Hemp Horizons Again: US Farm Bill Hails New Industry

With this week’s widely reported passage of the hemp amendment to the US Farm Bill (Forbes, USA Today), Bryan W. Brickner, publisher of The Cannabis Papers: A citizen’s guide to cannabinoids (2011), points to our founding and the likes of George Washington (a noted hemp farmer) as the future of cannabis sativa begins to unfold (again) in the United States.

Numerous farm states and the US federal government are pursuing new approaches to hemp: Illinois and Michigan have hemp bills pending in their legislatures; on Thursday, an Indiana Senate committee passed an industrial hemp bill; and in federal news, noted on Cannabis Culture as, US Farm Bill Allows Hemp Farming … in 10 States.

“Hemp’s not new to America,” noted Brickner, “as George Washington grew hemp in 1765 with a harvest of 5000 pounds of fiber and approximately 80 to 100 gallons of hemp oil from seeds.”

“China is today’s world leader in hemp,” Brickner closed, “and that’s okay I suppose; we don’t have to be is what I mean. American’s farming hemp again is the point – and it’s a growing industry.”

Brickner has a 1997 political science doctorate from Purdue University and is the author of several political theory books, to include The Promise Keepers (1999), Article the first of the Bill of Rights (2006), and The Book of the Is (2013).

Essay #11, "Washington's Hemp Seed Love," and the rest of The Cannabis Papers is available at online retailers and for free by download.