This Dope Could Change The World

Hey, guys. It's been a minute since I've posted here, but to be honest I've been super busy. Between working on some music, reading a ton of books, building a chicken coop, and just daily farm life here I haven't had much time for anything else, BUT I have had some spare time to research about a plant I've been interested in for a while now and I'm here to rant about it now. What plant have I been researching you ask? Cannabis. Yep, good old fashioned weed and I've found out a lot of interesting stuff, so just sit back with a cup of tea and maybe I'll convince you that dope is the plant that could solve a lot of our problems.

First things first, what I'm mostly going to be talking about in this post is hemp, which (as you may have thought, or at least I did) is not the same as marijuana. In the cannabis family there are two main plants, hemp and marijuana. The difference between hemp and marijuana is the amount of THC (the stuff that gets you high). The amount of THC in marijuana is about 20% whereas hemp only has about 1% which is definitely not enough to get you high (if that's something you're worried about). Now that we know the biggest difference between the two; let's talk about why hemp is the best:

Something that a lot of people don't know about hemp is that apart from making greener clothing, paper (which we'll get into in a second), and non-toxic paints is that hemp can also be made into plastic. NOT just regular plastic though.... COMPOSTABLE plastic. Yeah, you heard me right. Hemp plastic is compostable. Now what was one of the biggest issues in 2018? That's right, plastic straws. It makes me so mad when all this bull about plastic is such a huge predicament when we could be using hemp plastic that will completely compost in like thirty days. Think of all the problems this could solve. No more sea turtles found with half a straw stuck in their heads, no more islands with tons of ugly trash. Why aren't we using this greener alternative? BECAUSE NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT IT THAT'S WHY. We need to start making hemp plastic dangit.

Leave the trees alone: Hemp is more commonly known as a greener paper alternative, but did you know that a single acre of hemp grown in just one season yields just as much paper as up to four acres of trees that, by the way, take 20-40 years to grow? Yeah, pretty cool huh. Why are we still chopping down trees for paper? We could be making paper from elephant dung for goodness sakes! Talk about recycling. This is ridiculous. Not only can hemp be used as a paper replacement, but you can also use hemp wood instead of tree wood. You can literally build a house with this stuff. In my research not only did I find that hemp can be used for insulation, concrete (hempcrete), and wood, but ALSO non-toxic paint. You can build a house up to even painting your freaking walls with this plant. WOW

Clothing: making clothes with hemp is probably the most utilized of the hemp plant, but of course I'm gonna tell you some stuff you probably didn't know about using hemp as a replacement for, let's say, cotton. Did you know that hemp is ten times stronger than cotton and MUCH easier to grow? Cotton is a plant that needs a crap ton of pesticides to grow whereas hemp is naturally bug repellent. Why are we polluting the air with harmful chemicals when we can use hemp that is (in my opinion) SO much better?, not to mention hemp is extremely good for detoxing the soil.

Food: What? There's more? Heck yeah, there's more. Hemp seeds are remarkably good for your health. Hemp seeds are high in protein, essential vitamins, and amazing for boosting your immune system. Another edible hemp product that I really love is hemp oil (not CBD oil those are two different things). Hemp oil is extraordinarily good for your skin and hair, whether you take it internally, or use it externally it'll clear your skin and help your hair grow out beautifully. Now let's talk about the medicinal uses of hemp:

CBD oil: CBD oil does not (as you may think) "get you high" as I have said earlier, hemp does not have enough of the THC compound for that, but it does aid in things like depression, anxiety, and pain regulation (or so I've heard. I've never used it so idk). CBD oil is derived from the leaves and stems of the hemp plant whereas hemp oil comes from the seeds. Now I haven't done a whole lot of research on CBD oil, so I'm not going to go much into it, but if you're interested to learn more, there are tons to read about it on the internet.

There is the controversy of using marijuana (such as the THC compound) for medicinal purposes, but as I haven't done much research on the topic I'm not gonna say much here. You can research it yourself and come to your own conclusion based on your morals and such, but I will say as far as antidepressants go, it'll basically be the same thing (healthier in my opinion). It'll be abused, just like every other drug, but I honestly don't care what people use for their depression, or what not. It's not my business. That's all I have to say about the subject

Now don't you think the world would be way better off if we could just grow some dang hemp? There is honestly no reason this plant has to be illegal to grow. All I can see is how it'll help with so much (especially the plastic problem). Don't you think it would be a much better world if we could just have some freaking hemp farms around? UGH, okay my rant is done.

That's all I have on the subject for now. I hope you learned something from this post and if you know some more interesting things about hemp (or any of the cannabis family) then hit me up! I love learning more about this type of thing and also if I've got something wrong, let me know and I'll be glad to research more and fix my mistakes.

-Amy