Cannabis Legal Updates: Legalization of Industrial Hemp Passes Senate

The biggest surprise in 2018 for news on the cannabis plant, is that seemingly out of nowhere, there is now a push for legalizing industrial hemp nationally. It has actually been passed in the Senate, but not as a stand-alone bill. Industrial hemp is known for its dense, strong fiber content that has many applications, such as making paper, cloth, rope, biodegradable plastics, and even strong, non-toxic building materials with their own innate insulation. The ramifications of its use for types of materials mentioned are more ecologically-sound. It’s also an agricultural asset. It’s a hardy cash crop that can be planted and harvested twice in moderate climates. It can be used by organic and conventional farmers as a rotating crop that helps enrich the soil as it requires no synthetic fertilizers. This is great news for farmers and advocates of using hemp for environmentally-sound consumer and building products, as well as CBD. It will create hemp independence from foreign hemp sources, which includes Canada and other nations. Currently, it is legal to import industrial hemp products, but illegal to grow it.

Nevada Takes the Lead: Defies Outdated Federal Law to Begin Cultivating Industrial Hemp

Nevada has made a legal statement many are calling “revolutionary.” It defied the USA federal ban of industrial hemp agriculture with Nevada governor Brian Sandoval’s signing into law SB 396, which was passed overwhelmingly in both the Nevada State Assembly and Senate. This allows Nevada to raise hemp for commercial use, not merely for research, within its borders. Hemp and marijuana are of the same species. They are related. According to George Blankenbaker, president of Realhemp, Inc, hemp is the most misunderstood and underappreciated crop there is in the world. The apparent confusion between marijuana or cannabis and hemp has made growing industrial hemp without THC illegal in the USA only. This demonstrates the incredible nonsensical irony of reluctantly allowing hemp imports from China, Canada, and parts of Europe and elsewhere to be sold anywhere in the USA, but banning them from being grown commercially in the United States.

The Virtues of Hemp: The Most Underappreciated and Misunderstood Crop

Do you know the difference between marijuana and hemp? The confusion between those two terms has cost us the benefits of industrial hemp, which can do a lot of what other materials are doing with much less ecological damage than what exists now. According to George Blankenbaker, president of Realhemp, Inc, hemp is the most misunderstood and under appreciated crop there is. And the confusion between marijuana or cannabis and hemp has made growing hemp without THC illegal only in this country, the USA. We get most of our hemp products, especially hemp seeds and oils, from Canada and some from Europe. Both regions have relatively thriving hemp agricultural and industrial enterprises, and even theirs are not enough to sooth an ecologically unbalanced planet. China grows 90 percent of the world's hemp. Blakenbaker's interview was done by the Cannabis Summit among the several interviews and gifts offered elucidating medical cannabis' properties and its surrounding legal and social issues. What he reveals that has been kept from humanity in addition to cannabis' medicinal qualities is staggering.