Fun facts about hemp (2/2)

1. The first crop grown in many states of the USA was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for the state of Kentucky which produced 40 000 tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th century.
2. The oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China. Most people think however that hemp industrialization is related to ancient Egypt.
3. A lot of painters like Rembrandt’s or Van Gogh as well as most early canvas paintings used to paint of hemp linen.
4. In 1916, the US Government predicted that by the 40’s all paper would come from hemp and that cutting tree would be pointless.
5. 58 000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935.
6. Henry Ford’s Model-T car was built to run on hemp gasoline and it was built from hemp. The hemp plastic panels used are 10 times stronger than steel.
7. In 1938, hemp was called “Billion Dollar Crop”. It was the first time in history that a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a bilion dollars.

This post will be the last. Hope you enjoyed reading.

Fun facts about hemp (1/2)

To end this blog, here is a couple of post about hemp fun facts.

1. Until 1880s, most of the schoolbooks were made from hemp.
2. It was legal to pay taxes with hemp in America from 1631 until the early 1800s
3. In the USA during the 17th and 18th centuries it was against the law to refuse to grow hemp. In Virginia for instance…
4. USA founding fathers (Thomas Jefferson, George Washington…) grew hemp back in the day. This information came straight from Jefferson and Washington diaries.
5. Until the 19 century, 90% of the ships sails and rope were made from hemp. The word “canvas” or “canevas” comes from the latin word “cannabis”
6. 80% of all textiles, clothes, drapes, bed sheets… wee made from hemp until the cotton came up in 1820s.
7. The first Bibles, maps, charts, some flags, some drafts of the Declaration of Independance and even the United States Constitution were made from hemp.

Check the rest of the fun facts in the next post !

Three unexpected product made from hemp

By browsing the internet I discovered that hemp was used in order to build many kinds of items/products. Here is the most unexpected I found.

The company erba makes bikes from a combination of bamboo and hemp. The bike frame is made with lightweight really strong bamboo with joints held together by resilient hemp fiber.

Some brand started to make some skateboards that swap out traditional Canadian maple with hemp decks. It works in the USA because some kids feel concerned about the state of American forest.

Finally the more impressive one is the hemp house. Of course it is not made entirely from hemp but most of it is made with hempcrete which is a bio composite composed of the innr woody cores of the plant mixed with water et chemical stuff. It is described as the perfect bio-based building material: it is resistant to fire, earthquake and it is non-toxic.

 

 

Chili cooking recipe

Hey,

It has no relation with hemp but with two friends we cooked a chili con carne last month.

You can see the video by following this link chili con carne with bacon !

Enjoy it

 

 

Some cosmetic product based on hemp seed oil

I already talked about hemp oil and how it could be use. However here is a few example of cosmetic product that can be made with hemp oil.

Anti acne

Acne is a common skin disease that mainly affect teenagers. The fatty acids contained with hemp seed oil based products have shown to decrease the inflammation caused by acne, preventing breakouts.

Sun block

Sun blocking cream is usually made up from a formulation of some very heavy oils, it result in a thick and greasy cream. Hemp oil can be used to counter this. Furthermore hemp oil improves the moisturising effects and spread-ability of sun block.

Hair care

Hemp is one of the richest sources of essential fatty acids. As a result hemp seed oil helps in the formation of strong and healthy keratin – the main protein in hair. The lipid content of hemp seed oil also increases elasticity, volume, shine and the easiness with which hair can be combed. For this reason, it is not uncommon for hemp seed oil to be used in shampoos and hair styling products.

 

See you next week with some new info about hemp.

Medicinal cannabis and stock market investment

As we have seen in the last post, marijuana is legalized in 4 out of the 50 states of the USA. However, medicinal cannabis is legalized in a total of 18 states.

With more and more states legalizing this medicinal cannabis, the medical cannabis industry is getting busy in order to make profit from this promising market. According to See Change Strategy, a research firm specialized in new markets, the medicinal cannabis business market represent 2 billion dollars and it could be 9 billion dollars if other states were willing to legalize marijuana for medical use.

The leading company in this market is GW Pharma. It is a british company that has been founded in 1998. Their product is called Sativex.

Sativex is an oral spray sold mainly in Europe for the moment but it will soon probably extends to the USA. Sativex has strong partners with pharmaceuticals giants Bayer and Novartis. It is a cure against spasms caused by multiple sclerosis and it is free of known psychotic effects of cannabis.

GW Pharma is currently trying to validate step by step clinicalt trials in order to market Sativex for other diseases.

Marijuana-related problems in California

4 states in the USA had the marijuana legalized: Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Colorado. However marijuana is also legalized in California for medical purpose since 1996.

In fact, it is described as hypocrite by many people since it is really easy to get a prescription from a doctor: you just have to say your back hurts or that you have trouble sleeping…

The fact is that California faces important dryness problems and hemp cultivation still require lots of water. It does require the same amount of water than maize cultivation: from 22 liter to 60 liter per day.

Maize cultivation water cunsomption is regulated by some laws but it is not the case for marijuana cultivation which stand between legality and illegality. The water consumption rules for cultivation don’t apply for marijuana consumption.

Marijuana farmers are nearly all located in the same area called the Emerald Triangle.

 

Their uncontrolled water consumption resulted in the loss of a quarter of the flow of the rivers near the area.

Statistics on marijuana smokers in France and Netherland

Since I’ve talked about the permissive legislation in Amsterdam in the last two posts I thought it could be interesting to compare the statistics between Netherland and France (toughest repressive legislation in Europe) regarding young people marijuana’s consumption.

In France, 40% of the teenagers under 16 years old have tried cannabis at least once. On the other hand, in the Netherland, the country of coffe shops, only 26% of the teenagers under 16 yo have tried it.

Moreover, France is the second country in Europe where there is the most important marijuana consumption behind the Czech Republic. However, it is really hard to correlate the cannabis repression and the consumption. Let’s try to list the pros and cons of each legislation.

France – Pros (repressive legislation) 

• Marijuana is not sold in public places
• No excessive tourism only in order to smoke

France – Cons (repressive legislation) 

• High mariajuana consumption
• Bad for public health since the marijuana is mixed with other stuff by mafia/black market in order to increase profit
• Effort and money spent to fight cannabis despite it is not efficient

Netherland – Pros (permissive legislation) 

• Better for public health that in most countries since the product is controlled by the government
• Generates a lot of income for the government (same for alcohol and tobacco in France)
• Less smokers than in other countries

Netherland – Cons (permissive legislation) 

• Excessive tourism only in order to smoke freely

As you can see, the repressive legislation does not seem to be the more efficient way to fight marijuana and to improve public health.

 

Amsterdam permissive legislation towards cannabis (2)

In Amsterdam, within the tolerance policy it is still not legal to sell soft drugs but the goverment accepts the sell of soft drugs from coffee shops if those ones respects the following rules:

• Maximum sale of 5 grams per person
• Stock must not exceed 500 grams
• Forbidden to sell to young people
• Forbidden to sell hard drugs
• Forbidden to advertise for soft drugs
• Coffee shops can’t be built near schools

Regarding cannabis consumption, users are allowed to carry a maximum of 5 grams (tourists too). They can either buy it in coffee shops but they are also allowed to grow their own hemp trees. Every citizen of the Netherland is allowed to have a maximum of 5 hemp trees but only in order to collect cannabis for a personnal use.

Despite all of this is tolerated, it is not really approved by the law. That means that if you get caught with 5 grams or less of cannabis with you by police forces, they can still ask you to throw it for instance, but you will never have trouble with the law by carrying less than 5 grams.

Since 2010, Netherlands government is trying to make the cannabis consumption illegal despite other countries such as the USA are trying to set a permissive leglisation based on the Netherlands’ model up.

Amsterdam permissive legislation towards cannabis

Since I had many comments asking about how things were going in Amsterdam towards the cannabis I will write several posts explaining what is the current legislation and comparing statistics between France and Netherland towards marijuana consumption.

A little bit of history

The permissive legislation currently ongoing in Amsterdam has been adopted in 1976 just after a new law distinguished soft and hard drugs and the report called « Touwtrekken om hennep »  released in 1972 that ensured that use of marijuana is similar as tobacco or alcohol.

 

At this time, the government aims to quickly legalize cannabis in order to serve public health and free police forces to fight against heroin problems ( which were a big deal ). The legalization would have been too long and difficult, therefore, the government decriminalize it. The Netherlands are the first country to do so.

Next time we will talk about what is allowed and forbidden in Amsterdam.