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Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

As a fan of industrial hemp I am bitter that recreational drug use has given hemp a bad reputation in so many countries. Legalization is a very recent development. 2018 was a turning point in the US.

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Industrial hemp is a jack of all trades, master of none. Anything it can do, other materials can do better. Can you make a tshirt out of hemp? Of course. Is it better than cotton, let alone synthetic fibers? No. Hemp ice cream? Possible, but not better than regular ice cream. Hemp rope? Has been commercially available the whole time but fell out of favor in nearly all applications (sailing is an exception.)

> Can you make a tshirt out of hemp? Of course. Is it better than cotton

Hemp yields 2-3x more usable material per hectare of land than cotton does, in cotton only a tiny portion of the plant can be used.

Do you live in Portland or Seattle?

i don't - is the climate good good for hemp or something?

PNW is a good climate for hemp growth. I was thinking about consumer products, though. It is like an alternate reality where it looks like America, but hemp production/consumer goods we’re never nerfed by the Feds.

> let alone synthetic fibers

Then there is the rayon process and even using the oil to create synthetic fibers

I bought a hemp t-shirt in the early 1980s. I wore it up to the early noughties. Hemp clothing outlasts cotton and most synthetics in my experience. So is it better? Depends.

Sorry, but as an owner of a couple hemp T-shirts, it is much better than cotton and infinitely better than synthetics. It wears like iron, it breathes well, it drapes nicely, it has body. The shirts have outlasted generations of ordinary good t-shirts and semisynthetic dress shirts.

Is it sustainable? Yes.

Has recreational drug use given hemp a bad name? Seems like weed users weren't the force behind demonizing it.

As Howard Stern asked 30 years ago - don’t we have enough rope?

It was a stupid question then, it is a stupid question now.

But if Howard wants to share his 5 year plans for various industries, I'm sure we'd all love to see how he'd allocate our goods and labor. I'd love to learn which materials car companies use are "cheap enough" now, and don't need to get better, for instance.

Much of the rope market is synthetic fiber. I wouldn't be surprised if many modern ropes spew a cloud of microplastic particles whenever they are bent.

Now think about your fiber-fill pillow.

Anti drug zealots foster that reputation -- address your ire at them.

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