Hemp for Victory!

May 4, 2003 9:16 AM

"Hemp for Victory!"A USDA educational film from 1942 extolling the patriotic virtues of growing the crop that, a half-century later, over 600,000 people would be arrested for possessing. (Gotta love the official "Producer of Marihuana" license.) How times have changed.
posted by digaman (7 comments total)

Apparently GlobalHemp and Apple have the same web designers. That would explain a lot.
posted by krunk at 9:27 AM on May 4, 2003

I wish Steve Jobs would run for President.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:42 AM on May 4, 2003

Umm... just being Devil's Advocate here, but the transcript of the film even says that you're required to have a license by the government to grow hemp, like many farmers today have. In that sense, no, the times haven't changed... you could still be arrested in 1942 for growing marijuana.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:48 AM on May 4, 2003

XQUZYPHYR is right. Hemp is grown where I live too. HempFlax.
This kind of hemp has a very low THC %.
posted by ginz at 10:07 AM on May 4, 2003

the two above posters are correct. Industrial hemp has negligable amounts of THC, and is in many ways not the same plant as smokable marijuana. The most common analogy that I've herad is that it's like comparing sweet corn to field corn.
posted by angry modem at 10:58 AM on May 4, 2003

Well, the times are a changin'

Hempseed and hemp oil, also used in the making of food products, contain trace amounts of THC -- the "psychoactive" element that makes cousin marijuana an illegal drug.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has been trying for more than a year to prohibit the use of hempseed and hemp oil in food products, and the agency recently published "final rules" addressing the legal status of products derived from the cannabis plant. But a federal appeals court has temporarily stayed the order.

[source]
posted by skallas at 1:53 PM on May 4, 2003

They call them trace amounts for a reason. Should they ban water because it contains trace amounts of arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, selenium, silver and zinc?
posted by angry modem at 5:13 AM on May 5, 2003