Pubdate: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB) Copyright: 2008 Canoe Limited Partnership. Contact: http://www.edmontonsun.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135 Author: Russell Barth Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor, headline by newshawk INDUSTRIAL HEMP COULD REPLACE PETROLEUM RE: Leonard Webb's letter about oil. Webb says, "I wonder what is going to replace all the thousands of byproducts of petroleum?" If he would just Google the words "Industrial Hemp", he would find that all of these oil-based products could be replaced quickly, cheaply, and with no environmental damage by one easy to grow crop. Hemp has over 25,000 industrial applications including food, plastic-like polymers, fibre for building material or cloth, paper, and biomass fuel to feed our electricity production and fuel tanks. It doesn't need all the chemical fertilizers and pesticides of other crops (like soil-raping corn), and actually heals damaged soil as it grows. American industrialists in the 1930s knew all about this cheap, clean source of material, which is why they moved to have it criminalized. All they had to do was convince the public that hemp was "dangerous" by blaming the world's ills on black and Mexican marijuana smokers, which was easy enough, because they owned all the newspapers at the time. Seven decades later, we are still being bamboozled by into thinking that oil is the only thing we can use, and that marijuana is "dangerous". Russell Barth (Unfortunately true.) - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin