You are here:

User Tools
	Email this page
	Translate this page

Fiber Wars: The Extinction of Kentucky Hemp

Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time

David P. West, Ph.D

The scene is a dairy farm in east-central Wisconsin, August 21, 1993. On its fifth pass over the farm, the helicopter comes in low and hovers. The farmer’s terrified, triple-A, artificially-inseminated cow tries to leap the fence, breaks her leg and in three days is dead, calf lost. The newspaper report explains that “Local authorities have been using the National Guard helicopters in the area to search for wild marijuana patches.” According to their press release, the Wisconsin Department of Narcotic Enforcement’s Project CEASE removed 9.3 million hemp plants in 1993 in Wisconsin. ‘Hemp,’ they explain, “is the plant from which marijuana is extracted.”¹

Since 1983, when the program first began, CEASE has employed Sheriff’s deputies, the US Army Reserves, National Guard and law officers of the Wisconsin State Division of Narcotics Enforcement to search and destroy ‘wild marijuana:’ 3 tons in ’83; 22 in ’84; 41 in ’85; 104 in ’86; 165 in ’87; 113.7 in ’88 (estimated, ‘conservatively,’ to be worth $113.3 million on the illegal market).² More recently, plant counts rather than tonnage have been reported: 9.3 million plants pulled up in 1993.

Hemp, cannabis, is a pariah. Plant breeders could contribute some factual information to the discussion of the variation that exists within the genusCannabis, but researchers in the United States find it virtually impossible to obtain permit number 225 issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration and required to legally grow and conduct research on any cannabis³ plant. The loops through which one must jump to obtain this permit are sufficient to dissuade and obstruct those who try. Ironically, the state where the cow fell victim to the War on Drugs was once the number one producer of hemp.⁴ And nobody smoked it.

There is a lesion in our national memory banks regarding the role of this plant in our history.⁵ How do we reconcile the heinous character of this plant with the fact that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were dedicated hemp farmers? (The former said, ‘Sow it everywhere’ and the latter invented a hemp brake.) How is it that hemp was safe enough to be used as legal tender in colonial times, yet the curators of the Smithsonian Institute found it necessary to remove all reference to hemp from their displays?

Hemp is the common name for the fiber-yielding plant botanists call Cannabis sativa. ‘Cannabis’ and ‘canvas’ have the same etymological root. A sense of the significance of Cannabis to human culture and its geographic distribution can be gleaned from the linguistic record (Table 1).

Hemp canvas covered the Pioneer’s Conestoga wagons later to be turned into Levi’s new kind of trouser. Hemp was to navies what titanium is to modern military technology. Napoleon invaded Russia to cut off England’s access to Russian hemp upon which the British navy depended. The USS Constitution used sixty tons of hemp in its riggings and sails. Because of its strategic importance, there were laws both in England and the colonies at various times requiring the cultivation of hemp. Hemp fiber is slower to rot, making it the fiber of choice for maritime cordage. In fact, hemp has been the premier cordage fiber for cultures in the northern latitudes throughout most of history; ‘hemp’ was often used generically for fiber from any source.⁷

What is the truth about hemp? And why is it growing wild all over Wisconsin and other states and under attack by helicopter? How did this plant, so valued by the Founding Fathers, become an outcast, a pariah?

The real story of hemp is not a story of drugs. It is a tale of competition for markets and it captures in its telling all the significant cross currents of the Industrial Age.

Chapter 2: Plant Fibers In History

Fiber Wars: Table of Contents

Footnotes, Chapter 1:

1. Pioneer Press, St Paul, MN. Aug. 5, 1993. p.1B

2. Prescott Journal, Prescott, WI, Aug. 1, 1991. p. 1A.

3. Cannabis is used when referring to the botanical genus; cannabis, when referring to the plants of this group in a generic sense, including hemp and marijuana types.

4. Prior to 1915, Kentucky had been the major hemp producing state, with Missouri second. The industry in Kentucky has been thoroughly covered in Hopkins, J. F. 1951. A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. University of Kentucky Press, Lexington.

5. A broader discussion of this history and related matters can be found in: Herer, J. 1992. The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Queen of Clubs Publ. Van Nuys, CA; and, Conrad, C. 1993. Hemp--Lifeline to the Future. Creative Xpressions Publ. Los Angeles, CA.

6. Merlin, M. D. 1972. Man and Marijuana. Assoc. Univ. Presses. Cranbury, NJ.

7. Manila hemp (abacá, Musa textilis), sisal hemp (Agave sisalana, or henequen, Agave fourcroydes), Mauritius hemp (Furcraea gigantea), New Zealand hemp (Phormium tenax), sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea), Indian hemp (jute, Corchorus capsularis or C. clitorus), bow-string hemp (Sansevieria cylindrica). (Over thirty ‘hemps’ are listed by Montgomery, B. 1954. The bast fiber. In H. R. Mauersberger (ed.), Matthews’ textile fibers. Wiley, N.Y. p. 257-359.)

Top

Copyright © 1996-2008, Global Hemp, Inc. All rights reserved.
All other trademarks are acknowledged as belonging to their respective owners.

Web site design by Eric Pollitt Design Group