Cannabis used for medicine, food, fuel, paper, rope, maps, bricks, oil, paint, furniture and much more.
'Efficacious'
means effective, or productive as regards the desired effect. This is
particularly concerned with cannabis biomass (explained soon).
Cannabis is
versatile because it has so many uses. It's uses can be traced back to
thousands of years before Christ.
medicine, fuel, paper, food, rope, maps, clothes, nets,
lace, soap, sails, shoes, plastics, explosives, caulking, fiberboard, paint,
sealant, methanol, gasoline, fibre for fuel, bricks, charcoal, auto bodies,
packing mass, lubricants, oil for lighting, oil for fuel, oil for lights,
animal food, furniture, mats, varnish, lotions, ointments, lacquer, salad
dressings....
There are an
estimated 50,000 commercial uses. Until about 100 years ago almost all the
world's bibles maps, sails, clothes and books were made out of cannabis. Much
of the world's population has survived by eating hemp seed, cooked into a
porridge called 'gruel'.
Biomass is
the amount of plant material which can be converted to fuel, usually by
gasification. Biomass is biologically produced material. Methanol is a biomass
substance. Biomass can be converted into virtually any sort of energy.
World
production of biomass has been estimated at 146 billion tons a year.
The
thermochemical process which converts organic material to fuel is called
pyrolysis. This consists of applying heat with little or no air. It can produce
charcoal, gasses, acetone, methanol and other organic liquids known as
pyrolitic fuel oil.
When the
biomass of cannabis is converted to fuel there are no harmful waste products
(compare with radioactive sources of energy) and there is no environmental
pollution (as with fossil fuels).
The FCDA have
produced their 'biomass equation' which shows that cannabis biomass is the most
efficient (and potentially the cheapest and most reliable) way to produce
energy.
It is
estimated that up to 90% of the energy produced by the use of fossil fuels
could be produced from biomass. Hemp can be converted to methane, methanol or
petrol. Br ridding ourselves of the pollution factories and the resulting
sulphurous smogs which are released into the atmosphere we could dramatically
reduce acid rain and begin the reverse the Greenhouse Effect. Henry Ford's
first Model T was designed to run on a methanol petrol produced from hemp seeds.
75 to 90
percent of the paper used for books, maps, bibles, banknotes and newspapers,
was made from hemp until about 1883. Hemp paper had been used since the first
century AD, by the Chinese, and it was used in Europe since the 5th. Cannabis can
be harvested in 3 to six months as compared with 30 or more years for trees. It
can produce double or more fibre as wood chippings and requires no dangerous
chemicals in the paper pulping processes. No chlorine is needed for bleaching
and no deadly dioxins are thrown into the environment. Hemp paper will outlive
even the best quality wood pulp paper or papyrus paper.
Hemp seed is
one of the easiest to produce and nutritious food crops on earth. For many
centuries it was the staple food crop for most of the world. The oils produced
from the seed contains the highest amount of essential fatty acids in the plant
world. Hemp seed oil helped clear the human system of cholesterol. The seed
itself can be ground to make a porridge - gruel - or baked into cakes or bread.
Hemp seed is the single most complete food on the planet and can be grown
quickly almost anywhere, yet the world is allowed to starve as a result of the
often total prohibition of cannabis. During recent years, some countries,
notably the Maldives, have given life sentences to people found with even three
seeds, whilst in the Western world it is readily available for use as bird food
and fishing bait. That alone reveals the real evil behind this senseless
banning of foods
Hemp is for
replacing wooden materials. as it can be pressed into a variety of forms. It
can be used to make furniture and beams, being stronger and more flexible than
timber as well as more financially and environmentally beneficial. Isochanvre,
produced in France, is a method of making a building material from the hurds of
hemp, which sets into a very hard mineral state ideal for construction.
Archaeologists have found a bridge in the South of France, over 1200 years old,
made from a similar material. Several house have already been built from hemp
bricks.
Hemp can also
be used to make plastics for pipes for plumbing etc and almost any item made
from plastic at this time; however, the processes involved are far less
polluting.
As well as
using hemp fuel for his Model T, Henry Ford used hemp plastics to build the
body work.
Approximately
90 percent of sails and most rigging, nets, rope, flags and sealant was made
from cannabis until this century; even nappies and towels.. Even the sailors shoes
and socks were produced from cannabis fibres. The original hard wearing Levi
jeans were made from cannabis. In 1938 Popular Mechanics, a USA magazine,
stated that hemp was the "standard fibre of the world". Clothes made
from hemp are more durable yet softer than those made from cotton, a plant
which requires much pesticide and fertilizer to grow. Of course the huge
pharmaceutical companies who profit from these chemicals would suffer if hemp
was re-introduced widely into the markets, which is one reason such a process
may be slow. This profit is important to remember when examining the true
reasons for the prohibition of cannabis.
For hundreds
of years hemp seed oil was used to make paints and varnishes. Some of the
greatest works of art were created on canvas (incidentally a Dutch word meaning
cannabis), including works of Rembrandt, Van Gogh etc.
Until this
century hemp seed oil was used to produce most of the light in the world. It
burns with an even light and odes not produce the soot characteristic of modern
oils. It can also be used as a lubricant.
For more
detailed information on the industrial uses of cannabis / hemp, check this out.