Hemp Facts

Hemp facts are Courtesy of The Kentucky Hemp Museum & Library, Versailles, KY

1. One acre of hemp produces twice as much oil as one acre of peanuts.
Agriculture, Papermakers have high hopes for Industrial Hemp.
Agri-View. ” Wisconsin’s largest farm newspaper” April 27, 1995.

2. America’s first hemp law was enacted in 1619 at Jamestown Colony, Virginia ordering all farmers to grow Indian hemp seed.
Clark. V.S., History of Manufacture in the United States, Mcgraw Hill. NY 1929. pg 34.

3. Cannabis hemp was legal tender in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800′s. you could even pay your taxes with cannabis hemp.
Clark. V.S., History of Manufacture in the United States. Mcgraw Hill. NY 1929. pg. 34.

4. “The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp which began to be worked in the eighth millennium (8,000-7,000) BC).
“The Columbia History of the World. 1981. pg. 54.

5. The original. Heavy-duty, famous Levi jeans were made for the California ’49ers out of hemp sailcloth and rivets so that the pockets would not rip when filled with gold.
Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer, Revised and expanded 1995 edition: copyright March, 1995, HEMP Publishing. 5632 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys. CA 91401. pg. 6.

6. One acre of hemp produces as much cellulose fiber pulp as 4.1 acres of trees.
Dewey & Merrill. Bulletin #404. U.S. Dept. of Age. 1916.

7. Hemp paper is stronger and has greater folding endurance than wood pulp paper.
Dewey & Merrill. Bulletin #404, US Dept. of Ag., 1916.

8. Cannabis hemp seeds contain all the essential amino acids and essential fatty acids, which are vital to the immune system necessary to maintain a healthy life.
Hempseed Nutrition. Osburn, Lynn, Access unlimited, P.O. Box 1900. Frazier Park. CA 93225.

9. Hemp seeds contain up to 24% protein. A handful of seed provides the minimum daily requirement of protein for adults.
Rosenthal. Ed. Hemp Today, pg. 101.

10. The first recorded hemp crop planted in Kentucky was planted on April 25, 1775 in Boyle County.
State Historic Sight Marker, Boyle County Kentucky.

11. In the 1800′s, Kentucky regularly accounted for one-half of the industrial hemp production in the United States.
Hopkins, James F., 1951. A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. Lexington: University of Kentucky
Press.

12. In 1942, the US Army and Department of Agriculture released their “Hemp for Victory” film which encouraged farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. The war had cut off importation of fibers for textiles and rope, and by 1943, over 100,000 acres of hemp were growing in the US When W.W. II ended, the US Government canceled virtually all hemp farming permits.
Roulac, John, Industrial Hemp Practical Products – Paper to Fabric to Cosmetics, pg. 13. Hemptech.

13. In 1938, Popular Mechanics magazine stated, “Over 25,000 products can be manufactured from hemp, from cellophane to dynamite.”
Roulac, John. Industrial Hemp Practical Products – Paper to Fabric to Cosmetics, pg. 24. Hemptech.

14. August 13, 1941, Henry Ford first displayed his plastic car at Dearborn Days in Michigan. The car ran on fuels derived from hemp and other agricultural based sources, and the fenders were made of hemp, wheat, straw, and synthetic plastics. Ford said his vision was “to grow automobiles from the soil.”
The Kentucky Hemp Museum and Library. 1998 Historical Hemp Calendar, February. Roulac, John. Industrial Hemp Practical Products – Paper to fabric to Cosmetics, pg. 11. Hemptech

A Florida Biochemist Designs A Citrus Tree With THC

Credit San Francisco Bay Chronicle…….

In the summer of 1984, 10th-grader Irwin Nanofsky and a friend were driving down the Apalachee Parkway on the way home from baseball practice when they were pulled over by a police officer for a minor traffic infraction.

After Nanofsky produced his driver’s license the police officer asked permission to search the vehicle. In less than two minutes, the officer found a homemade pipe underneath the passenger’s seat of the Ford Aerostar belonging to the teenage driver’s parents. The minivan was seized, and the two youths were taken into custody on suspicion of drug possession.

Illegal possession of drug paraphernalia ranks second only to open container violations on the crime blotter of this Florida college town. And yet the routine arrest of 16 year-old Nanofsky and the seizure of his family’s minivan would inspire one of the most controversial drug-related scientific discoveries of the century.

Meet Hugo Nanofsky, biochemist, Florida State University tenured professor, and the parental authority who posted bail for Irwin Nanofsky the night of July 8, 1984. The elder Nanofsky wasn’t pleased that his son had been arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia, and he became livid when Tallahassee police informed him that the Aerostar minivan would be permanently remanded to police custody.

Over the course of the next three weeks, Nanofsky penned dozens of irate letters to the local police chief, the Tallahassee City Council, the State District Attorney and, finally, even to area newspapers. But it was all to no avail.

Under advisement of the family lawyer, Irwin Nanofsky pled guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia in order to receive a suspended sentence and have his juvenile court record sealed. But in doing so, the family minivan became “an accessory to the crime”. According to Florida State law, it also became the property of the Tallahassee Police Department Drug Task Force. In time, the adult Nanofsky would learn that there was nothing he could do legally to wrest the vehicle from the hands of the state.

Biochem 101: How to design a Cannabis-equivalent citrus plant

• Step One:Biochemically isolate all the required enzymes for the production of THC.
• Step Two:Perform N-terminal sequencing on isolated enzymes, design degenerate PCR (polymerase chain reaction) primers and amplify the genes.
• Step Three:Clone genes into an agrobacterial vector by introducing the desired piece of DNA into a plasmid containing a transfer or T-DNA. The mixture is transformed into Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram negative bacterium.
• Step Four:Use the Agrobacterium tumefaciens to infect citrus plants after wounding. The transfer DNA will proceed to host cells by a mechanism similar to conjugation. The DNA is randomly integrated into the host genome and will be inherited.

It was in the fall of 1984 that John Chapman Professor of Biochemistry at Florida State University, now driving to work behind the wheel of a used Pontiac Bonneville, first set on a pet project that he hoped would “dissolve irrational legislation with a solid dose of reason.” Nanofsky knew he would never get his family’s car back, but he had plans to make sure that no one else would be pulled through the gears of what he considers a Kafka-esque drug enforcement bureaucracy.

“It’s quite simple, really,” Nanofsky explains, “I wanted to combine Citrus synthesis with Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol.” In layman’s terms, the respected college professor proposed to grow oranges that would contain THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Fourteen years later, that project is complete, and Nanofsky has succeeded where his letter writing campaign of yore failed: he has the undivided attention of the nation’s top drug enforcement agencies, political figures, and media outlets.

The turning point in the Nanofsky saga came when the straight-laced professor posted a message to Internet newsgroups announcing that he was offering “cannabis-equivalent orange tree seeds” at no cost via the U.S. mail. Several weeks later, U.S. Justice Department officials showed up at the mailing address used in the Internet announcement: a tiny office on the second floor of the Dittmer Laboratory of Chemistry building on the FSU campus. There they would wait for another 40 minutes before Prof. Nanofsky finished delivering a lecture to graduate students on his recent research into the “cis-trans photoisomerization of olefins.”

“I knew it was only a matter of time before someone sent me more than just a self-addressed stamped envelope,” Nanofsky quips, “but I was surprised to see Janet Reno’s special assistant at my door”. After a series of closed door discussions, Nanofsky agreed to cease distribution of the THC-orange seeds until the legal status of the possibly narcotic plant species is established.

Much to the chagrin of authorities, the effort to regulate Nanofsky’s invention may be too little too late. Several hundred packets containing 40 to 50 seeds each have already been sent to those who’ve requested them, and Nanofsky is not obliged to produce his mailing records. Under current law, no crime has been committed and it is unlikely that charges will be brought against the fruit’s inventor.

Now it is federal authorities who must confront the nation’s unwieldy body of inconsistent drug laws. According to a source at the Drug Enforcement Agency, it may be months if not years before all the issues involved are sorted out, leaving a gaping hole in U.S. drug policy in the meantime. At the heart of the confusion is the fact that THC now naturally occurs in a new species of citrus fruit.

As policy analysts and hemp advocates alike have been quick to point out, the apparent legality (for now) of Nanofsky’s “pot orange” may render debates over the legalization of marijuana moot. In fact, Florida’s top law enforcement officials admit that even if the cultivation of Nanofsky’s orange were to be outlawed, it would be exceedingly difficult to identify the presence of outlawed fruit among the state’s largest agricultural crop.