April 18, 2019 • 16 mins
George Noory and author Jen Hobbs explore the many benefits available from hemp, the non psychedelic derivative of marijuana, and how it offers health benefits, can help protect the environment and possibly even fight climate change.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio. Now,
there was a time. Let's talk about hip for a
moment and how important it is because it's taking the
world here by storm. Years ago, it was very legal
in this country and then it became illegal. What happened? Sure?
(00:21):
So yeah, I mean hemp was always a major economic
backbone of our country. I mean, I go back to
the Thirteen Colonies, we grew hemp. You know, just from
the very beginning of our country. The British needed it
for their Royal Navy. It was used for sales or
(00:42):
rope for you know, all of their supplies uniform uniforms,
and you could even as a colonist, you could even
pay your taxes to the British government in hemp. So um,
you know, it was a very big crop back then.
I know, our founding fathers screw hemp. You know, George
Washington grew it out at all five of his farms.
(01:06):
And then when we get around the nineteen thirties, the
government was trying to the federal government was trying to
drum up some additional money in additional taxes, and the
Marijuana Tax Act came around and I'm sure you've heard
about that. That was the first piece of legislation that
(01:29):
really put hemp and marijuana together and started to really
kind of give this culture of confusion around what marijuana is,
what hemp is, what each one is used for, and
you know, didn't distinguish between the two, and that was
largely done on purpose. You know, we had William Randolph
(01:52):
Hurst who had the largest newspaper chain in the country
at the time. Hearst Communications is still around today. He
owns the forests that he used to produce all the
paper for his empire, and he always saw hemp as
a competition to him. UM. So did a lot of
other industries at the time because too didn't they right
(02:15):
right Uh, And at this particular time. UM. What's really
interesting is that, you know, hemp had always been around, UM,
but the tools to manufacture things out of hemp started
to UM, they started to get more modernized, and that's
what became the factor here where people saw it as
(02:37):
competition because UM, you know, he had obviously big cotton
industry at this time. UM. They were also UM industries
such as DuPont that were you know, rising petrochemical company. UM.
They had a lot of lucrative chemical patents at the time,
and they saw hemp as you know, a direct competition
(02:58):
as well, because a lot of them is that they
used to pull paper. Um. You know, hemp wasn't you know,
you didn't need those means to to make paper out
of hemp. Did people in those days smoke camp as well?
They they did smoke marijuana as far as I know.
(03:18):
It was also used in um for medical purposes. UM.
That we go into this in jesseven Tours Marijuana Manifesto
when we talk about how marijuana was impacted by this
particular law. UM. You know, this is a time when
morphine started to come about in the medical field and
(03:40):
they realized that they could really figure out the dosage
UM for you know, using that for pain management. UM.
And a lot of doctors did use like a hemp
um for marijuana oil to treat a lot of different
pain for their patients. So this is something that was
in the metal community at the time, and it affected
(04:03):
doctors as well. After this act was passed, if you
were a doctor and you were prescribing marijuana to a patient,
you had to actually report that information to the director
of the Bureau of Narcotics who was at the time,
Harry Anslinger. So a lot of people didn't want to
(04:24):
do that, you know, you who wanted to go on
a list for using a medication that was going to
go to the Bureau of Narcotics and doctors didn't feel
comfortable doing that either. And then of course anyone that
was in the particular industry of growing hemp, producing it,
you know, manufacturing it into something, or if you're prescribing marijuana,
(04:46):
you had to pay a tax. And you know, there
weren't any other taxes placed on any other medications or
any other industrial crops. So people started to, you know, think, well,
this is kind of a risky thing, um to be
involved in. And uh you know at the time, uh
(05:09):
we we weren't really doing our best economically, so you know,
people weren't inclined to spend extra money, um, you know,
to to keep harvesting hemp. Now, hamp, of course is
part of the cannabis species, but it's different from marijuana.
What is the difference between the two plants. Yes, they
(05:30):
are different. Um. A lot of times people describe them
as cousins. They're related, but they're used for entirely different purposes.
So UM, the greatest distinction is definitely the content of THHC.
So that's the psychoactive element in the plant in marijuana.
It's so that's, you know, really what marijuana is used for.
(05:53):
UM overall in general, there's there's really no other use
for that plant. Camp, on the other hand, does not
have a great quantity of THC. There's about three percent
I'm sorry, point three percent or less THHC in the
hemp plant, and the rest of it is uh, you know,
(06:14):
you know, there's CBD in there, the cbd in both
marijuana and hemp. But the hemp plant is used for
making all different types of all different types of products,
from clothing to rope. As we talked about paper, now
we can get into plastics. There's a big movement to
(06:36):
start using it. A lot of a lot of car
dealerships today, like BMW, for instance, you use hemp in
their door panels natural fibers instead of carbon fiber because
it's more eco friendly to go that route. And it
also looks very different. Hemp looks more like bamboo, has
(06:59):
a long stock, where marijuana looks more like a tree
or bush. It has more of a shrub appearance. Let's
talk about now what is going on with the future
of hemp gen next hour, we'll take phone calls with
our listeners who were fascinated by this topic. But at
what point did hemp start becoming legal again? So it's
(07:24):
been a slow process, obviously. I think most people know.
We grew hemp in World War Two for all sorts
of war purposes, for you know, making a parachute courts,
uniforms for our soldiers. And in the book I talk
about that how at that time, you know, the USDA
(07:48):
came in and helped farmers, you know, really grow as
much of the crop as possible. There were processing plants
that were built at the time specifically for hemp to
make all of these things. And uh, even politicians said
that they that we wouldn't have won the war without hemp,
(08:09):
and then yeah, oh yeah, I have them recorded in
the book. And you know, after World War Two, we
went back to the Marijuana Attacks Act, and uh, you know,
farmers went over to Congress and you know, petition to
get the taxes taken away. And then by the time
Congress tried to rectify it, it was several years later.
(08:30):
And by that time, you know, the synthetic fibers like
um nylon and all you know, rayon and all all
those different um polyesters started to become very popular. So
again the whole drive to make hemp into a you know,
an agricultural commodity kind of went by the wayside yet again.
(08:54):
Um then when we get into the late nineties, around
nineteen ninety nine nine, Canada obviously started their own hemp
program and legalized it and starting and started to export
it for food purposes. So you know, we wanted to
import it, and the government made a special exception for
(09:21):
Canadian food grade hemp products including hemp boil and hemp
seed to be imported. So you know, at that point
farmers who were like, well, wait a minute, why are
we importing it? Can't we just grow it? And then
you know, we can keep that money here. So from
that point moving forward, there was always an advocacy effort
(09:43):
to get hemp back as a legal crop. And you know,
obviously by this time it was on the schedule and
narcotic list next to marijuana. You know, in the nineteen
seventies it was classified by the DA as a as
a drug. So you know, that's always been the number
one problem, especially you know, in our lifetime, to get
(10:07):
access to hemp, we had to take it off of
the schedule on an arcotic list um. And uh, you know,
in twenty fourteen, we started to see a shift where
the federal government came up with the Industrial Hemp Pilot
Program and that allowed farmers to grow the crop under
(10:29):
special conditions and each state could come up with their
own guidelines. But in general, uh, these farmers were growing
the crop for um more of an academic purpose to
study it to see, you know, when was the best
time to grow it, Um, what could be possibly made
from it if it's grown a certain way. And again,
(10:52):
you know, they are wondering, well, what's what's the future
for this? Can it Can it become an you know,
full commodity like we see in Canada. And it took
until the twenty eighteen Farm Bill for that to actually
become a reality. The uh, the Industrial Hemp Act was
put into that bill, which took hemp off of the
(11:16):
schedule and narcotics list. It officially categoryized it as an
agricultural crop. And now because of that, farmers are able
to grow it and also get crop insurance. They're able
to get access to bank accounts, credit card companies, you know,
(11:37):
everything that you could do in a normal business, but
you weren't able to do if you were growing hemp. Right, yeah, yeah,
that's changing now that hemp is legal. How rigorous is
it as a plant? Does it grow fast? Yes, it does.
Hemp can mature in about one hundred to one hundred
(11:57):
eighty days, so you can really it's a pretty fast
growing cycle. So depending on the climate, some people can
grow you know, two crops a year, even three, three
different rotations a year if they're in the right climate.
And it doesn't take a lot of water the way
other agricultural crops do, like corn or cotton. And obviously
(12:21):
it's also one of the big benefits for growing it
is it doesn't need all those pesticides at other crops need.
It's pretty dramatic. What about other countries, GM, what are
they doing in this arena? Well, um, you know besides Canada. Yeah, so, um,
hemp is we're actually importing a lot of hemp seed
(12:45):
to start all these um programs. Now that you know,
obviously hemp is federally illegal, the majority of it is
coming from other countries, so um, I talk about different Uh,
different varieties of hemp in the book, and how there's
you know, different ones are better for certain purposes. So
if you're growing hemp for making clothing or if you're
(13:10):
growing it to make food, you might choose one variety
over another. UM. But uh, you know, we're we're getting
hemp from um. Like one particular strain is from Spain,
another one's from France. UM, and it's you know, they
grow it mostly in France and in the European Union. UM.
(13:33):
I mean they're growing it for CBD oil, they're growing
it for um, you know, just about every purpose under
the sun. But yeah, I mean we're even importing Finnish
industrial hemp um for which is mostly used for grain
or as a food source. So I feel like we
(13:56):
have a lot of catching up to do, especially since
China in general wants to really capitalize on the CBD
market right now as a cash crop. How does it
compare to like corner soybeans, Yeah, it is a cash
crop right now. Everyone is really focusing on CBD because
that's where farmers can make the most money, right and
(14:22):
especially if you want to take a look at state
for instance, like Kentucky. You know, Kentucky. They they always grew,
they were always known for growing tobacco. That was really
their main cash crop. And obviously tobacco isn't as popular
now as it once was, so that the need for
(14:43):
that particular crop has gone down significantly, and they've switched
over to soybeans to replace tobacco as the leading crop
in the state. And the investment on the return is
not as substantial as hemp. Uh. If you're growing soybeans,
about an acre of soybeans deals about five hundred dollars,
(15:06):
while an acre of hemp that's being grown for CBD
can bring in as much as thirty thousand dollars. Wow,
that's huge, huge difference. Yeah, and and that's that's not
an overly optimistics figure. Um, that's actually a conservative estimate
the product. Oh yeah, yeah. And you know CBD now
(15:30):
that hemp is legal. UM, it's what ended up happening,
was hemp. Uh, CBD is now legal federally, so UM.
You know, this is something that's now available in mostly
every state. UM. And it's uh, it's obviously used for
a lot of different purposes and helps many different people
(15:52):
with many different conditions and ailments. You know. UM, everything
from seizures to arthritis and cancer too, isn't it. Yeah, yep,
cancer too. I mean yeah, it's from market. Big farmer
probably doesn't want to know about this, doesn't. Well, yeah,
it's you know, what's really crazy is that the FDA
(16:14):
just approved the first pharmaceutical drug with CBD in it.
It's called Epidolus and it's for rare two rare seizure conditions,
uh dravics syndrome, and uh just get the other one.
But it's you know, it's it's a very um it's
a very hard condition to because there's just those you know,
(16:38):
the seizures are just so constant, and there hasn't been
any other, um, any other treatment for it that works,
and the CBD is is effective. Listen to more Coast
to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern
and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for
more
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio. Now,
there was a time. Let's talk about hip for a
moment and how important it is because it's taking the
world here by storm. Years ago, it was very legal
in this country and then it became illegal. What happened? Sure?
(00:21):
So yeah, I mean hemp was always a major economic
backbone of our country. I mean, I go back to
the Thirteen Colonies, we grew hemp. You know, just from
the very beginning of our country. The British needed it
for their Royal Navy. It was used for sales or
(00:42):
rope for you know, all of their supplies uniform uniforms,
and you could even as a colonist, you could even
pay your taxes to the British government in hemp. So um,
you know, it was a very big crop back then.
I know, our founding fathers screw hemp. You know, George
Washington grew it out at all five of his farms.
(01:06):
And then when we get around the nineteen thirties, the
government was trying to the federal government was trying to
drum up some additional money in additional taxes, and the
Marijuana Tax Act came around and I'm sure you've heard
about that. That was the first piece of legislation that
(01:29):
really put hemp and marijuana together and started to really
kind of give this culture of confusion around what marijuana is,
what hemp is, what each one is used for, and
you know, didn't distinguish between the two, and that was
largely done on purpose. You know, we had William Randolph
(01:52):
Hurst who had the largest newspaper chain in the country
at the time. Hearst Communications is still around today. He
owns the forests that he used to produce all the
paper for his empire, and he always saw hemp as
a competition to him. UM. So did a lot of
other industries at the time because too didn't they right
(02:15):
right Uh, And at this particular time. UM. What's really
interesting is that, you know, hemp had always been around, UM,
but the tools to manufacture things out of hemp started
to UM, they started to get more modernized, and that's
what became the factor here where people saw it as
(02:37):
competition because UM, you know, he had obviously big cotton
industry at this time. UM. They were also UM industries
such as DuPont that were you know, rising petrochemical company. UM.
They had a lot of lucrative chemical patents at the time,
and they saw hemp as you know, a direct competition
(02:58):
as well, because a lot of them is that they
used to pull paper. Um. You know, hemp wasn't you know,
you didn't need those means to to make paper out
of hemp. Did people in those days smoke camp as well?
They they did smoke marijuana as far as I know.
(03:18):
It was also used in um for medical purposes. UM.
That we go into this in jesseven Tours Marijuana Manifesto
when we talk about how marijuana was impacted by this
particular law. UM. You know, this is a time when
morphine started to come about in the medical field and
(03:40):
they realized that they could really figure out the dosage
UM for you know, using that for pain management. UM.
And a lot of doctors did use like a hemp
um for marijuana oil to treat a lot of different
pain for their patients. So this is something that was
in the metal community at the time, and it affected
(04:03):
doctors as well. After this act was passed, if you
were a doctor and you were prescribing marijuana to a patient,
you had to actually report that information to the director
of the Bureau of Narcotics who was at the time,
Harry Anslinger. So a lot of people didn't want to
(04:24):
do that, you know, you who wanted to go on
a list for using a medication that was going to
go to the Bureau of Narcotics and doctors didn't feel
comfortable doing that either. And then of course anyone that
was in the particular industry of growing hemp, producing it,
you know, manufacturing it into something, or if you're prescribing marijuana,
(04:46):
you had to pay a tax. And you know, there
weren't any other taxes placed on any other medications or
any other industrial crops. So people started to, you know, think, well,
this is kind of a risky thing, um to be
involved in. And uh you know at the time, uh
(05:09):
we we weren't really doing our best economically, so you know,
people weren't inclined to spend extra money, um, you know,
to to keep harvesting hemp. Now, hamp, of course is
part of the cannabis species, but it's different from marijuana.
What is the difference between the two plants. Yes, they
(05:30):
are different. Um. A lot of times people describe them
as cousins. They're related, but they're used for entirely different purposes.
So UM, the greatest distinction is definitely the content of THHC.
So that's the psychoactive element in the plant in marijuana.
It's so that's, you know, really what marijuana is used for.
(05:53):
UM overall in general, there's there's really no other use
for that plant. Camp, on the other hand, does not
have a great quantity of THC. There's about three percent
I'm sorry, point three percent or less THHC in the
hemp plant, and the rest of it is uh, you know,
(06:14):
you know, there's CBD in there, the cbd in both
marijuana and hemp. But the hemp plant is used for
making all different types of all different types of products,
from clothing to rope. As we talked about paper, now
we can get into plastics. There's a big movement to
(06:36):
start using it. A lot of a lot of car
dealerships today, like BMW, for instance, you use hemp in
their door panels natural fibers instead of carbon fiber because
it's more eco friendly to go that route. And it
also looks very different. Hemp looks more like bamboo, has
(06:59):
a long stock, where marijuana looks more like a tree
or bush. It has more of a shrub appearance. Let's
talk about now what is going on with the future
of hemp gen next hour, we'll take phone calls with
our listeners who were fascinated by this topic. But at
what point did hemp start becoming legal again? So it's
(07:24):
been a slow process, obviously. I think most people know.
We grew hemp in World War Two for all sorts
of war purposes, for you know, making a parachute courts,
uniforms for our soldiers. And in the book I talk
about that how at that time, you know, the USDA
(07:48):
came in and helped farmers, you know, really grow as
much of the crop as possible. There were processing plants
that were built at the time specifically for hemp to
make all of these things. And uh, even politicians said
that they that we wouldn't have won the war without hemp,
(08:09):
and then yeah, oh yeah, I have them recorded in
the book. And you know, after World War Two, we
went back to the Marijuana Attacks Act, and uh, you know,
farmers went over to Congress and you know, petition to
get the taxes taken away. And then by the time
Congress tried to rectify it, it was several years later.
(08:30):
And by that time, you know, the synthetic fibers like
um nylon and all you know, rayon and all all
those different um polyesters started to become very popular. So
again the whole drive to make hemp into a you know,
an agricultural commodity kind of went by the wayside yet again.
(08:54):
Um then when we get into the late nineties, around
nineteen ninety nine nine, Canada obviously started their own hemp
program and legalized it and starting and started to export
it for food purposes. So you know, we wanted to
import it, and the government made a special exception for
(09:21):
Canadian food grade hemp products including hemp boil and hemp
seed to be imported. So you know, at that point
farmers who were like, well, wait a minute, why are
we importing it? Can't we just grow it? And then
you know, we can keep that money here. So from
that point moving forward, there was always an advocacy effort
(09:43):
to get hemp back as a legal crop. And you know,
obviously by this time it was on the schedule and
narcotic list next to marijuana. You know, in the nineteen
seventies it was classified by the DA as a as
a drug. So you know, that's always been the number
one problem, especially you know, in our lifetime, to get
(10:07):
access to hemp, we had to take it off of
the schedule on an arcotic list um. And uh, you know,
in twenty fourteen, we started to see a shift where
the federal government came up with the Industrial Hemp Pilot
Program and that allowed farmers to grow the crop under
(10:29):
special conditions and each state could come up with their
own guidelines. But in general, uh, these farmers were growing
the crop for um more of an academic purpose to
study it to see, you know, when was the best
time to grow it, Um, what could be possibly made
from it if it's grown a certain way. And again,
(10:52):
you know, they are wondering, well, what's what's the future
for this? Can it Can it become an you know,
full commodity like we see in Canada. And it took
until the twenty eighteen Farm Bill for that to actually
become a reality. The uh, the Industrial Hemp Act was
put into that bill, which took hemp off of the
(11:16):
schedule and narcotics list. It officially categoryized it as an
agricultural crop. And now because of that, farmers are able
to grow it and also get crop insurance. They're able
to get access to bank accounts, credit card companies, you know,
(11:37):
everything that you could do in a normal business, but
you weren't able to do if you were growing hemp. Right, yeah, yeah,
that's changing now that hemp is legal. How rigorous is
it as a plant? Does it grow fast? Yes, it does.
Hemp can mature in about one hundred to one hundred
(11:57):
eighty days, so you can really it's a pretty fast
growing cycle. So depending on the climate, some people can
grow you know, two crops a year, even three, three
different rotations a year if they're in the right climate.
And it doesn't take a lot of water the way
other agricultural crops do, like corn or cotton. And obviously
(12:21):
it's also one of the big benefits for growing it
is it doesn't need all those pesticides at other crops need.
It's pretty dramatic. What about other countries, GM, what are
they doing in this arena? Well, um, you know besides Canada. Yeah, so, um,
hemp is we're actually importing a lot of hemp seed
(12:45):
to start all these um programs. Now that you know,
obviously hemp is federally illegal, the majority of it is
coming from other countries, so um, I talk about different Uh,
different varieties of hemp in the book, and how there's
you know, different ones are better for certain purposes. So
if you're growing hemp for making clothing or if you're
(13:10):
growing it to make food, you might choose one variety
over another. UM. But uh, you know, we're we're getting
hemp from um. Like one particular strain is from Spain,
another one's from France. UM, and it's you know, they
grow it mostly in France and in the European Union. UM.
(13:33):
I mean they're growing it for CBD oil, they're growing
it for um, you know, just about every purpose under
the sun. But yeah, I mean we're even importing Finnish
industrial hemp um for which is mostly used for grain
or as a food source. So I feel like we
(13:56):
have a lot of catching up to do, especially since
China in general wants to really capitalize on the CBD
market right now as a cash crop. How does it
compare to like corner soybeans, Yeah, it is a cash
crop right now. Everyone is really focusing on CBD because
that's where farmers can make the most money, right and
(14:22):
especially if you want to take a look at state
for instance, like Kentucky. You know, Kentucky. They they always grew,
they were always known for growing tobacco. That was really
their main cash crop. And obviously tobacco isn't as popular
now as it once was, so that the need for
(14:43):
that particular crop has gone down significantly, and they've switched
over to soybeans to replace tobacco as the leading crop
in the state. And the investment on the return is
not as substantial as hemp. Uh. If you're growing soybeans,
about an acre of soybeans deals about five hundred dollars,
(15:06):
while an acre of hemp that's being grown for CBD
can bring in as much as thirty thousand dollars. Wow,
that's huge, huge difference. Yeah, and and that's that's not
an overly optimistics figure. Um, that's actually a conservative estimate
the product. Oh yeah, yeah. And you know CBD now
(15:30):
that hemp is legal. UM, it's what ended up happening,
was hemp. Uh, CBD is now legal federally, so UM.
You know, this is something that's now available in mostly
every state. UM. And it's uh, it's obviously used for
a lot of different purposes and helps many different people
(15:52):
with many different conditions and ailments. You know. UM, everything
from seizures to arthritis and cancer too, isn't it. Yeah, yep,
cancer too. I mean yeah, it's from market. Big farmer
probably doesn't want to know about this, doesn't. Well, yeah,
it's you know, what's really crazy is that the FDA
(16:14):
just approved the first pharmaceutical drug with CBD in it.
It's called Epidolus and it's for rare two rare seizure conditions,
uh dravics syndrome, and uh just get the other one.
But it's you know, it's it's a very um it's
a very hard condition to because there's just those you know,
(16:38):
the seizures are just so constant, and there hasn't been
any other, um, any other treatment for it that works,
and the CBD is is effective. Listen to more Coast
to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern
and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for
more
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