jrsavoie
Recruit
That's why it was called growing or smoking rope around here.Henry Ford built a car almost entirely out of industrial hemp - all body panels, interior panels/upholstry/carpet, all the "plastics" used in the car - knobs, steering wheel, etc. - were hemp-based. It was done to promote the American farmer as the foundation of Industrial America.
During WWII, the USDA put out a promotional film, "Hemp For Victory" encouraging American farmers to not only grow hemp for the war effort, but showed them how to grow, harvest and process it - four years after the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act had banned industrial hemp growing in the US! Before Kentucky's farmers became Government Subsidy-supported tobacco growers, they were self-sufficient, financially independent growers of industrial hemp.
In WWII, future President George H.W. Bush's Navy fighter plane was lubricated with hemp oil products, its guages of its precision instruments in the cockpit all floated in hemp oil and its hydraulic systems filled with hemp oil.
Hempcrete is lighter and stronger than conventional concrete and is actually an insulator. Hemp fiberboard is lighter and stronger than conventional construction fiberboard and waferboard. Hemp fiber is 3 times stronger than sisal fiber (which is what's currently used to make 'natural' rope) and as strong as nylon and polyester ropes of the same diameter. Hemp fiber doesn't rot, which is why Pacific Theater uniforms in WWII were made from 100% hemp cloth instead of cotton - it not only took a beating and wore far better than cotton - they didn't rot away in place on the wearer like cotton did. All the rigging ropes on Naval ships were hemp, as well as all the canvas of the sails used prior to steam ships made of hemp because it was stronger and didn't rot at sea like cotton canvas would.
There's still a lot of ditch weed around. We and the neighbors had fields that came up in hemp every year. I heard last year, that at least one still does.
You'd get just as high smoking potato leaves. LOL. Hemp doesn't have much thc in it.