Why outlawing cannabis was a HUGE mistake

 Planet A

A new chanel explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world

It goes by many names:

Hemp,

cannabis,

marijuana,

weed,

ganja...

And just as diverse as its names, are its uses.

Hemp has been one of the most planted crops in history

Not because we are just a bunch of stoners.

But because the recreational use of hemp is just the tip of the iceberg.

For thousands of years, both animals and humans

used it as an important food source.

We made our textiles,

paper,

medicine,

energy,

oil...

ALL with hemp.

Until we started demonizing and criminalizing it.

Now, the "miracle plant" is making a comeback,

and it could help clean some of our most polluting industries.

This is the story of cannabis flying high,

in the fight against climate change.

But first, a little bit of history.

"Long ago, when these ancient Grecian temples were new,

hemp was already old in the service of mankind..."

Hemp cultivation started 12,000 years ago in China,

and from there, humans spread it everywhere.

I mean, everywhere!

Because if you had hemp, that meant you also had

food, oil, clothes, and more.

"You can't tell human history without trade.

And you can't tell trade without ships.

And you can't tell ships without hemp because hemp is

the only plant that makes it possible to cross oceans."

This is Steffen Geyer.

One of the directors of Berlin's Hemp Museum.

Sailors used highly durable hemp

for their ropes and sails.

So, they took the seeds with them everywhere.

Because after wood, hemp was the second most used material on the ships.

Especially in the colonial era, it assumed strategic importance.

Napoleon forced the biggest hemp producer at the time, Russia,

to stop selling hemp to his enemies in order to weaken them.

Its flowers have been used as medicine for thousands of years,

as well as in spiritual practices

or just simply for pleasure.

But then came the dark ages for cannabis.

First, because by the late 19th century,

it was losing out on efficiency and price against new materials.

New technologies were invented for cotton,

which boosted its supply as a fiber.

Trees replaced hemp as a paper source.

And later, sails and rope were made with petroleum-based synthetics.

But what really killed the plant was something else.

"There was a zeitgeist for banning

the substance use of recreational drugs.

There was this idea that we can control

the Black parts of our society,

the Hispanic parts of our society, the gay people,

all these non-white conservative religious groups

by saying they're using a new drug."

Thus, the "miracle plant" became the "forbidden one".

Cannabis sativa has a lot of varieties.

Some grow short but very flowery,

rich with the psychoactive substance THC,

while others grow tall and are perfect for fiber production.

Industrial hemp is very low on THC.

When the cultural war on cannabis started,

no distinction was made between different

varieties of the plant.

From the 19th century, on the whole plant

with all its varieties was banned in

Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Greece, Egypt and South Africa –

which contributed to its decline.

In 1937, the US also restricted its cultivation

and pushed its policy to the rest of the world.

That restriction and the stigmatization led to

hemp being overlooked as a material for decades.

But now, scientists are slowly discovering that

its uses can go well beyond what we've known so far

and could help us clean up a lot of industries.

A big one is construction.

The building and housing industry produces almost

40% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

But hemp might help change that.

Hemp wool is already in use as an insulation material.

But now, more and more sustainable construction companies

use hempcrete to build walls and floors, too.

Like this 12-floor building made with hempcrete in South Africa.

Hempcrete is basically a mixture of hemp shives and lime

Lime petrifies the hemp, so it doesn't degrade or break.

It is light, but strong.

It is breathable,

so it regulates moisture and temperature better.

That means lower energy bills, no mold and basically a non-toxic environment.

It is fire-resistant and due to its flexibility it can withstand major earthquakes.

Its insulation properties are also off the charts.

It works as heat, sound and humidity insulation.

And after its lifetime, hempcrete can be reused as fertilizer as it is totally organic.

The concrete it's replacing is the world's second

most used material after water

and is responsible for eight percent

of the world's carbon emissions.

But hempcrete walls do not only produce

less carbon than concrete ones,

they are actually carbon negative.

That means hempcrete stores more CO2

than it requires to make and transport.

That is due to hemp's carbon storage capacity.

Compared to trees, hemp can potentially breathe in

and store up to four times more CO2.

"Applying hemp fiber-based products

in the construction industry,

we safeguard that we store carbon for a long time –

60, 70 years – in the construction buildings."

This is Mark Reinders from HempFlax.

The company is one of the biggest hemp processors in Europe,

providing hemp to different industries

from automotive to construction.

His father was a hemp farmer,

so he basically grew up with hemp crops.

"Hemp fiber insulation stores on the net base,

more than 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide

per cubic meter of hemp insulation.

For your reference, the production of glass wool

or rock wall insulation emits over

250 kilograms of carbon dioxide."

Producers say building with hempcrete is competitive and

Mark Reinders thinks prices can go even lower.

But the obstacle is: In most countries,

construction regulations are very strict and

introducing a new construction material

can take years of testing and bureaucracy.

Hemp is at the beginning of that road in many countries.

Hemp can also help to reduce deforestation.

Until the late 19th century, most paper was made of hemp.

Early bibles and even the drafts of

the US Declaration of Independence were written on hemp.

But today, paper is made from trees.

And it is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation.

Every year, we lose forests the size of Portugal.

Fifteen percent of all trees we chop down

are used to make paper.

Global demand is expected to at least double

and in some cases almost triple.

While we are losing our forests, some companies are more willing to

re-introduce hemp into their paper production.

"Not in the low-end applications like toilet paper,

but more in the high-end applications, like

banknotes, value documents, but also in cigarette papers.

At the end of the day, you will smoke it anyway."

There is another industry that has been blowing smoke

about its environmental footprint:

textiles.

"The textile industry is a little bit the Holy Grail,

the Champions League for any fibre."

It's also a champion polluter

because cotton needs a lot of toxic pesticides and water.

In fact, 54% of all the pesticides used in India,

the world's leading producer, is used in cotton plantations.

Not to mention that it kills the soil,

as well as draining scarce water sources.

Just one regular cotton T-shirt uses approximately 3000 liters of water.

Enough to provide a person with drinking water for almost three years.

Now, the industry is looking for alternatives.

"Hemp doesn't need much water,

doesn't need much fertilizer and

doesn't need any pesticides to be grown."

A hectare of hemp can produce two and a half times

more fiber than a hectare of cotton.

It can grow up to five meters within just three to five months.

Hemp fiber is not only better for the environment,

but its strong fibers also make longer lasting textiles.

Less water, less fertilizer, less land and no pesticides,

but stronger and lasting fibers.

But there is a catch!

"If you want to be successful in implementing

hemp fiber into the textile industry,

we have to modify the hemp fiber to

the existing textile machinery because

the other way around is not going to happen.

Because the investments to do so are just too high."

So basically, the industry wouldn't invest

to make new machinery only for hemp fiber,

which is considered to be very rigid,

not suitable for existing cotton weaving machines.

Thanks to the pressures the textile industry has been facing,

companies and researchers have been trying to find alternatives.

Now, using enzymes or mechanical processes,

they have found environmental ways to cottonize

and integrate hemp fibers into their existing production.

But this is still in the early stages and it will take some time

until the industry agrees on the best way to cottonize the hemp.

This is the first problem hemp is facing in other industries too.

Lack of standard methods because of missing research

and development for decades.

"We need to give it a new chance

and stop putting all these regulations on hemp.

We need to free this up entirely for the industries

to really move forward. Because if 0.01% of THC

are the little things that prevent somebody in the building industry

to get shives and herds for their building material,

then this industry has no way of moving forward."

This is Maren Krings.

She has dedicated the last six years to investigating the ways

in which hemp can help us mitigate the climate crisis.

This research took her to four continents

and a journey to re-discover the old ways

of printing books with hemp

with a traditional German paper company.

Because, of course, she couldn't use anything

but hemp paper for her book "H is for Hemp".

But contrary to what you might have thought...

"I did not smoke a lot of weed during my trips.

Of course, I tried, a couple of times."

Like Maren's willingness to try new things,

governments around the world are slowly

trying new approaches to solve hemp's second problem:

strict regulations.

From Colombia to South Africa,

from Thailand to Argentina,

a lot of countries are looking into different ways

to legalize hemp in its different forms.

In 2018, industrial hemp plantations became legal in the US.

The EU has mentioned hemp as a valuable

contributor to reaching its Green Deal objectives.

But regulations are still confusing,

and they change from country to country.

Some countries, like Colombia, define industrial hemp as

any Cannabis sativa plant with THC levels

up to 1%..

While it is 0.2% in the EU,

and 0.3% in the US.

These differences, plus the fact that marijuana is

still a controlled substance, scare off the investors.

But against all odds,

global industrial hemp demand was calculated

to have a four-billion-dollar market value in 2021

and is expected to reach almost 17 billion dollars by 2030.

If we include legal THC-rich cannabis

for medicinal and recreational purposes,

the market value is expected to reach $176 billion by 2030.

Creating new supply chains for all these different industries

and making sure it is economically viable

will be another big challenge.

"We've hammered it down into humanity's head

that this is an illegal and massively bad plant.

Now, we have to unlearn all of these lies

and all of this misconception about the plant.

And it will take a lot of effort."

"When we end the prohibition of marijuana,

then there will be thousands of new companies

that start a natural resource business.

The future of hemp is green."

"I'm not saying hemp is the only solution.

I do believe we need to do way more than

only grow hemp to fight climate change."

We haven't even talked about the nutritional,

and medicinal uses of the plant.

As scientific research increases,

we might encounter more unexpected uses for it.

Like as a possible superconductor in EV batteries.

Or as biofuel.

Or as a superfood.

This has been a real trip.

I am sitting on a hemp chair,

wearing a hemp shirt

and having a hemp chocolate.

We all love good stories and in the book of plants

cannabis has definitely an extraordinary chapter.

Maybe it is this history that makes some people

very hopeful about it.

https://youtu.be/0O-IodgG8a4