Why do Americans don't use HEMP to fabricate paper and textiles instead cutting trees?

Question

Why do Americans don't use HEMP to fabricate paper and textiles instead cutting trees?

Answer 1

i use hemp shampoo and conditioner! =)

Answer 2

Because hemp also makes fiber for clothes that is cheaper and superior to synthetic material

this comes from the petroleum business

these are owned by the people who are behind the Law makers

and they do not want  competition that will easily overrule their own products ,

The money involved is billions.

That is why Marijuana consistently ,even in the light of favorable research ,continues to be outlawed

Hemp has many good points

can be used for building material ,

recuperates tired soil and fixes nitrogen

,has medical value ,

makes paper, clothes and  oil .

even bio fuel

and much more

But it will not become legal especially the fiber plant

which is no good for smoking any way

Answer 3

I could be out of touch on this, but wasn't hemp banned because it was the same as smoking "weed" or marijuana ?

Answer 4

Would there be any difference ?  One acre of hemp or one acre of trees, its all the same.  Do some checking before your pie-hole opens.  There are more trees in North America now, then when Europeans first came here.  Even further, lots more trees get planted then are cut down, every year.

Answer 5

Wow some people need there pie hole examined-to think there are more trees now. The hole idea of a viable hemp culture is to dispel rumours.1)Hemp is a renewable resource that one acre can be planted and harvested in the same year with little maintenance and resowen the following year,where as the same acre of land for trees would take 50-80 years to become harvestable and hoping disease or insects haven't ruined it2)People need to be more "out of the box thinking" and acceptable of hemp products3)the facilities to process the hemp product I may be wrong but I don't think there is huge processing plants that can accommodate hemp most are small mom and pop operations4)in Ontario Canada you can see more hemp farms growing with signs on the highways indicating this ,one is just north of Barrie Ont on highway 400

Answer 6

If I recall my history correctly we used to use hemp to make some really high quality paper here in the US and then the Timber Industry did a little lobbying.

Answer 7

I'm with you on that one.  We have an archaic law on the books that prohibits growing industrial hemp in America.  The story often told is that it was done to protect the other textile material industries like synthetic fibers, maybe cotton.

Hemp is really useful.  It was considered patriotic to grow hemp in early America.  

It makes clothing, rope, paper and other products.

The seeds are very nutritious, including omega 3 fatty acids.  The oil has many uses.  A friend of mine has a prototype hemp paper mill.  He had to get a research grant, to grow a small patch of hemp.  He intends to use the paper mill to help promote hemp paper making.  

Audubon  has a great article on the Boreal Forest of Canada and how it is becoming fragmented by logging, mining etc., largely to make paper.

Read it at:

http://www.forestethics.org/article.php?...

"Many products with roots in Canada's boreal forest find their way into our homes, so our thoughtless consumption of them drives the destruction of the forest. The advocacy group Forest Ethics reports that about half of the paper used to print magazines, newsprint, and the 17 billion catalogues produced annually in the United States was once boreal bird habitat. The majority of mailed catalogues are produced using virgin boreal wood fiber logged in clearcuts as big as 30 square miles. Disposable paper products like Charmin, Puffs, Kleenex, and Bounty use more than 2.5 million tons of pulp annually, most of it unrecycled, from trees  sawn in the boreal. In fact, Canada's boreal forests are razed at a rate of about five acres a minute to feed the voracious consumption of wood and wood products of the United States alone."

and from Forest Ethics

"If you care about clean air and water, you care about the Boreal Forest. Stretching from Alaska clear across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean, the Boreal is an astonishing wilderness—one of the largest intact ecosystems in the world. It holds more freshwater than anywhere else on the planet and plays an essential role in cleaning the air we breathe. After the oceans, the Boreal stores more carbon than anywhere else in the world. It’s also home to threatened species like woodland caribou and wolverine, as well as wolves, bears, fish and half of North America's songbirds."

So it is a huge carbon sink, as long as it stays intact and healthy.  The major carbon sink for north america.  And we're using it for junk mail.