Broadcast Sunday 27 April 2003
with Robyn Williams

The Future of Hemp

Summary:

Author of Cannabis & Cancer, Arthur's Story, Pauline Reilly, discovered that hemp has remarkable qualities, both for the health of the environment and for people. She tells us that its commercial production deserves to be promoted. It is a versatile product and was in the past used for all sorts of purposes - rope, clothing, paper and food, to name a few. Today, if we can ignore the prejudices and look at some of the myriad of benign use of the plant, perhaps the world could be a better place.

Transcript:

Robyn Williams: One of my most comfortable garments is a T-shirt woven from hemp. It looks more or less like any other kind of clothing, but has a feel and natural drape all of its own.

You can of course buy hemp apparel in various parts of Australia, but mine comes from Bangalow, not far from Byron Bay in New South Wales. You may not find this surprising. What is surprising though is Pauline Reilly.s list of advantages that this neglected fibre can offer, and also the apparent prejudice which has kept it out of common use.

Pauline Reilly is a distinguished ornithologist and has appeared before on this program talking about both Antarctica and the story of Arthur, her husband.s use of cannabis during palliative care. THC by the way, which she mentions, is the active ingredient, tetra, hydra cannabinol.

Pauline Reilly.

Pauline Reilly: If we, as international members of the human race, were told of a cheap and simple answer to much of the troubles of the world, a solution that would neither pollute nor endanger our environment, wouldn.t we clamour for our government to adopt that solution immediately? There is such a solution: hemp. All the information about this versatile plant is available to government and anyone else who cares to read about it, and yet the proposition is looked at with suspicion. Would it perhaps lead to a plant in the same genus as marijuana, legally falling into the hands of the awful people who use it recreationally?

Wrong. Marijuana is the commonly-used name for cannabis. The sought-after property of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use is THC. Industrial hemp contains a very low level of THC, about .3% as against marijuana.s 3% upwards, and a high percentage of another ingredient, CBD, that actually blocks the marijuana high. It could be called .antimarijuana.. A user could smoke hemp all day without getting a .high..

The initial intention of my book, Cannabis and Cancer, Arthur.s Story., was to point out the necessity of making medical marijuana legally available to suffering humans. But our planet is also suffering from our misuse. Hemp has such remarkable qualities, both for the health of the environment and for people, that its commercial production deserves to be promoted.

Hemp and marijuana are different species and cultivated differently. Marijuana plants, Cannabis indica, need sun and light and plenty of space to spread, whereas hemp plants, Cannabis sativa, must be close together to produce good stalks and be allowed to pollinate and grow seeds. Marijuana, on the other hand, needs to be harvested before pollination and the production of seed. If it is hidden in a hemp crop, it is liable to pollination, thus leading to a poor end product without the sought-after potency. Also, a .pot-buster. camera is being, or has been, developed in the US. This could not only detect marijuana plants growing in dense vegetation, but also differentiate between legal commercial hemp crops and plants with a higher THC content.

So let.s examine this versatile product, hemp.

Throughout the world and in all ages, hemp has been used for all sorts of purposes: rope, clothing, paper and food, with claims of up to 50,000 uses.

Cloth more than 7000 years old has been found, with claims of up to 12,000 years old.

With the advent of steam and petroleum-powered ships, hemp fell into disuse. No longer was it needed to make sails and associated ropes, lines and rigging.

Hemp seed oil to fuel lamps was replaced by whale oil with the consequent slaughter of whales. Whale oil, in its turn, was replaced by petroleum.

Henry Ford manufactured equipment for extracting oil from hemp. For his first cars, he used parts cast from hemp and ran his cars on hemp oil. Hemp parts are much stronger than metal parts. What an advantage for those who happen, even lightly, to bump into something hard and are charged hundreds of dollars for replacement panels. And hemp panels are biodegradable. How splendid it would be if we could be rid of those hideous graveyards of dead car bodies littering our countryside.

The inventor of the diesel engine expected it to be fuelled by vegetable oils, hemp being the most suitable.

Hemp is used in butter, cooking oils, cheese, soaps, plastics, styrofoam, cosmetics, (I use a hemp hand cream, imported, unfortunately). It is envisaged that an entire house and furnishings will soon be built and produced solely from hemp: fibreboard and frame furniture and covering, carpets that are mildew-resistant and more durable than existing carpets, non-toxic varnish and paint to replace products made from toxic petrochemicals.

A machine for stripping fibres from hemp plants has replaced the previous labour-intensive method of separating the fibrous inner bark from the hollow stalk. The fibres make fabric to replace cotton cheaply and cleanly. As a protection against skin cancer, cloth with even just 50% of its content in hemp is effective in blocking out the sun.s damaging UV rays. No doubt the replacement of cotton by hemp would be unwelcome to clothing manufacturers because it lasts longer than cotton, resulting in reduced demand for new garments.

Hemp was the main source of paper until the 20th century. Hemp fibres make paper superior in quality to that produced from wood. Chlorine bleach, a polluter of rivers, is not used in the production of hemp paper. In a warm climate, hemp crops can be harvested at four months, whereas trees grown for pulp take 20 years to mature. Also, the ratio of production of hemp to wood is 1:4, that is, one hectare of hemp to four of wood. So, with wood plantations that take 20 years to mature, hemp is 80 times preferable to wood for paper making. Added to that, wood plantations require high subsidies to establish and maintain.

Methanol produced from hemp could replace much of the world.s need for energy. And the covert excuse for war against oil-producing countries. The engines of today.s racing cars are fuelled by methanol.

When we investigate the health benefits, we find that hemp flour is gluten-free with a high protein content. Hemp seeds contain all the amino acids, providing easily digested protein that is superior to soybeans, as well as essential fatty acids (EFAs) in what is considered the best ratio. EFAs are reputed to help prevent bronchial asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and ulcers, and their lack may contribute to other medical problems, such as high cholesterol and depression. A range of hemp foods is being produced in Australia. Last year on TV we were shown some luscious looking hemp oil ice cream, .looking. being the operative word. Legally it could neither be sold nor eaten. In December 2001, the Australia-New Zealand Food Authority presaged legalisation of hemp food, having found that its benefits outweighed any costs and the Australian Federal Government was expected to pass legislation early in 2002 to permit its use.

Hemp plants resist those rays of the sun normally blocked by the ozone layer. Hemp crops require little water or fertiliser and are naturally pest-resistant, unlike cotton which needs much water, fertilisers and pesticides. Hemp.s long roots break up the soil and its abundant leaves shade the ground and inhibit weed growth, removing the necessity for herbicides. Dead leaves help to revitalise the soil through the addition of organic matter.

The hemp plant may provide an answer to salinity problems, its long tap root tapping into underground nutrients and water.

To clean up ground contaminated by nuclear fallout, such as at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, it was proposed to use industrial hemp plants, plus the new technology of phytoremediation, but research has been hampered through strict controls, the old myth of it being a drug still prevailing.

One of the reasons for prohibiting the use of hemp in 1937 was that it competed with petroleum products which meant bad news for the oil giants. Because it is a clean and renewable product, it threatened to impact upon the production of energy from coal, oil, gas and nuclear fission, all of which are not renewable and all are polluting. This competition with industry was not welcomed. Where once hemp was regarded as a normal agricultural crop, it was now regarded with suspicion, the result of the vicious propaganda levelled at all cannabis.

Canada is the latest country to join those without hemp restrictions: that is, Eastern Europe and Asia. In Australia, there has been a steady clamour for hemp production but research has not been encouraged and has been strictly limited, without any government funding. In 1999, in Gippsland, Victoria, the first commercial crop produced nursery mulch using waste water from dairy farms in the region. Under strict licence, experimental crops are now being grown in Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, but growth of the industry has been hampered by State laws, rather than Federal laws, so that the States are experimenting in isolation and the laws are liable to change either way.

After an official visit to Australia to look at the cannabis trials, New Zealand announced that it was contemplating lifting the ban on the growing of hemp for commercial purposes.

Hemp can replace tobacco, flax, cotton and sugar cane crops where growers are looking for alternatives. The cost of production of hemp is greater than that for flax, the methods and equipment not yet refined. Even so, the revenue from hemp is almost double that from an equivalent area of flax. The growth of commercial hemp crops may burgeon early in the 21st century, providing the politicians can overcome their prejudices and listen to the scientists and consider the practical experiments presently under way by private companies.

Ignoring the prejudice and sluggishness of some of our legislators and looking at the benefits through rose-coloured glasses, perhaps we might see some of the many other benefits mentioned earlier, as well as the end of acid rain caused by the poisoned fumes from petroleum-fed combustion engines. Hemp oil largely replacing petroleum could mean the end of tanker disasters at sea which cause loss of life to seabirds and other marine organisms.

Doesn.t this paint a rosy picture? I.ve touched on only a few of the properties of hemp to show that it has a myriad of benign uses. All that is needed now is a Croesus with a vision other than the acquisition of still greater wealth. A Croesus who will metamorphose into a philanthropist prepared to take on the giants of industry. A Croesus willing to invest in Research and Development, to resurrect and modernise the equipment that make hemp processing viable before the advent of modern resource-hungry methods. His . are they any female Crosesuses? . his memorial will be .He made the world a better place.. Perhaps our own government might metamorphose into that Croesus.

We all have our dreams.

Robyn Williams: And Pauline Reilly does her dreaming in Melbourne, when not in Antarctica or crouching in a hide waiting for a twitch. Spotting a rare bird, in other words.

Next week, another Melbournian, Emeritus Professor John Bradshaw wonders whether it would be OK to clone his grandma, and do other questionable scientific experiments. The ethics of science rides again.

I.m Robyn Williams.

Guests:

Pauline Reilly
Author
Melbourne
Victoria