentary, is too low a level to be psychoactive in the body. It is significantly less than the THC content found in recreational cannabis, which stands at about 40 percent.

Historically, this misconception has been a major factor in hemp’s illegal status in the U.S., dating back to 1970 when President Richard Nixon first declared it a Class I drug along with recreational marijuana and heroin, among others.

While interning for the Virginia Hemp Company this past summer, Klein said he spent a significant amount of time lobbying in Washington D.C. where he ran into the problems with this misconception frequently. 

“I talked mostly with staffers, but most agriculture reps said that [the politicians they represent] are anti-marijuana,” Klein said. “This shows that, for many politicians, the fear of politically associating with marijuana keeps them from seeing the benefits of hemp.”

Before it was declared illegal, the U.S. government promoted hemp to help the U.S. win WWII with the “Hemp for Victory” propaganda campaign, which encouraged farmers to produce hemp to make rope, cloth and cordage for military use. Hemp was also the first material ever used to make cloth in 800 B.C. China, according to the documentary. 

Klein and his staff members set up a table showing off some of the varied ways that hemp can not only provide a greener alternative to common products but even improve on them. The table had hemp cooking oil, which has more omega-3 than traditional oil, hemp paper, which can be produced four times more efficiently than paper from trees, the different hemp fibers used in clothing, which can be produced with less water than cotton, and raw hemp, which can be made into a concrete substitute. 

The use of hemp to make concrete, or “hempcrete,” has particularly interesting prospects for the U.S. as a whole, according to the documentary. 

Not only could it provide thousands of new jobs due to building renovations and new building construction, but it can improve quality of life for homeowners. 

According to the documentary, hempcrete is a carbon negative material, which means that it actually absorbs CO2 in the air as well as filters out other pollutants. The construction process could also made safer by the use of hempcrete, as it does not require workers to wear masks or gloves because it is nontoxic. Power tools would also be unnecessary when using hemp, which would eliminate loud noise and wires on construction sites. 

“Hempcrete wall construction is not complicated, but there is a learning curve in working with low temperatures and wet conditions,” Linda Booker said, co-producer, director and editor of “Bringing It Home.”

When Booker and her co-producer Blaire Johnson began filming in November 2010, Booker was new to the history of hemp.

In 2011, Booker and Johnson attended the Hemp Building Symposium in Granada, Spain where they were able to meet with global hemp business leaders which changed her perspective on this issue. 

“I was skeptical like a lot of people,” Booker said. “I realized that we need a good film to educate people about this.” 

President Barack Obama signed the Farm Bill in February, which made hemp legal for research and academic uses, which is a step towards legalization. However, hemp is still illegal to grow without a DEA issued permit. 

The DEA has only issued three of these permits since 1970, according to the documentary released in 2013.

“Until we take hemp out of the substance one narcotic classification, the DEA will still have jurisdiction over seed imports for research,” Booker said. 

Booker said DEA pressure forces higher prices for legal hemp products because they have to be imported. 

Andrew Klein said he is working to inform people about hemp close to home. 

“The future is working with businesses, farmers and political leaders to formulate policy to help legalize hemp in NC,” Klein said. “The long-term future of the hemp society is to get passionate, intelligent students jobs in the hemp markets.”  

New documentary on hemp: Bringing it Home by Linda Booker and Blaire Johnson

The battle to bring back hemp in the US is getting more and more intense, and is drawing media attention, albeit a bit slowly from the mainstream press. A new documentary by two young filmmakers has just been released, below is an article from the News & Observer in North Carolina, written by Glenn McDonald:




Christopher Columbus journeyed to America using hempen ropes and sails. The United States Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper. Hemp was a major agricultural boon to World War II domestic war efforts.
These are just a few of the more patriotic points made in the locally produced documentary film “Bringing It Home,” which premieres Thursday in Durham. The film examines the issue of industrial hemp farming and argues that federal law prohibiting the cultivation of hemp on U.S. soil is one of America’s most puzzling and misguided public policies. Despite having no psychoactive properties, industrial hemp is classified as a controlled substance under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.
Filmmakers Linda Booker and Blaire Johnson – both graduates of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies – began the project in 2010. The story would eventually lead them to film in the United Kingdom, Spain, Washington, D.C., California, and back to North Carolina. Booker, speaking from her home in Pittsboro, said she wasn’t a hemp advocate when the project began.
“I’m naturally a little bit of a skeptic on things, and like a lot of people, I didn’t really get what hemp was,” Booker said. “I thought it was just a stoner hippie issue. But it really didn’t take very long for me to get engaged and interested.”
While hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S., hemp products are not illegal to sell. In fact, American consumers purchase around $450 million worth of hemp products annually – mostly apparel and nutritional products like hemp oil. But all the hemp used for these products must be imported, mostly from Canada. The U.S. is the world’s largest importer of hemp. China is the world’s largest exporter.
The film begins with the story of Asheville home designer Anthony Brenner, who made headlines in 2010 when he built the nation’s first “hemp house,” made from environmentally friendly hempcrete – a building product similar to concrete. Brenner would later design his own hemp-based home to provide a safe indoor environment for his daughter Bailey, who has a rare genetic disorder that makes her sensitive to synthetic chemicals.
From here, the film explores the many industrial uses of hemp, focusing in particular on its utility as a building material, clothing fabric and food supplement. The filmmakers traveled to Spain and the U.K. to speak with hemp advocates and farmers. Footage from Berkshire, England, shows vast fields of hemp farmed as a cash crop, and several experts are consulted to extol the virtues of the plant.
“Bringing It Home” employs the usual techniques of the documentary film to tell its story – interviews, statistics, animations – and it covers a lot of ground.
Booker said the goal was to make the film relatively short, as part of the team’s education outreach campaign, so that it could be presented along with discussion events and panels. For a 52-minute film, it’s ambitious in scope, breaking down the various political, economic and historical aspects of the issue.
“The best analogy I can come up with is that it’s kind of like when a sculptor has a big chunk of marble in front of them, and they whittle and chip away to make something of it,” Booker said.
In developing the project, Booker and Johnson worked with the Durham-based Southern Documentary Fund (SDF), a nonprofit that provides feedback and helps filmmakers secure funding.
Triangle filmmakers
Rachel Raney, executive director of the SDF, said “Bringing It Home” is a good example of the kind of work that’s coming out of the Triangle’s booming documentary filmmaking community.
“This is a tough film to pull off,” Raney said. “It’s a really complex, multilayered topic. They knew they wanted to get this film in hands of the people working in this issue.”
Indeed, the film seems to be coming out at an opportune time. The hemp issue is being vigorously debated at the state and federal level, with several states having already passed legislation legalizing industrial hemp cultivation. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has continued to block such state initiatives, but the U.S. House of Representatives just last week approved a version of the highly contested Farm Bill that includes new rules on hemp farming.
“I think it’s incredibly timely,” Raney said of the film. “And that often happens in documentary films. You can start something when its not on anyone’s radar, then the stars align and everyone catches up with you.”  ‘Bringing It Home’A documentary on the potential and politics of the U.S. hemp industry will be screened at 6 and 8 p.m. Thursday at the Full Frame Theater at the American Tobacco Power Plant building in Durham. Both screenings are free and open to the public and will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/17/3113529/local-documentary-heralds-healthy.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/17/3113529/local-documentary-heralds-healthy.html#storylink=cpy

List of US states that are supporting hemp

A quick overview of states' activity re hemp legislation is useful at this time. Most states have cultivated hemp at some time, so there is a record for many to go forward with this initiative; however, there are many states to go.
And then of course there is federal approval needed, which Mina Hegaard is working on with her
petition at www.minawear.com/about-us/ 
Please sign, and if your state is not already looking into hemp, please get in touch with us here and we would love to help out!

So far,  31 states have introduced pro-hemp legislation and 19 have passed pro-hemp legislation.

Eight states (Colorado, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont,Washington, and West Virginia) have defined industrial hemp as distinct and removed barriers to its production.

Three states (Hawaii, Kentucky, and Maryland) have passed bills creating commissions or authorizing research.

Nine states have passed hemp resolutions: California, Colorado, Illinois, Montana,New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Vermont and Virginia.

Eight states have passed hemp study bills: Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Vermont. Many other states have done studies without legislative directive.

Hemp movement news from Washington State: House Bill 1888

It is always welcome news when I can post an a new state taking on the hemp issue. So far Kentucky, Colorado, California, Oregon, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota and North Carolina have all got some news items on this blog. Washington joins the frey, and I am hoping to start a New York initiative here, hopefully reps Jerrold Nadler who co-sponsored Ron Paul's bill and Carolyn Maloney

(NY's 8th and 12th districts) will support this. All 50 states could benefit, so let's see 40 more posts of this genre - and of course let's get lots more signatures on the petition to the White House at www.minawear.com/about-us/

 

 

 

 

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — A legislative committee has approved a bill that would allow Washington farmers to grow industrial hemp.

Washington officials are in the process of establishing a system to legalize the production and sale of marijuana for recreational use, following passage of Initiative 502 last fall. But that initiative didn't cover the production of hemp or hemp products.

House Bill 1888 would permit development of an industrial hemp industry in Washington. A House committee approved the bill Thursday, sending it to the full House for a vote.

Nine other states have passed laws allowing hemp production, but none grows hemp as a crop. The federal government still bans the plant.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Legislative-committee-approves-hemp-bill-4298715.php#ixzz2LaSgdjOo

North Carolina hemp activism

Southern states are starting to get very vocal over hemp, led of course by Kentucky. North Carolina would be just as ideal a place to cultivate hemp, replacing the ubiquitous tobacco and cotton, saving water and creating jobs to boot. All states will need the federal approval even if they do vote to make it legal, and that is in the works with the petition at www.minawear.com/about-us/ - please take a moment to sign so your state can profit! Jeff Danner of NC posted earlier this month on Common Science the following thoughts: "Hemp, George Washington Grew It"

With all of the critical economic and environmental challenges we face in the world and in North Carolina today, we no longer have the luxury of tolerating the foolish, inefficient and unnecessary ban of growing industrial hemp. Before everyone gets all excited, this is not a marijuana legalization column. Hemp consists of a family of strains. Strains of hemp which are useful in industrial applications contain 30 to 50 times less of the “active” ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), than strains grown for “recreational” use. Hemp has a long and rather glorious history. Its cultivation began 12,000 years ago in China, making it among the first plants domesticated by humans. Hemp rope and sails were used in the great sailing vessels of the Age of Exploration of the 1500s. In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a statute requiring all farms in the colony to plant hemp. George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon, and the original Levi’s blue jeans were made from hemp. North Carolina was once among the top hemp producing areas in the country. Hemp is a remarkable plant. It grows very rapidly. It enriches the soil it’s grown in with nitrogen making it an ideal plant for crop rotations. Hemp is also very effective in removing excess nutrients from the soil, which prevents them from reaching local waterways and causing damaging algae blooms. The soil cleaning properties of hemp could be of great use in remediating North Carolina’s hog waste lagoons. Almost every part of the hemp plant can be converted into useful products. The fibers in the stalks can be used to make rope, paper, and textiles. The oil in the seeds can be used to make biofuel, biodegradable plastics, and a variety of health foods. The remaining parts of the hemp plant can be tilled into the soil as compost. However, today there is no industrial hemp production in the U.S. What happened, you ask? The short answer is the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which imposed a tax on hemp products regardless of end use or THC content. The longer answer is complex and filled with intrigue involving two of the most famous families of the era, the Hearsts and the Mellons. By the mid 1930s, William Randolph Hearst had become fabulously wealthy through his newspaper empire. To maximize his profits and to secure his supply of newsprint, he invested in millions of acres of timber. At the same time, as I explained in “The Lesson of Nylon”, DuPont Chemical, in which the Mellon family where heavily invested, introduced synthetic fibers into the textile industry. Just about this time, several key advancements were made in both hemp farming and processing which may have allowed it to compete favorably with timber and nylon. As the legend goes, the Hearsts and Mellons felt sufficiently threatened by these developments to use their influence to “encourage” the U.S. congress to tax hemp. By the mid 1950’s industrial hemp production in the U.S. had ceased. All was quiet on the hemp front for a while until the counter culture movement of the 1960s brought about increased interest in the strains of hemp better suited to recreational use. The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was thrown out by the Supreme Court in Leary. V. the U.S. in 1969. (Yes, that was Timothy Leary of “turn on, tune in, and drop out” fame.) Any sense of victory for Mr. Leary was to be short lived with the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which, rather than taxing hemp production, simply banned it outright. Absent a minor exception for medical marijuana, this ban is still in place today. Given all of the benefits and uses of hemp, you should not be surprised to know that it is grown all over the world. I suspect you will also not be taken aback to learn that the world’s largest grower of hemp and exporter of hemp-based products is China. So who do you think is the world’s largest importer of hemp-based products? Yep, it’s us, the U.S.A. This foolishness is almost certain to end soon. In August of 2012, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon introduced the Industrial Hemp Farming Act which is still working its way through the Congress. North Dakota, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, California, Montana, West Virginia, and Vermont have already passed legislation allowing for industrial hemp production as soon as the U.S. government relents. North Carolina should join this group of forward-thinking states. Growing hemp would benefit our farmers through increased revenues and improved soil productivity. Hemp could be deployed in cleaning our hog lagoons and other damaged agricultural areas, and our already-rebounding textile industry is perfectly positioned to start making high-quality hemp fabrics for the domestic and international markets. What do you say Governor McCrory? Have a comment or question. Please use the interface below or send me an e-mail to commonscience@chapelboro.com.

Houses of Hemp in America

This article, titled "House of hemp? Pushing cannabis as a

construction material" by Jeffrey Head appeared last year in

 latimesblogs.latimes.com

 

Woody Harrelson championed the environmental benefits of hemp. Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein incorporated it into their collections. Now a company promoting hemp as the eco-building material of the moment said it wants to build California's first hemp house.

Hemp Technologies said it wants to use hemp-based materials to construct a 500-square-foot structure at the ruins of Knapp's Castle near Santa Barbara. The castle, completed in 1920, was built for Union Carbide founder George Owen Knapp but destroyed by wildfire in 1940. Since then, all that has remained on the property are the sandstone blocks outlining the once-grand estate.

The principal material for the project is Hempcrete, made of the woody internal stem of the Cannabis sativa plant, which is processed into chips and mixed with a lime-based binder. That concoction is then sprayed on, poured into slabs or formed into blocks like concrete to create the shell of a building. Interior surfaces are plastered, and exterior surfaces are stuccoed.

“The walls are to be framed and earthquake-braced internally with lumber,” said Greg Flavall, Hemp Technologies' co-founder, who added that “hemp is very close in cellulosic value to wood.” The material helps to keep structures warm in winter and cool in summer, he said.

Other advantages, advocates have said, beyond the fact that the plant can be grown with little water and few pesticides: Hemp is resistant to fire damage and termites. Although air does not pass through the walls, moisture naturally dries out, and mold or dry rot are not problems. David Madera, who co-founded Asheville, N.C.-based Hemp Technologies with Flavall, credited the walls' lime content, which needs carbon dioxide to harden.

The lime will pull carbon dioxide from the environment after the home is built “because the lime wants to go back to being a rock,” Madera said. “That means the wall is going to get harder and harder over time.”

Flavall said the Knapp's Castle structure “will lock in about 12 tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have escaped into the atmosphere when the hemp cellulose decays in the field.”

That is, if the structure is completed. A Santa Barbara County official said a project has been submitted for planning approval but still needs to pass most stages of the permitting process. A house, outbuilding or any other structure would have to be deemed appropriate for the site, and any unconventional materials would have to be declared safe.

Madera, who declined to disclose the identity of his firm's California client, said Hemp Technologies has consulted on three Hempcrete houses in North Carolina, where the material was treated as an alternative form of insulation.

Although hemp contains only trace elements of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, hemp is still derived from a cannabis plant. State and federal laws do not make a distinction between varieties of cannabis used for clothing or building materials and varieties used for more psychoactive purposes, so producing hemp is prohibited. Importing hemp, however, is legal, and various companies are pushing forward with hemp building products too.

Hemp Traders in L.A. distributes Hemp Board, a medium-density fiberboard (MDF) made from the same woody material that goes into Hempcrete. Hemp Board President Lawrence Serbin said his MDF is a sustainable alternative for doors, cabinets and shelves.

Spanish architect Monika Brümmer has developedCannabric and Cannapanel, which, as the names suggest, are cannabis-based building blocks and wall panels. She has completed several residential projects in her country, where the products met construction standards.

-- Jeffrey Head

One of three Hempcrete houses in North Carolina designed by Push Design with Hemp Technologies providing hemp materials and serving as consultants.

Photos, from top: Another Hempcrete house in North Carolina. Credit: Push Design. The site of Knapp's Castle in Santa Barbara County. Credit: Pfly / Wikipedia Commons

HEMP IN NORTH CAROLINA

Like many southern states, North Carolina at one time grew hemp. There is record of 39 tonnes grown in 1850 and 3,016 tonnes grown in 1860. The Civil War was a factor which stopped much of the US hemp cultivation, so the 1870 record is nil. That same amount is what is grown today.

The nineteenth century use of hemp was mainly for the navy, which used the better grades of this fibre, usually grown and processed in Russia. Attempts at using domestic supplies were made, including discussions on Capitol Hill, but the Russian hemp was actually preferred by the US sailors for its strength, having been water-retted. One trial comparing the two was made in 1824 on a ship called the USS North Carolina, one side rigged with Russian, the other with American.

Today the navy uses Manila hemp, or abaca, and even if someone wanted to produce hemp ropes, they would have to use foreign grown hemp; presently, cultivation is not allowed t in the US at all, despite its use by the Founding Fathers and its promotion by the US government in 1942, when it was used by the US Navy, grown in the Midwest and processed in Massachusetts.

Two North Carolina Senators are presently trying to have hemp relegalised in their state. One is a Republican, Stan Bingham; the other a Democrat, Ellie Kinnaird. While there is bipartisan agreement between both of the state's senators, local law enforcement officials are not as united. Guildford County Sherriff BJ Barnes weighs the fact that it would require testing by noting that testing is not a new practice in policing, and concludes with the thought: "I don't want to stand in the way of something that could be a lucrative crop...I don't have a problem with it."

On the other hand, Davidson County Sherriff David Grice does have a problem with it in his mind; he thinks that legalising hemp would be "letting the genie out", claiming a grower of hemp could mix in marijuana plants to hide them, which is widely rebutted by knowledgeable advocates who point out that cross-pollination would preclude such an arrangement.

The Democratic Senator, from the Chapel Hill area, joked with her colleague: "Stan, you'll get run out of the country where you live, and I'll be a hero in Chapel Hill."

Sen. Bingham stands by his convictions whatever hotheads want to do, saying: "Hemp is just too worthwhile to back down because of potential namecalling...it just makes sense to me."

Good for both of you, time we saw some bipartisan action for the good of the public. Me thinks George Washington would be proud.