Not sure what that statement means. Isn’t the hemp used in cars just fibers added to plastic to strengthen it as figerglass, kevlar or or other fibers are used? Perhaps some hemp fabric is used.
In the linked article they state that they can actually turn hemp fiber into biodegradable plastics. So instead of a plastic dash board it is made from biodegradable hemp. Like in fancy new cars today. Not theoretical.
The second article linked shows that in 1941 Ford made a car from hemp. Instead of steel he made the frame and chassis from plasticized hemp. All the way back in ‘41.
I myself am a recovering drug addict whom has battled with severe drug dependency my entire life. I agree rehabilitation doesn’t get proper funding, the reason is simple, we’re drug addicts. Rehab is intended to guide (dedicated) patients to a lifestyle free of drug use and dependence.
On the other hand; methadone, subutex, suboxone, as well as pharmaceutical opioids is the route most addicts will pursue due to a single major factor - we still get high, just don’t get in trouble for it and it becomes “acceptable” to continue using.
The Salvation Army ARC offers a no cost residential “inpatient” program and usually always have beds available. If not they’ll get you to the next closest location asap, also free of charge. Great program too. I finished the 6mo program in July or August.
I’ve been to quite a few rehabs a lot some would say, everything from Passages Malibu to sober living homes state, federal, private, and nonprofit. Now here’s the CRAZIEST part most people can’t comprehend - I didn’t get clean until…. I was ready and willing. I will have 11 months clean in a few days. Prior to that relapse I was 3 years clean.
Most people who don’t struggle with the substance abuse disorder will never be able to comprehend the disease and it’s so unfortunate. I believe the clearest most understandable statement I can make as recovering drug addict is this:
Every single day is a battle that I fight with more vigor, courage, commitment, and dedication than most people put forth in a lifetime of efforts. I fight for my life on a daily basis.
Causes
The exact cause of substance use disorder is not known. A person’s genes, the action of the drug, peer pressure, emotional distress, anxiety, depression, and environmental stress can all be factors.
Many who develop a substance use problem have depression, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, or another mental problem. A stressful or chaotic lifestyle and low self-esteem are also common.
Hopefully I can help shine a light on this dark nasty subject.
Addiction is complicated and I do not have an addictive personality, so I can only try to understand it from an outsider’s perspective. The easiest course of action would seem to be to blame the addict, so that I have no responsibility- your fault, your problem- except that it’s still going to be my problem one way or the other. Jail is expensive, rehab is expensive even hospitalization for overdose is expensive. Eventually the public pays a substantial part of the bill, including as victims to drug based crime. There are also the social problems of violent, drug diseased neighborhoods that traumatize the children raised in them, which, even if you lack sympathy, means that many of them will be an economic drag rather than an asset for our country as a whole. .
So what does our society do, for the most part? We blame the addicts and instead of paying for treatments and making their drugs free to them until they are treated we try to punish them and punish the dealers that provide the drugs.
It wouldn’t be an irrational approach if it worked, but to continue decade after decade with the same policies at great public expense with no researched evidence that it is effective is collective insanity.
I, for one, hope that the flood of marijuana legalization is just the beginning, and that we come to our senses and decriminalize all drugs and use all that money we spend throwing people in jail to treat them and try to fix the societal issues that encourage addiction as best we reasonably can.
As a person who has spent more than half a century with my hands in the soil to make a living (I was even among the first growers to benefit from early ripening strains that made growing high-grade pot in the NE possible, winning second place in the national High Times annual contest for my very best bud, grown on a terrace in Manhattan), I can speak with some experience of the remarkable nature of the plant.
Most weeds either flourish in cool soil or warm soil, but cannabis begins growing in cool soil and grows vigorously through the hottest weather with a moderate level of drought tolerance for a broad-leaf annual. It also tolerates frost, even when young. I used to transplant starts from my NYC apartment to hidden plots on the first week of April and young plants of the strain I grew survived a late snow one season without any protection- frosts in April as low as 25F are common in the Hudson Valley.
It is also a dioecious plant with strong monecious tendencies- it is the only plant I have ever grown that is usually either male or female but occasionally both- that is the dreaded “hermaphrodite” that would first show early female formation of embryos, but, to the dismay of the grower, send out male flowers late in the season, which for a guerilla grower could destroy a crop before such plants were detected and removed by turning an entire plot into a heavily seeded product.
In N. CA, in the late '60’s, strains were sometimes kept fairly pure by leaving the partially harvested female in the ground well past harvest time and waiting for it to produce a few weak male flowers at the tips of the empty embryos where a few seeds would form late in the season. Maybe there are other plants that do this, but I’ve never seen one.
Perhaps the monecious aspect of cannabis is a man-made quality accomplished many centuries ago by selective breeding in order to obtain high THC marijuana.
Hemp for victory!
We grew 11 acres of CBD/floral hemp in 2019. We planted only female clones (rooted cuttings) of 8 different varieties, in order to ‘spread out’ harvest period. Due to collapse of the market and unscrupulous processors reneging on contracts, we still have every scrap of bud that we harvested (over 10K pounds), sitting in bulk grain sacks in the barn. No prospects for anyone to process it, so I presume that at some point, my wife will give up, and I’ll just have some very expensive mulch to spread.
Despite planting only female clones, and patrolling fields daily, I never saw a male plant - or even a branch bearing male flowers - but something must have hermed, because some of the very late-harvested bud had some seeds present, and the next year, there were lots of ‘volunteer’ hemp plants in those fields, with males predominating. There is no mistaking a male for a female, and the bees (especially bumblebees) absolutely LOVE a male hemp plant!
I do not see hemp as a viable crop… at least, not for a small grower. ‘Big Tobacco’, or similar entities will control how much is grown, and thus, demand and prices. I suspect that ‘Big Pharma’ will have their hands on marijuana production, when the time comes.
‘Fiber’ hemp… the market is limited, and prices are so low, that few folks in this part of the country are growing it… I’m not aware of more than one, or possibly two, entities that are even processing ‘fiber’ hemp. Back when we were growing, fiber hemp was bringing only 2-4 cents per pound, whereas the floral product was valued at anywhere from $40-$100 per plant, depending on CBD% and weight of bud/plant.
Although it’s the same species as marijuana and CBD hemp, It’s a different critter… planted from seed, allowed to grow, flower, set seed, etc. Then, they mow the stalks, leave them lying for a period to rot down, and then roll into large bales, like hay, for transport to whatever processing center. With fuel and fertilizer prices as they are currently, I can’t imagine that it would pay its way.
The illegal drug trade depends on its illegality. Maybe a video of the streets of Lisbon would be a good example of what decriminalizing that is well planned might bring about.
You cannot just offer paraphernalia, you have to provide treatment and shelter. In the U.S. we seem incapable of long term government investment. There is strong pushback against government created social solutions and not enough incentive for politicians to be serious about creating truly effective policies. We have the government we deserve, I guess.
Programs have to be done from the federal level or specific cities or states with more generous policies will attract the needy from all over the country sinking the programs with excessive demand.
As long as the populus has its hand in the peripheral economies surrounding prohibition, there will be endless efforts to maintain the status quo. Its just the way it is… part of the system… living off the blood of the sufferers…
From the second link. “In this sense, it seems that the legislator - keeping, first, the spirit of the decriminalization law and, second, adopting an evidence-based orientation - should return proven cases of drug use to the Commissions, the body under which this behaviour was initially placed, assuring that drug use stays, as originally, an administratively sanctionable misdemeanor, but not a crime. Adequate and tailored sanctions for these cases, that might foresee an update of the old ordinance Law n. 94/96, the table that regulates the quantities permitted, could be needed.”
I’m not sure what you believe the two articles suggest in context with my opinion that all drugs should be decriminalized and profits from dealing them should be eliminated by the most practical means possible, including treatment programs but also via providing drugs for addicts.
Both of them offer clear evidence to support my opinion. However, I thank you for the second link because i was unaware of changes that have been made since the original decriminalization for users. I never felt that this was going far enough, and it appears the Portuguese Supreme court reinstated criminal punishment, which the article seems to suggest is not the right or legislated approach.
States can regulate the legal trad of marijuana to help small farmers and businesses, and that seems to be what is happening in NY. Maybe you need to get politically involved.
The single most effective thing you can do when dealing with an individual you wanna help that is in active addiction is simple, love. Most of us suffer from severe mental health issues, ADHD, genetic predisposition, as well as PTSD. Tough love is still love, the more people who genuinely care for the addict the better their odds become. As we delve deeper into addiction cognitive thinking and normal reasoning become non-existent, isolation begins and depression sets in, that’s a sure recipe for disaster every time.
I agree fully that “the war on drugs” is not the best option, that’s why we’re now seeing MJ legalization and decriminalization of other substances starting to gain traction. It’s always going to be a double edged sword . If I didn’t have a support system in place full of people who love me unconditionally I’d be right back out there getting high. We’re supposed to love one another, be kind and compassionate. That’s how to make an impact and a difference.
Nah. I’m too old.
I never want to have to work THAT hard again, for the rest of my life.
For the right price, I might be enticed to grow 1-2 acres of hemp or MJ, but I’d almost want a healthy deposit, up-front, and guaranteed payment for product delivery before I’d even consider it.
On second thought… no. I have enough. I never want to grow that stuff again.
The political powers-that-be, from the Deans of the colleges & universities with Schools of Agriculture(at least 5 of those in this state) to the Commissioner of Agriculture, Governor, and U.S. Senators and Congressmen were all foursquare behind and pushing the whole Industrial Hemp deal.
I’m not sure where TPTB currently stand on legalized marijuana.
At present, it matters not to me, personally, if MJ is or isn’t legal. I quit smoking 30+ yrs ago, and have some chronic respiratory issues, so I’m not about to go back to smoking for entertainment. And, if so inclined, I can already purchase hemp-derived THC/CBD edibles, legally.
Just really another look at the way Portugal decriminalization is looked at with a different lens than just journalistic opinion. And the issues the Netherlands has experienced over quite a number of years.
I think it’s well established I’m against complete Drug legalization. That being said with proper documentation and research over years I can change my mind if it’s better for the populus as a whole.
I’m looking for genuine research to the affects of complete drug legalization. I think that the problem is that so many people have a stake in keeping “recreational” drugs illegal and the public has not been exposed to rational arguments for their complete legalization. Imagine how much police departments would shrink if all the crime related aspects of drug addiction were removed? All the related industries, including uniform makers, arms manufacturers, private prisons and so forth, that would be critically damaged should our endless and futile policing of addictive drugs were to discontinue? Here are some arguments for it and against it.
The lack of extensive research is in itself damning of our society’s approach, all over the globe, to supporting an information based approach to drug addiction.
Here’s a government paper on the subject in support of complete legalization. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/legalizing-drugs-would-benefit-united-states-legalizing-drugs-p-32
Here is some research. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229047990_The_Economics_of_Drug_Legalisation
Here’s a few paragraphs about heroine addiction.
To begin with, one stakeholder in this issue are those addicted to drugs, those who have fallen victim to the failed war of drugs and continue this cycle due to the poor tactics we hold today in its resolving. Certain individuals that were addicted to certain substances and made a rapid recovery were a large percentage of Vietnam veterans. Over 90 percent of the returned veterans who had been addicted to heroin in Asia ceased being addicted to the States virtually at once (Peele, par. 2). The Vietnam addiction experience was cataloged by Lee Robins, a professor of social science in psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, and her colleagues in the 1977 classic, “Vietnam Veterans Three Years After Vietnam: How our study changed our view of heroin”—the most careful and detailed study of a group of hundreds of heroin-addicted people ever conducted (Peele, par. 3). Everything Robins and her colleagues took on faith about heroin were disproved. Most soldiers (85 percent) said they found opioids readily available to them at home—so we can discount the idea of lack of supply accounting for their mass recovery (Peele, par. 4). The significance of this finding is overwhelming. Unlike the widespread assumptions shared by the media and the American medical establishment, natural recovery is, by far, the norm. Given a reasonable environment, time and the expectation that we can and will recover, almost all of us will (Peele, par. 12). “Armed with that understanding [that addiction is a disease], the management of folks with addiction becomes very much like the management of other chronic diseases, such as asthma, hypertension, or diabetes,’ said Dr. Daniel Alford, who oversees the program at Boston University Medical Center. It’s hard necessarily to cure people, but you can certainly manage the problem to the point where they are able to function through a combination of pharmaceuticals and therapy.’” (Peele, par. 17). The entirety of these findings highlights the importance of change which includes environmental and social. Those that were addicted quickly recovered because of the lack of emotional isolation that furthered their cycle of addiction. The legalization of drugs will do this exactly, but with the entire nation. It will de-stigmatize drug use inevitably changing the environment and social premise that holds negative dispositions towards those that are addicted, aiding their recovery instead of making it wors
What do you think it will do about this?
Provisional data from CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicate there were an estimated 107,622 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 2021, an increase of nearly 15% from the 93,655 deaths estimated in 2020.
That the pandemic was depressing.
I have lost a friend to overdose and if the product had been obtained from the government I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have happened.
THC is THC?? Well let’s try something. Is alcohol alcohol? If you drink a 16oz beer, what going to happen? Now instead, you drink 16oz of whiskey. What might happen? THC has the same effect , it depends on the breeder. I know that this is not a perfect example, but it’s certainly similar