The CBD Crew?

[englishrick]

hillig defined the biotypes Cannab,,,there are 7 of them,,,,but most people call everything Cannabis Sativa,,,

yo Dr Tre,,,funny you should mention that milk drink,,,my cousins from Pakistan drink that CannaMilk,,,it knocks them on there asses for hours,,,1 of my dogs [huski] drank a small batch not so long ago,, she started-off wobbling and falling over then she couldnt move for about 8 hours,,,her pupils became massive,,,ive got a video of it,,,,she ate 12 grams of my best weed once too and she was nowhere near as knocked-out as she was with the milk

the fats in the milk act like a solvent,,,,the rudy oviously has some active componants

 

[headband 707]

Canna Ice cream is becomming real popular in Cali I hear LOL peace out Headband707

 

[headband 707]

Damn Elmanito that looks amazing lol I would love to have been around when they were smokin that baby lol peace out Headband707

 

[funkymonkey]

what are you trying to say funky,,,that Hemp populations donot contain the building blocks for drug-types like the ones people smoke,,?

its impossible to avoid the family connections,,

If you're trying to say that drug cannabis was developed from hemp then you are definitely speculating. It is thought that cannabis originated in China, and it probably did, but seeing as they found drug cannabis that is thousands of years old in China in grave goods as part of a ceremonial burial we know for a fact that drug cannabis has been around since before recorded history begins, therefore we have no idea if drug cannabis came from hemp or not. Unless you have a time machine to go back to a time before man had even founded the first civilisation then you have no idea on that, no-one does. Read all the books you want, they cannot give you the answer on that one.

 

[headband 707]

yeah I'm sure as long as ppl could get high all over the world they did lol PEACE Headband707

 

[funkymonkey]

Ruderalis is not hemp, the ancestors were cultivated for drug use, historical fact. Like the guy said above indicas or 'afganicas' are probably closer to hemp than rudy is.

I think you're partly right. The Scythians grew lots of cannabis for ritual use, they would throw bushels of the flower tops on stone hearths inside leather tents then close all the tent flaps and sit inside inhaling the smoke. They used the stems for fibre. After the Romans conquered parts of the lands the Scythians inhabited (they were semi-nomadic so ranged over quite a large area of eastern and southern europe) they carried on cultivating cannabis but mostly for fibre. The feral cannabis populations in Moravia (Czech Republic) are descended from Scythian and Roman crops and definitely contain both CBD and THC chemotypes, I have grown seeds collected in Moravian fields and there are some high THC individuals, it would not be too hard to make a high THC line from that population if one used sufficient numbers for selection.

The feral populations of Bulgaria, Albania and the Balkans has a mixed ancestry, some of it does descend from drug cannabis as there used to be a fair bit of hashish production in Greece, Macedonia, Thrace and the rest of the southern Balkan region, however, a lot of fibre crops were also grown throughout eastern and southern europe so the feral populations there today have had multiple inputs of genes at different times over the centuries.

Hungary and Russia cultivated huge quantities of hemp for fibre right up until WWII, the feral populations in these countries are escapees from the hemp fields, there has been a lot of study of the feral hemp of the Ukraine.

While the psychoactive properties of cannabis flowers has been known in eastern and southern Europe for at least 3 millenia (Herodotus and other Greeks wrote of the use of the flowers in ancient times) there was never a widespread smoking of the stuff, it was used in folk medicine and was fed to cattle to relieve stress so they gave milk again after being stressed.

I honestly think we shouldn't overlook the usefulness of the feral hemp populations of Europe, there is potential there for breeding drug cultivars, now that we have lost a lot of the drug cultivars that were maintained for centuries in places like Thailand, Afghanistan and India we need to start looking at other populations. I'm personally interested in the populations of Central Asia - Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Dagestan etc. There are some very old hashish making cultures in that part of the world. In the 19th century when the British began to study hashish the best qualities were the hand rubbed charases from Yarkand and Samarkand in Central Asia. Stalin did a lot to disrupt and destroy the traditional cultures in that region, hundreds of thousands were shipped off to the gulags, traditional medicines and shamanic beliefs were suppressed, but it won't all have been destroyed, there will still be some special very old cultivars to be found but there are almost no roads in that region, it's steppes mostly and the people are largely nomadic outside the urban centres.

I have seeds from Uzbekistan and Dagestan as well as some others from Europe, it is hard work going through them to find the useful individuals though.

 

[elmanito]

17th century stoned like a turtle lol

Namaste

 

[englishrick]

it was a question,,,do you think Hemp population contain the buildingblocks for the Cannabis people smoke?

 

[englishrick]

hopefull this looks ok,,

 

[funkymonkey]

17th century stoned like a turtle lol

Namaste

Is that a Rembrandt?

It's hard to trace the history of cannabis smoking within European culture, we know George Washington probably smoked the flowers of his hemp crops and we have proof Abraham Lincoln did in the 1850s (he wrote a letter to the Hohner harmonica company where he said he loved little better than relaxing on his porch with a pipe of 'sweet hemp' and playing his harmonica) but there is also the contradictory fact that in the 1830s and 1840s the British medical establishment were completely in the dark about the properties of both dried flowers and hashish. O'Shaughnessy, the Irish doctor who served in the British Indian Army in the 1840s was the first to carry out proper studies into the properties of cannabis flowers and hashish beginning in 1841 in India. Before that, the samples of cannabis flowers and hashish that were shipped back to England for study by the medical profession had lost their potency by the time they arrived due to having to make the months long voyage around the horn of Africa and improper storage. The British medical profession concluded that the samples they received had probably degraded and that was why they had no psychoactive effect on them when they ingested it. They also speculated that it was possible that cannabis and hashish only had an effect on 'Hindoos' as they called native Indians back then. O'Shaughnessy was the one who dispelled that myth.

So all in all, I think it's fair to say we haven't got any hard and fast answers as to how many people were smoking cannabis within white european society (which includes pre civil war America) and how far back the habit goes. Hashish was produced in Greece in the 19th century, I'm not sure how far back Greek production dates, but I suspect it goes back a very long way as Greece lies at one end of the ancient Silk Road and both cannabis and the knowledge of hashish production originate at the other end of the Silk Road in China.

 

[funkymonkey]

it was a question,,,do you think Hemp population contain the buildingblocks for the Cannabis people smoke?

Not a good question really, it's like asking does the wild wolf population contain the building blocks for the Yorkshire Terrier. The answer is yes, they are the same species after all.

What no-one knows and it's almost certainly a question that can never be answered is what was the original wild state of the cannabis species. I think that would be a better question.

Was cannabis originally hemp, only useful for food (seeds) and fibre (stems) and drug cannabis with high THC the result of man breeding it from wild hemp in the same way domestic dogs were bred by man from wild wolves?

In Siberia in the 1970s a fascinating experiment was done with Siberian Silver foxes. Using only a small starting population and inbreeding between the offspring retaining a restricted genepool they discovered it only took a surprisingly small number of generations before they had a breed of animal that was no longer a Siberian Silver Fox, the animals had become fully domesticated with radically altered personalities and physical features from the original wild animals. This proved that it probably only took a few decades from the first wolves becoming domesticated to the first domestic dog breeds descending from the wolf.

There may well have been high THC cannabis right from day one when cannabis first evolved or it may have taken the hand of man to create high THC cannabis, we don't know and we have solid proof that high THC cannabis existed in very ancient times, long before writing or even civilisation existed, when man still lived as hunter-gatherers. This, to me, suggests that high THC cannabis existed in a natural wild state because man did not start farming crops until a later period.

If I were to hazard a guess I reckon that the original wild cannabis contained individuals that grew lots of flowers and had loads of thc; recognisable to modern eyes as something worth smoking AND individuals that grew lots of fibrous stem and was only good for extracting the fibre. If you go to Moravia and study the feral cannabis there as I have done you will see a population like this, I strongly suspect this is a glimpse at the original wild state of the species - highly varied and containing the necessary genes to develop BOTH drug cannabis AND fibre hemp.

 

[cannaboy]

What's that the chicken and the egg thing again... The herb came from space!! I am not certain.....
Semantics
Pm londinium he's just been on a sativa mission he will have some first hand this season smarts.

I believe cannabis had an affect on every one who came in contact with it, the reason its all gone now is because people didn't share at first, (like us tight bastards) the people exploring were not to know virgins,, and the wise hashed all the flowers shipped home for medical research just before the pillaging started different people did different things with different intentions with different strains from then on ,,all was invented was done 1000's of years ago and war has changed it for the worse just think what grew back when money wasn't invented and 1st. man roamed?? there was both fibre and the pukka!!
seeds like massive..

what came first is what survived.. I.e high populations or superior genetics and ones with resistance this would make for landrace..

sorry to go on..

people wrecked it late 70's, it was a concern in the 60's

sssc had the best to offer ever!!!

 

[headband 707]

Hemp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about industrial hemp. For its psychoactive variant, see Cannabis (drug). For the biology of the plant, see Cannabis. For other uses, see Hemp (disambiguation).

The variety of appearances for cannabis. Only C. sativa (left) is suited for industrial hemp, but it also has medicinal varieties.Hemp (from Old English hænep) is the name of the soft, durable fibre that is cultivated from plants of the Cannabis genus, cultivated for commercial use.

In modern times, hemp has been used for industrial purposes including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food, fuel, and medical purposes[1] with modest commercial success.[2][3] In the past three years,[when?] commercial success of hemp food products has grown considerably.[4][5]

Hemp is one of the faster growing biomasses known,[6] producing up to 25 tonnes of dry matter per hectare per year,[7] and one of the earliest domesticated plants known.[8] For a crop, hemp is very environmentally friendly, as it requires few pesticides[9] and no herbicides.[10] Modern research data on soil fertility is limited. Currently, results indicate that high yield of hemp may require total nutrient levels (field plus fertilizer nutrients) similar to a high yielding wheat crop.[11]

Cannabis sativa L. subsp. sativa var. sativa is the variety grown for industrial use, while C. sativa subsp. indica generally has poor fibre quality and is primarily used for production of recreational and medicinal drugs. The major difference between the two types of plants is the appearance and the amount of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) secreted in a resinous mixture by epidermal hairs called glandular trichomes, although they can also be distinguished genetically.[12] Oilseed and fibre varieties of Cannabis approved for industrial hemp production produce only minute amounts of this psychoactive drug, not enough for any physical or psychological effects. Typically, hemp contains below 0.3% THC, while cultivars of Cannabis grown for marijuana can contain anywhere from 6 to over 20%.[13]

Industrial hemp is produced in many countries around the world.[14] Major producers include Canada, France, and China. While more hemp is exported to the United States than to any other country, the United States Government does not consistently distinguish between marijuana and the non-psychoactive Cannabis used for industrial and commercial purposes.[13]

Contents [hide]
1 Uses
1.1 Food
1.1.1 Nutrition
1.1.2 Storage
1.2 Dietary supplement
1.3 Medicine
1.4 Fibre
1.4.1 Building material
1.4.2 Composite materials
1.4.3 Paper
1.5 Jewelry
1.5.1 Fabric
1.5.2 Cordage
1.5.3 Animal bedding
1.6 Water and soil purification
1.7 Weed control
1.8 Fuel
2 Cultivation
2.1 Historical cultivation
2.1.1 Harvesting
2.2 Varieties
2.3 Diseases
3 History
4 Countries that produce hemp
5 Industrial growth under licence
6 See also
7 References


[edit] Uses
Hemp is used for a wide variety of purposes, including the manufacture of cordage of varying tensile strength, clothing, and nutritional products. The bast fibres can be used in 100% hemp products, but are commonly blended with other organic fibres such as flax, cotton or silk, for apparel and furnishings, most commonly at a 55%/45% hemp/cotton blend. The inner two fibres of hemp are more woody, and are more often used in non-woven items and other industrial applications, such as mulch, animal bedding and litter. The oil from the fruits ("seeds") oxidizes (commonly, though inaccurately, called "drying") to become solid on exposure to air, similar to linseed oil, and is sometimes used in the manufacture of oil-based paints, in creams as a moisturizing agent, for cooking, and in plastics. Hemp seeds have been used in bird seed mix as well.[15] Hempseed is also widely used as a fishing bait.

[edit] Food

Shelled hemp seedsHemp seeds contain all the essential amino acids and essential fatty acids necessary to maintain healthy human life.[16] The seeds can be eaten raw, ground into a meal, sprouted, made into hemp milk (akin to soy milk), prepared as tea, and used in baking. The fresh leaves can also be eaten in salads. Products range from cereals to frozen waffles, hemp tofu to nut butters. A few companies produce value added hemp seed items that include the seed oils, whole hemp grain (which is sterilized by law), dehulled hemp seed (the whole seed without the mineral rich outer shell), hemp flour, hemp cake (a by-product of pressing the seed for oil) and hemp protein powder. Hemp is also used in some organic cereals, for non-dairy milk[17] somewhat similar to soy and nut milks, and for non-dairy hemp "ice cream."

Within the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has treated hemp as purely a non-food crop. Seed appears on the UK market as a legal food product, and cultivation licences are available for this purpose. In North America, hemp seed food products are sold, typically in health food stores or through mail order. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that "the market potential for hemp seed as a food ingredient is unknown. However, it probably will remain a small market, like those for sesame and poppy seeds."[18]


[edit] Nutrition
This article appears to contradict the article Essential amino acid. Please see discussion on the linked talk page. Please do not remove this message until the contradictions are resolved. (August 2010)

[show]Typical nutritional analysis of hemp nut (hulled hemp seeds)[19]
Calories/100 g 567
Protein 30.6
Carbohydrate 10.9
Dietary fiber 6
Fat 47.2
Saturated fat 5.2
Palmitic 16:0 3.4
Stearic 18:0 1.5
Monounsaturated fat 5.8
Oleic 18:1 (Omega-9) 5.8
Polyunsaturated fat 36.2
Linoleic 18:2 (Omega-6) 27.6
Linolenic 18:3 (Omega-3) 8.7
Linolenic 18:3 (Omega-6) 0.8
Cholesterol 0 mg
Moisture 5
Ash 6.6
Vitamin A (B-Carotene) 4 IU
Thiamine (Vit B1) 1 mg
Riboflavin (Vit B2) 1 mg
Vitamin B6 0 mg
Niacin (Vit B3) 0 mg
Vitamin C 1.0 mg
Vitamin D 0 IU
Vitamin E 9 IU
Sodium 9 mg
Calcium 74 mg
Iron 4.7 mg

About 30–35% of the weight of hempseed is hempseed oil or hemp oil, an edible oil that contains about 80% essential fatty acids (EFAs); i.e., linoleic acid, omega-6 (LA, 55%), alpha-linolenic acid, omega-3 (ALA, 22%), in addition to gamma-linolenic acid, omega-6 (GLA, 1–4%) and stearidonic acid, omega-3 (SDA, 0–2%). Whole hempseed also contains about 25% of a highly-digestible protein, where 1/3 is edestin and 2/3 are albumins. Its amino acid profile is close to "complete" when compared to more common sources of proteins such as meat, milk, eggs and soy.[20] The proportions of linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid in one tablespoon (15 ml) per day of hemp oil easily provides human daily requirements for EFAs. Unlike flaxseed oil, hemp oil can be used continuously without developing a deficiency or other imbalance of EFAs.[21] This has been demonstrated in a clinical study, where the daily ingestion of flaxseed oil decreased the endogenous production of GLA.[21]

Hempseed is an adequate source of calcium and iron. Whole hempseeds are also a good source of phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, copper and manganese.

Hempseed contains no gluten and therefore would not trigger symptoms of celiac disease.

[edit] Storage
Hemp oil is a highly unsaturated oil. As such, it has a relatively low smoke point and is not suitable for frying. It is primarily used as a food oil and dietary supplement, and has been shown to relieve the symptoms of eczema (atopic dermatitis)[citation needed]. Hemp oil can spontaneously oxidize and turn rancid within a short period of time if not stored properly; it is best stored in a dark glass bottle, in a refrigerator or freezer (its freezing point is -20°C). Preservatives (antioxidants) are not necessary for high quality oils that are stored properly.

[edit] Dietary supplement
Hemp oil has been shown to relieve the symptoms of eczema (atopic dermatitis).[22]

Hemp Seed contains a large dietary supplement of omega-3, higher even than walnuts which contain 6.3% of n-3.

[edit] Medicine
Main article: Medicinal cannabis
Hemp oil has anti-inflammatory properties.[23]

[edit] Fibre

Hemp stem showing fibres.The fibre is one of the most valuable parts of the hemp plant. It is commonly called bast, which refers to the fibres that grow on the outside of the woody interior of the plant's stalk, and under the outer most part (the bark). Bast fibres give the plants strength. Hemp fibres can be between approximately 0.91 m (3 ft) and 4.6 m (15 ft) long, running the length of the plant. Depending on the processing used to remove the fibre from the stem, the hemp may naturally be creamy white, brown, gray, black or green.[citation needed]

The use of hemp for fibre production has declined sharply over the last two centuries, but before the industrial revolution, hemp was a popular fibre because it is strong and grows quickly; it produces 10% more fibre than cotton and 10% more fibre than flax when grown on the same land.[citation needed] Hemp has been used to make paper. It was often used to make sail canvas, and the word canvas derives from cannabis.[24][25] Abaca, or "Manila hemp", a relative of the banana plant, replaced its use for rope. Burlap, made from jute, took over the sacking market. The paper industry began using wood pulp. The carpet industry switched over to wool, sisal, and jute, then nylon. Netting and webbing applications were taken over by cotton and synthetics.

[edit] Building material

Concrete block made with hemp in FranceIn Europe and China, hemp fibres have been used in prototype quantities to strengthen concrete, and in other composite materials for many construction and manufacturing applications.[26] See Hempcrete.

[edit] Composite materials
A mixture of fibreglass, hemp fibre, kenaf, and flax has been used since 2002 to make composite panels for automobiles.[4][27] The choice of which bast fibre to use is primarily based on cost and availability.

[edit] Paper
The first identified coarse paper, made from hemp, dates to the early Western Han Dynasty, two hundred years before the nominal invention of papermaking by Cai Lun, who improved and standardized paper production using a range of inexpensive materials, including hemp ends, approximately 2000 years ago.[28]

From 1880 to 1933 the hemp grown in the United States had declined from 15,000 to 1,200 acres (4.9 km2), and that the price of line hemp had dropped from $12.50 per pound in 1914 to $9.00 per pound in 1933.[29][30]

In 1916, U.S. Department of Agriculture chief scientists Lyster H. Dewe and Jason L. Merrill created paper made from hemp pulp, which they concluded was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp wood."[31][32]

In 1935 hemp started to make a significant rebound from a very low level.[30] In the 1930s Hearst began a campaign against hemp, and published stories in his newspapers associating hemp with marijuana[33] and attacking marijuana usage.[34]

Currently there is a small niche market for hemp pulp. Hemp fiber is mixed with fiber from other sources than hemp. In 1994 was there no significant production of 100% true hemp paper.[35] World hemp pulp production was believed to be around 120,000 tons per year in 1991 which was about 0.05% of the world's annual pulp production volume.[2] This can be compared to a typical pulp mill for wood fibre, which is never smaller than 250,000 tons per annum.[35] The cost of hemp pulp is approximately six times that of wood pulp,[2] mostly because of the small size and outdated equipment of the few hemp processing plants in the Western world, and because hemp is harvested once a year (during August) and needs to be stored to feed the mill the whole year through. This storage requires a lot of (mostly manual) handling of the bulky stalk bundles, which accounts for a high raw material cost. Hemp pulp is bleached with hydrogen peroxide, a process today also commonly used for wood pulp.

[edit] Jewelry
see Hemp Jewelry

[edit] Fabric

A sack made from hemp fibreA modest hemp fabric industry exists, and hemp fibers can be used in clothing.[36] Pure hemp has a texture similar to linen.[37]

[edit] Cordage

Hemp ropeHemp rope was used in the age of sailing ships, though the rope had to be protected by tarring, since hemp rope has a propensity for breaking from rot, as the capillary effect of the rope-woven fibres tended to hold liquid at the interior, while seeming dry from the outside.[38] Tarring was a labor-intensive process, and earned sailors the nickname "Jack Tar". Hemp rope was phased out when Manila, which does not require tarring, became widely available. Manila is sometimes referred to as Manila hemp, but is not related to hemp; it is Abacá, a species of banana.

[edit] Animal bedding
Hemp shives are the core of the stem. In the EU, they are used for animal bedding (horses, for instance), or for horticultural mulch.[39] Industrial hemp is much more profitable if both fibres and shives (or even seeds) can be used.

[edit] Water and soil purification
Hemp can be used as a "mop crop" to clear impurities out of wastewater, such as sewage effluent, excessive phosphorus from chicken litter, or other unwanted substances or chemicals. Eco-technologist Dr. Keith Bolton from Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, is a leading researcher in this area. Hemp is being used to clean contaminants at Chernobyl nuclear disaster site.[40]

[edit] Weed control
Main article: Weed control#Organic methods

Biodiesel sampleHemp, because of its height, dense foliage and its high planting density as a crop, is a very effective and long used method of killing tough weeds in farming by minimizing the pool of weed seeds of the soil.[41] Using hemp this way can help farmers avoid the use of herbicides, to help gain organic certification and to gain the benefits of crop rotation per se. Due to its rapid, dense growth characteristics, in some jurisdictions hemp is considered a prohibited noxious weed, much like Scotch Broom.

[edit] Fuel
Biofuels, such as biodiesel and alcohol fuel, can be made from the oils in hemp seeds and stalks, and the fermentation of the plant as a whole, respectively. Biodiesel produced from hemp is sometimes known as hempoline.[42] Hemp biodiesel is clean burning and non-toxic.

Henry Ford grew industrial hemp on his estate after 1937,[43] possibly to prove the cheapness of methanol production at Iron Mountain. He made plastic cars (the so-called Hemp Car) with wheat straw, hemp and sisal. (Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1941, "Pinch Hitters for Defense.") Filtered hemp oil can be used directly to power diesel engines. In 1892, Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine, which he intended to fuel "by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils, which earlier were used for oil lamps, i.e. The Argand lamp."[44][45][46]

[edit] Cultivation

Hemp being harvested
Climate zones well suited for the cultivation of hempMillennia of selective breeding have resulted in varieties that look quite different. Also, breeding since circa 1930 has focused quite specifically on producing strains which would perform very poorly as sources of drug material. Hemp grown for fibre is planted closely, resulting in tall, slender plants with long fibres. Ideally, according to Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the herb should be harvested before it flowers. This early cropping is done because fibre quality declines if flowering is allowed and, incidentally, this cropping also pre-empts the herb's maturity as a potential source of drug material. However, in these strains of industrial hemp the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content would have been very low, regardless.

The name Cannabis is the genus and was the name favored by the 19th century medical practitioners who helped to introduce the herb's drug potential to modern English-speaking consciousness. Cannabis for non-drug purposes (especially ropes and textiles) was then already well known as hemp.

The name "marijuana" is Spanish in origin and associated almost exclusively with the herb's drug potential.

[edit] Historical cultivation
Hemp has been grown for millennia in Asia and the Middle East for its fibre. Commercial production of hemp in the West took off in the eighteenth century, but was grown in the sixteenth century in eastern England.[47] Because of colonial and naval expansion of the era, economies needed large quantities of hemp for rope and oakum.

[edit] Harvesting

Industrial hempseed harvesting machine in France.
Thick stands of fibre hemp compete well with weeds.Smallholder plots are usually harvested by hand. The plants are cut at 2 to 3 cm above the soil and left on the ground to dry. Mechanical harvesting is now common, using specially adapted cutter-binders or simpler cutters.

The cut hemp is laid in swathes to dry for up to four days. This was traditionally followed by retting, either water retting (the bundled hemp floats in water) or dew retting (the hemp remains on the ground and is affected by the moisture in dew, and by molds and bacterial action). Modern processes use steam and machinery to separate the fibre, a process known as thermo-mechanical pulping.

[edit] Varieties
There are broadly three groups of Cannabis varieties being cultivated today:

Varieties primarily cultivated for their fibre, characterized by long stems and little branching, extreme red, yellow, blue or purple coloration, or thickness of stem and solid core, such as hemp cannabis oglalas, and more generally called industrial hemp.
Varieties grown for seed from which hemp oil is extracted or which can be dehulled.
Varieties grown for medicinal, spiritual development or recreational purposes.
A nominal, if not legal distinction is often made between hemp, with concentrations of the psychoactive chemical THC far too low to be useful as a drug, and Cannabis used for medical, recreational, or spiritual purposes.

[edit] Diseases
Main article: List of hemp diseases
Hemp plants can be vulnerable to various pathogens, including bacteria, fungi, nematodes, viruses and other miscellaneous pathogens. Such diseases often lead to reduced fibre quality, stunted growth, and death of the plant. These diseases rarely affect the yield of a hemp field, so hemp production is not traditionally dependent on the use of pesticides.

[edit] History

Yangshao culture (ca. 4800 BCE) amphora with impressed hemp cord design
Má, the Mandarin word for hemp. In China, the use of hemp has been shown to go back at least 10,000 years.
Cannabis sativa from Vienna Dioscurides, 512 A.D.Hemp use dates back to the Stone Age, with hemp fibre imprints found in pottery shards in China and Taiwan[48] over 7,000 years old. They were also later used to make clothes, shoes, ropes, and an early form of paper.[48] Contrary to the traditional view that Cai Lun invented paper in around 105 AD, specimens of hemp paper were found in the Great Wall of China dating back 200 years earlier.[citation needed]

The classical Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 480 BC) reported that the inhabitants of Scythia would often inhale the vapours of hemp smoke, both as ritual and for their own pleasurable recreation (Hist. 4:73-75).

In late medieval Germany and Italy, hemp was employed in cooked dishes, as filling in pies and tortes, or boiled in a soup.[49]

Hemp in later Europe was mainly cultivated for its fibres, and was used for ropes on many ships, including those of Christopher Columbus. The use of hemp as a cloth was centred largely in the countryside, with higher quality textiles being available in the towns.

The Spaniards brought hemp to the Western Hemisphere and cultivated it in Chile starting about 1545.[50] However, in May 1607, "hempe" was among the crops Gabriel Archer observed being cultivated by the natives at the main Powhatan village, where Richmond, Virginia is now situated;[51] and in 1613, Samuell Argall reported wild hemp "better than that in England" growing along the shores of the upper Potomac. As early as 1619, the first Virginia House of Burgesses passed an Act requiring all planters in Virginia to sow "both English and Indian" hemp on their plantations.[52] The Puritans are first known to have cultivated hemp in New England in 1645.[50]


United States "Marihuana" production permit. In the United States, hemp cultivation is legally prohibited, but during World War II farmers were encouraged to grow hemp for cordage, to replace Manila hemp previously obtained from Japanese-controlled areas. The U.S. government produced a film explaining the uses of hemp, called Hemp for Victory.In 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed in the United States. It levied a tax on anyone who dealt commercially in cannabis, hemp, or marijuana. It was repealed by an overriding law in 1970.

Hemp was used extensively by the United States during World War II. Uniforms, canvas, and rope were among the main textiles created from the hemp plant at this time.[53] Much of the hemp used was cultivated in Kentucky and the Midwest.

Historically, hemp production had made up a significant portion of antebellum Kentucky's economy. Before the American Civil War, many slaves worked on plantations producing hemp.[54]

During World War II, the U.S. produced a short 1942 film, Hemp for Victory, promoting hemp as a necessary crop to win the war.

By the early twentieth century, the advent of the steam engine and the diesel engine ended the reign of the sailing ship. The production of iron and steel for cable and ships' hulls further eliminated natural fibres in marine use. Hemp had long since fallen out of favour in the sailing industry in preference to Manila hemp.

[edit] Countries that produce hemp
Over 30 countries produce industrial hemp including Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Great Britain, France, Russia and Spain.[55]

From the 1950s to the 1980s the Soviet Union was the world's largest producer (3,000 km² in 1970). The main production areas were in Ukraine,[56] the Kursk and Orel regions of Russia, and near the Polish border. Since its inception in 1931, the Hemp Breeding Department at the Institute of Bast Crops in Hlukhiv (Glukhov), Ukraine, has been one of the world's largest centres for developing new hemp varieties, focusing on improving fibre quality, per-hectare yields, and low THC content.[57][58]

Other important producing countries were China, North Korea, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, France and Italy.


Typical Japanese Shinto shrine with paper streamers & rope made out of unprocessed hemp fibre.In Japan, hemp was historically used as paper and a fibre crop. There is archaeological evidence that cannabis was used for clothing and the seeds were eaten in Japan right back to the Jōmon period (10,000 to 300 BCE). Many Kimono designs portray hemp, or "Asa" (Japanese: 麻), as a beautiful plant. In 1948 marijuana was restricted as a narcotic drug. The ban on marijuana imposed by the United States authorities was alien to Japanese culture, as the drug had never been widely used in Japan before. Though these laws against marijuana are some of the world's strictest, allowing five years imprisonment for possession of the drug, they exempt hemp growers, whose crop is used to make robes for Buddhist monks and loincloths for sumo wrestlers. Because marijuana use in Japan has doubled in the past decade, these "loopholes" have recently been called into question.[59]

Uruguay has also approved a project of hemp production as of the second half of 2010.

France is Europe's biggest producer, with 8,000 hectares cultivated. Canada (9,725 ha in 2004),[60] the United Kingdom, and Germany all resumed commercial production in the 1990s. British production is mostly used as bedding for horses; other uses are under development. The largest outlet for German fibre is composite automotive panels. Companies in Canada, UK, United States, and Germany among many others process hemp seed into a growing range of food products and cosmetics; many traditional growing countries still continue to produce textile grade fibre.

Hemp is not legal to grow in the U.S. under Federal law because of its relation to marijuana, and any imported hemp products must meet a zero tolerance level. It is considered a controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (P.L. 91-513; 21 U.S.C. 801 et seq.). Some states have defied Federal law and made the cultivation of industrial hemp legal. These states — North Dakota, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, West Virginia, and Vermont — have not yet begun to grow hemp because of resistance from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.[61]

Commercial production (including cultivation) of industrial hemp has been permitted in Canada since 1998, under licenses and authorization issued by Health Canada. In 2009, hemp was harvested on 5450 hectares of Canadian land.[62]

[edit] Industrial growth under licence

Industrial hemp production in FranceLicences for hemp cultivation are issued in the European Union, Canada, in all states of Australia, and nine states in the United States.[63]

In the United Kingdom, these licences are issued by the Home Office under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. When grown for non-drug purposes hemp is referred to as industrial hemp, and a common product is fibre for use in a wide variety of products, as well as the seed for nutritional aspects as well as for the oil. Feral hemp or ditch weed is usually a naturalized fibre or oilseed strain of Cannabis that has escaped from cultivation and is self-seeding.

Victoria, Queensland and most recently New South Wales issue licences to grow hemp for industrial use. Victoria was an early adopter in 1998, and has reissued the regulation in 2008.[64] Queensland has allowed industrial production under licence since 2002[65] where the issuance is controlled under the Drugs Misuse Act 1986.[66] Most recently New South Wales now issues licences[67] under a law that came into effect as at 6 November 2008, the Hemp Industry Regulations Act 2008 (No 58).[68]

Vermont and North Dakota have passed laws enabling hemp licensure. Both states are waiting for permission to grow hemp from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Currently, North Dakota representatives are pursuing legal measures to force DEA approval.[69] Oregon has licensed industrial hemp as of August, 2009.[70]

[edit] See also

 

[funkymonkey]

What's that the chicken and the egg thing again... The herb came from space!! I am not certain.....
Semantics

Yeah, it's like the chicken and the egg, we don't know what came first and never will. It can be fun to speculate and theorise but the answers are lost in the mists of time, no-one was even able to write back when the answers we seek were available, the earliest civilisations had drug cannabis, look at the vedas of the very early Indus/Ganges civilisations, some of the oldest written scriptures we have, they contain clear references to drug cannabis and it's use for intoxication.

people wrecked it late 70's, it was a concern in the 60's

Actually, all was fine until the early 80s. What happened was America went right wing under Nixon and then Reagan and the War On Drugs really began. There were federal initiatives like CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) which destroyed a lot of people's lives, the only good cultivation magazine (Sensimilla Tips) was shutdown and Tom Forcade died so High Times became a joke and little more than a mouthpiece for some very shady characters who I can't talk about here. The US sponsored massive eradication efforts in places like Mexico and Thailand and that is why those genepools were destroyed.

sssc had the best to offer ever!!!

SSSC had some good stuff but so did The Seed Bank (Nevil) and Lowland Seeds/Positronics (Wernard, Old Ed, Kees Hoekert), once some Americans arrived in Holland it all started to go wrong, again, I can't write about that here.

The best ever came from a number of sweet spots that had the ideal conditions for the production of top grade cannabis. Places like the highlands of Thailand, Hawaii, the Southern Pacific coast of Mexico, the highlands of Oaxaca, the highlands of Santa Marta in Colombia, the islands of the Panama coast. By contrast, Cheese is absolute garbage, if you didn't get to experience some of the old stuff that is pretty much gone now you really can't get a handle on just how bad modern weed is, sure it tastes good but the effects are so watered down and lacking in the 'head' compared to the greats of the past it's a completely different animal. I wouldn't swap a pound of Cheese for a ounce of Kaui Electric, Puna Budder, Kona Gold, Colombian Gold, Panama Red, Lemon Thai, Chocolate Thai, Zacatecas Purple, Michoacan Brown Spear, Guerrero Green, Highland Oaxacan Gold or any of the other greats of the past.

 

[cannaboy]

your right about the equatorial sativas being best I was just dreaming of the durban chitral they had,, I want it instead of critical mass.. but I would take a few pure landrace ahead of that..
Funkey monkey.. you heard of the 30year old pineapple kush. supposed to be the real deal pineapple express, landrace afghan x hashplant grown on the emrald triangle at the exact latitude that it's parents grew in afghanistan.. I need it..

 

[funkymonkey]

your right about the equatorial sativas being best I was just dreaming of the durban chitral they had,, I want it instead of critical mass.. but I would take a few pure landrace ahead of that..
Funkey monkey.. you heard of the 30year old pineapple kush. supposed to be the real deal pineapple express, landrace afghan x hashplant grown on the emrald triangle at the exact latitude that it's parents grew in afghanistan.. I need it..

Ah, the Durban/Chitral, well spotted. That Durban male was special, they had several crosses using it and they were all spectacularly good. The best of the lot was Durban/Thai Highflyer, still one of the very finest hybrids I've encountered, oh how I wish I had seeds of that. Durban has always been a personal favourite, African weed was what I grew up on, I love the licourice taste of a good Durban, but you can only find it in South Africa these days. I managed to score some pretty good Durban in the Dam a couple of years ago but that was a lucky one-off, I remember walking down the Singel towards Centraal Station on a very wet afternoon smoking a joint of it and not caring at all I was getting soaked to the skin and feeling like it was the 80s again.

All the old classics are sats, indicas were all turned into hash. The reason why people started to breed indicas with sativas to make hybrids was the War On Drugs and CAMP driving grows indoors, the sats didn't work indoors with the primitive lights and equipment they had back then (HPS bulbs only appeared in 1978, halides a couple of years earlier) and indica offered the possibility of indoor growing.

I've heard of that Pineapple Kush but never seen it, there are a ton of old things still around but often very tightly held. The first indica seeds landed in the US around 1976 it is said, there are a few things still around that descend from those early indica imports, but it's all become very blurred and hard to pin down these days as a lot of the people who were active back then either went to jail or left the scene entirely.

If you want some really nice Afghan/Kush types take a look at the Real Seed Co and pick up some stuff like Mazar, Sheberghan and their other indicas, they are unworked so you need to grow out a good number and look for the special ones, when you find em, cross em to each other, that would be much more profitable than looking in the commercial genepool which has become a total mess. There are some commercial offerings that are also worth a look like Deep Chunk, Pine Tar Kush, X18, Purple Chitrali etc.

 

[grasspass]

My experience from the mid -west U.S.A. is that wild hemp is the harshest, worst tasting pot you could possibly imagine and if you find a patch growing wild , only about one patch in 20 has plants with any THC in it and very little at that. Interesting that the plants with some THC in them were the least harsh tasting. This was from 1979 to 1983, if that makes any difference.

 

[funkymonkey]

Those feral plants will be the feral remnants of the 'Hemp For Victory' campaign during WWII. After the Japanese seized The Phillipines in early 1942 the US lost it's source of Manilla Hemp (not a form of Cannabis) which was an important fibre resource, herefore the US govt handed out hundreds of thousands of sacks of hemp seeds and it was sown widely across the midwest. After the war they stopped growing it and tried to eradicate any traces of it. The microclimate, soil and other environmental factors all play a role in determining how a line will alter after going feral and I guess the environment in the midwest wasn't conducive to evolving smokeable plants. If the same WWII hemp lines had gone feral in somewhere like Hawaii they would probably have evolved into something quite passable to smoke, on the flip-side if they had gone feral somewhere with a harsh early winter like Russia they would have evolved into semi-autoflowering ruderalis.

Probably the reason why the THC plants were least harsh is they would have the highest overall levels of cannabinoids and terpenoids, whereas the ones with no THC would be harsh as hell cos they lacked those things and what you were tasting was the chlorrophylls, waxes and other components of the plant.

 

[grasspass]

I do recall that the ones with THC were more sticky, but knew nothing about trichs back then. We must of left 100, six foot tall plants out there unharvested.

 

[funkymonkey]

Have you seen that 'Acapulco Gold' documentary? The part showing some young folks harvesting midwest feral hemp is hilarious and sad at the same time, they had no clue, they cut down the plants and took them to another place out of the way somewhere and stripped off the fan leaves, there were no flowers on the plants at all so it must have been way too early in the year. They had sacks full of fan leaves and took them home, wrapped em in bundles and packed em in with some dry ice because they said it increased the potency. After that they pressed it some and sold it, they admitted it wasn't great pot, but to be honest, it must have been absolutely pointless to smoke that stuff, I doubt it got anyone high.