The quick answer is get you high.
Hemp is one of the oldest domesticated crops in the world and is enjoying a renewed boom in its use. Colorado leads the way in industrial hemp cultivation having over 400 active industrial hemp businesses in 2016. The revamp of hemp is largely due to it being environmentally friendly to produce, cheap to grow, uses less water and pesticides than traditional crops, and the list of uses grows every day.
Currently hemp is credited with over 25,000 uses. Some are obvious because they’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, like making fabric, paper, or rope/netting. During the times of sail-ships it was well known that the best canvas for sails came from hemp products and it’s widely thought that the word canvas stems from cannabis. Other uses are recent discoveries like hemp based hygiene products, cooking oils, building materials, and even plastics. Hemp based plastics can bio-degrade quicker and more effectively than petroleum based plastics and won’t leech chemicals into the contents of the plastic containers. Hemp has been proven to increase the strength and decrease the cracking of concrete, even being able to produce more environmentally friendly fiberglass, insulation, and drywall. Hemp in food products or cooking oil has 25% protein, is a good source of calcium and iron, and has more omega-3 than walnuts.
These products don’t contain THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana, so you can’t smoke them to get high. Though hemp and marijuana both come from strains of Cannabis sativa, hemp has less than 1% THC, therefore you can try to smoke hemp to get high but it won’t get you very far.
Hemp Marijuana
Bred for fibers (clothing & construction) Specifically grown for potent trichomes
Oils (cooking & topical ointments) Optimum THC
Nutrition (supplements) Medical Uses (medicines & pain killers)
Not grown for optimum amounts of THC
What’s helping increase hemp’s popularity is how quickly it can grow. Hemp plants only take 12-14 weeks to mature to be harvested, compared to 20 years it takes trees to mature. Forests are being cut down three times faster than they can re-grow and hemp can replace wood fibers in all tested products. It can breathe in four times the CO2 of trees during this time as well and makes a great rotation crop for farmers due to the nutrients it puts back into the soil. Currently hemp is legal to grow in some states like Kentucky, Oregon, and California however the DEA is strict with the permits allowing individuals to grow hemp. It has to be in an industrial setting, not just growing in someone’s yard, and is highly regulated.
“Growing hemp is kind of like driving, you can’t drive without a license and you can’t grow hemp without a permit. The difference is that it’s almost impossible to get a permit from the DEA to grow hemp” – VoteHemp advocate
Eco-Minded 