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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

> Hemp is a fantastic plant with many unique and important uses. One has to wonder why the US has, since the 1930s I believe, been so against it. One might suspect the pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in seeing hemp (and its naughty cousin, marijuana) banned

Many countries around the world do not have the same restrictions on hemp industrial production that the USA does, and yet, hemp isn't all that widely used and other sources for materials are often preferred instead. I suspect a lot of the praise of hemp as some kind of miracle material comes from those who just want legal marijuana and they’ll say anything to get it, not people who particularly care about industrial manufacturing.

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I think that's a reasonable point to make.

At the same time, I wouldn't underestimate the worldwide effects a ban in the US had, given its importance as a consumer of world goods especially in the second half of the 20th century. And while industrial hemp wasn't banned worldwide, it was banned or curtailed in other countries for prolonged periods (e.g. Germany from 82 to 95).

Hemp production seems to be around 0.25% of cotton production. No matter the intrinsic properties of the material, that seems like a very difficult lead to catch up to. And I'm sure both are getting squeezed by synthetic fibers (cotton consumption seems to be fairly stable for years).

Hemp: 65kt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp#Producers

Cotton: 25mt https://www.icac.org/Press-Release/2018-(1)/PR-5-2018-Global...

Synthetic fibers: 65mt https://www.statista.com/statistics/741368/world-synthetic-f...

Wool: around 1mt

Name a dominant manufacturing countries that has legal hemp?

Exporting hemp is also an issue. The USA foreign policy forced most of the world to make cannabis illegal since the 70s.

Since hemp was illegal, capital was invested in cotton and wood industrial tools.

As hemp production increases so will the technology to produce goods.

Er, China for one. Also France, Canada, UK, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Thailand, ...

Over 30 according to a quick look at wikipedia.

Its funny to watch someone get slapped down with the ole' "name one," Rush Limbaugh tactic. He uses it because people can't reply, since radio is one way. Of course, if you use it on a two way communication, better look it up first.

Yeah, an acquaintance runs a farm that also has fields of hemp, and it's no miracle - it's used in quite a few industries in preference to other materials, but it's not that dominant. As far as I recall, their harvest was shipped for making cigarette paper and hemp textiles; both of which are interesting but ultimately just niche use cases.

For both of those ‘niche’ use cases, paper and cloth, hemp was the dominant material used for many centuries prior to the last century.

Hemp can grow places trees can't, like high altitudes. And hemp is such a fast growing weed that few other weeds can catch up during the growth cycle, making it less work for the farmer. http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-067.htm

I'm more interested in a greater availability of locally sourced hemp-based nutrition. Hemp seeds are great for you: http://www.purehealingfoods.com/hempHeartsInfo.php

Or maybe the United States and many countries they influence are off the list of potential customers for hemp products so if their economy is reliant on exporting it may not make sense to overhaul everything to a system that is pretty much designed not to make money.

It also works great as fuel for pellet stoves. It produces roughly the same amount of ash as wood pellets. I would love to use it as a renewable energy source.

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