CANNABISCONFUSION!

Hemp vs Marijuana

IT'S ALL IN THE NAME

The name Cannabis is the universal scientific name for both Hemp and Marijuana; the difference being that Marijuana gets you high and Hemp does not. Hemp and Marijuana are English common names used to differentiate between the types of products Cannabis produces. Hemp is grown for long strong natural fiber, nutritional seeds & oil, industrial oil and CBD medicinal resin, all of which can be manufactured into 1000's of different types of carbon neutral or negative products that are good for both people and the planet. Marijuana is grown recreationally for the narcotic effect of getting high and medicinally where THC is beneficial to fighting a variety of illnesses. 

Cannabis is the genus name from the family Canabaceae. There still seems to be a debate as to whether there's one species, Cannabis sativa L, with three subspecies, or there's three separate species, however, the three types are identified as: Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica and Cannabis ruderalis.

 Cannabis sativa: This fast growing, tall Cannabis plant has been selectively bred for both industrial hemp and for marijuana purposes. This is the only species used for industrial hemp. Different cultivars are bred for fibre or seed production with less than 0.3% THC. Cannabis sativa has also been selectively bred for a high content of THC and is often cross bred with Indica for a variety of psychoactive marijuana products.

Cannabis indica: This species is mainly used for its THC psychoactive recreational marijuana products and medicinal marijuana. It naturally grows much lower and bushier making it ideal for high production marijuana. Selective breeding has increased it's THC content for medical and recreational drug use however now it is also being bred to increase some of the other medically beneficial cannabinoids like CBD and CBN.

Cannabis ruderalis: This is the modern name given to Cannabis plants growing in the wild. Due to 12,000 years of human intervention and natural selection of Cannabis it is not known if any Ruderalis plants are actually a true native species.

THE NAME HEMP

The word "hemp"  is used to describe all the non-psychoactive uses of Cannabis. This includes;

• industrial hemp (ihemp) which includes industrial products produced from hemp fiber and hempseeds;
• food hemp (fhemp) food produced from hempseeds
• medicinal hemp (mhemp) produced from hemp resin

INDUSTRIAL HEMP

There are 1000's of environmentally friendly products that are produced from hemp fiber and hempseeds and 1000's more that could be. These include hemp clothing, textiles and rope, 100's of hemp building products, hemp paper, canvas, hempcrete, hemp bio-diesel & bio-fuel, wood preservative varnish and paint etc..

FOOD HEMP

Hempseed being a tasty nutritional superfood containing pure protein, balanced omegas, easily digestible fiber and loads of mineral makes it easy to add to most commercial foods. A consistent diet of 4 tablespoons of hempseeds daily can have remarkable health benefits and stave off many common illnesses. 

MEDICINAL HEMP

Marijuana has become the word for the psychoactive property of Cannabis, which is the THC or tetrahydrocannabinol content of the resin surrounding the female seed pod which is inhaled or ingested for its narcotic, psychoactive, mind altering effect.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA

A relatively new term "Medical Marijuana" is used to describe the many newly discovered medicinal benefits of Cannabis. This is really confusing because both hemp and marijuana have medicinal properties. Science has isolated over 200 medicinally beneficial compounds, called cannabinoids, terpenes & flavonoids from Cannabis of both Hemp and Marijuana however only marijuana has THC, which is the one and only cannabinoid that is psychoactive. 

ORIGIN OF THE NAMES

The words Cannabis and Hemp are derived from the ancient world and the exact origin is impossible to determine but; 

Wikipedia Quote: "The plant name Cannabis is from Greek κάνναβις (kánnabis), via Latin cannabis,[1] originally a Scythian or Thracian word,[2] also loaned into Persian as kanab. English hemp (Old English hænep) may be an early loan (predating Grimm's Law) from the same Scythian source. So it would seem that the Greek word kannabis translated into Old English eventually became "haenep" and is now "hemp".

The interesting thing is the "Scythian" origin. The name Scythian applies to nomadic tribes that moved over the vast area of the Eurasian Steppes or grasslands extending from the Black Sea and into China and Mongolia. These tribes established trade routes all throughout central Asia and the middle east, which later became the "silk road". The Eurasian Steppes are considered the area where "indigenous Cannabis" grew and it was these nomadic, horse people who discovered its many uses and who traded it all throughout the region.

Selective Breeding

While both Hemp and Marijuana originate from the same plant, Cannabis sativa L.  They became separate strains over time due to selective breeding.  Selective breeding for hemp originated with developing strains for  improving fiber and seed quality and yeild. Selective breeding for marijuana has dramatically improved the THC content. THC or tetrahydrocannabinol is a cannabinoid compound in cannabis which is responsible for the narcotic effect of getting stoned. 

Cannabinoids are organic chemical phyto-compounds found in the resinous mushroom shaped trichomes that cannabis produces to protect its reproductive seed pods from attach by insects or fungus. There are over 100 different  Cannabinoids, the most abundant being THC and CBD or Cannabidiol. Other common cannabinoids are CBN, CBG and CBC. There are also other medicinal compounds called flavonoids and terpenes  which all together make up over 200 phyto-molecules that are medicinally beneificial for human health and provide relief for a plethora of illness.

THE MARIJUANA DEVIL THAT KILLED HEMP

The term Marijuana, on the other hand, is not nearly so historically significant. The name Marijuana or Marihuana (derived from Mexican Spanish) came to America in the early 1900s with Mexican immigrants fleeing the Mexican civil war. 

The name stuck because it was chosen by the Hurst Newspaper chain to demonize Cannabis (Reefer Madness) and remove it from industrial competition with the new emerging synthetic nylon (DuPont Corp.) and wood paper industries in which Hurst had large interests.

This political propaganda, while it seems quite bizarre today, was a smoke screen (pun intended) created by a few powerful industrialists to convince the government and the public to remove all forms of cannabis from the market including hemp paper, canvas, clothing, pharmacological products, even rope. 

Unfortunately their plan worked flawlessly and they were successful in eliminating hundreds of existing Hemp products from the market including pharmacological, and industrial products that were poised to reach new heights in sales as the hemp industry had been growing consistently culminating in this Popular Mechanics ad from 1938:

From the article: 

Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great tensile strength and durability. It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products, ranging from rope to fine laces, and the wood "hurdes" remaining after the fiber has been removed contains more than seventy-seven percent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to cellophane.

Fish nets, bow strings, canvas, strong rope, overalls, damask tablecloths, fine linen garments, towels, bed linen and thousands of other everyday items can be grown on American farms. Our imports of foreign fabrics and fibers average about 200,000,000 per year; in raw fibers alone we imported over $50,000,000 in the first six months of 1937. All of this income can be made available for Americans.

The removal of hemp fiber as a raw source material for industrial production allowed petroleum innovation to dominate the production lines for the past 80 years. It is remarkable, if not criminal, that prohibition of cannabis was upheld by governments around the world even in the face of climate and environmental disaster. 

All the knowledge and innovation that had gone into many many years of hemp production was lost. Climate change and the solutions to petroleum and petrochemical environmental disasters have been known since the 70's but the very active propaganda machine of these multi-national corporation has constantly underplayed the crisis in order to maintain market dominance. 

What is particularly troubling is the fact that governments have not been willing to challenge these multi-nationals, particularly in face of the global chaos they have caused......and continue to cause to this day. 

Now, 80 years later, we have billions of tons of synthetic polymer plastics, chemicals and synthetic textiles poisoning and choking the Earth, climate change and ocean acidification as a result of the short sighted interests of these business and political elites.