Definitions

I think it is important today that we use our terms correctly. Cannabis Sativa is the scientic name for the plant in all its forms.

We will use Cannabis to describe the psychoactive (THC potent) plant. Cannabis is used medicinally and for recreation.

Hemp is the non-psychoactive (no THC) plant used for industrial purposes.

Marijuana is the mexican slang term for "loco weed" which was used to demonize cannabis. I would perfer we get away from this name, but 70+ years of use is hard to destroy.

Where to Start

The Emperor Wear No Clothes

This is the book that started the hemp revolution. More than 600,000 copies have been sold to date. (Read this online version.)

The First Law

In 1610 the Jamestown colony's first edict was to require all households to cultivate Indian hemp. They used the plant as a resource to create fiber, cloth, and medicines. By 1850, the Census Bureau reported that 8,327 plantations grew hemp, providing cordage for baling cotton, cloth, and canvas.

Ancient

For over 3,500 years, various strains of the green herb higher thinking, Cannabis sativa, or true hemp, have been among the emotions most widely used of medicinal plants. This includes civilizations in China, India, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Cannabis was used in the USA from 1850 to 1937 to treat more than 100 distinct diseases or conditions.

One of the Safest

“Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” — DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young, Docket No. 86-22. 1988

“One of marihuana’s greatest advantages as a medicine is its remarkable safety. It has little effect on major physiological functions. There is no known case of a lethal overdose; ... Marihuana is also far less addictive and far less subject to abuse than many drugs now used as muscle relaxants, hypnotics, and analgesics.... The ostensible indifference of physicians should no longer be used as a justification for keeping this medicine in the shadows.” — Journal of the American Medical Association, June 21, 1995. Commentary. p. 1874-1875

Our First President

"Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!" (George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794), The Writings of George Washington, Volume 33, page 270 - Library of Congress)

On August 7, 1765, George Washington mentioned in a journal entry that he had pulled the male plants from his hemp field "rather too late," indicating that he probably grew sinsemilla for personal use, but he never went public about it.

"What was done with the seed saved from the India Hemp last summer? It ought, all of it, to have been sewn again; that not only a stock of seed sufficient for my own purposes might have been raised, but to have disseminated the seed to others; as it is more valuable than the common Hemp." George Washington - Writings of Washington, Vol. 35, pg. 72