In case you didn't read the Addicted to Oil piece, or wondered what the throwaway comment about Hemp was, there's a quote below, and I leave you to research the rest. Just bear in mind that this is suppressed history. That (even now) 'they' managed to ban hemp under cover of banning a dangerous drug (marijuana). Although (as it happens) I would be for legalising marijuana, that is not what this is about. Hemp is one of the oldest and most useful plants we ever had. You know Canvas (sails on ships) that's Cannabis (look it up in the dictionary). Rope? All made from hemp until recently. So, if it wasn't fear of drugs that made them conspire against it, what was it? Well DuPont Chemicals like us using cotton for everything (needs loads of pesticides, fertilizers, etc) rather than Hemp (a very sturdy weed). And the Oil Lobby like us using ancient plant material from under the ground, expensive to get at, and all in their control, rather than renewable resources like hemp oil, and they can palm off their by-products on us as plastic. Check it out...

"Notably, this was at the same time (and thanks mainly to the same people who developed the plastics industry) that the only product to have more uses than oil, but with none of the toxic side effects, was banned. That product was hemp – the oil of which can drive cars, create plastics or be made into soap, the fibres of which can be turned into paper or clothes, and the seed of which is one of the most nutritious substances known. (Oh, and growing hemp counterracts climate change, too.)

Thanks, however, to the efforts of DuPont and William Randolph Hearst (with their respective vested interests in the plastics and paper industries), the use of hemp (which one would have to smoke around three tonnes of to get high) was outlawed, along with its more potent sister marijuana, under drug prohibition laws.

In place of the drug that was not a drug, we drill ever deeper into the veins of the earth. We pull the oil up not with syringes, but with derricks (named after an infamous 17th century hangman because of their resemblance to gallows). We cannot imagine a world without oil, deny the possibility of weaning ourselves off it, and will break the law – and even kill – to ensure a constant, cheap supply of the stuff. We are, every single one of us, addicted to oil. "

Excerpt from: Forbidden Fruit
Date Published: 22/04/2003
Author: Jeremy Smith