Marijuana Hater’s Guide to Making a Billion Dollars from Hemp: The Next Disruptive Industry
By Matthew Harmon
Farmbridge California, 181pp, Paperback, $19.99, April 20th 2021, 978-1735674704
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In Cryptocurrencies, those who had gotten in early, those who took huge risks in an unknown medium of exchange and with zero guarantees of returns, have been reaping most of the profits since bitcoin has become the new cool thing. Cannabis is not different. At the time of writing this article, China is on the top of the Leaders Board of the global Industrial Hemp market—the world’s largest producer and exporter “producing over half of the world’s supply,”1—which isn’t a strange thing at all considering that the world’s first paper was produced in China (circa 150 BC) using hemp. The origins of cannabis though are still unknown, and are the subject of an ongoing debate (while the general consensus assigns the plant’s historical roots to Asia).
As the world prepares for a Cannabis revolution, few know the difference between Cannabis, Hemp, and Marijuana.
Cannabis is the plant. Hemp and Marijuana are both produced from the Cannabis plant—although their cultivation, setup, and processing are different. The plant is said to be dioecious: it is either a male plant or a female plant. We know that there are three species of Cannabis: Cannabis sativa L., Cannabis ruderalis, and Cannabis indica.
Indica hast the highest amount of THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol: one out of the 113 total cannabinoids found in the plant; it is a psychoactive agent that “affects brain function and causes alterations in perception, mood, and cognition,” making us feel ‘high‘).
SativaL., which was discovered by Swedish botanist Carolus Linnarus in 1753, is usually the perfect species for producing Hemp. And ruderalis is characterized by its high CBD concentration; CBD: Cannabidiol, another one of the 113 Cannabinoids found in the plant, believed to be the one that “gives the plant its medicinal properties.”
While industrial hemp can grow in as little as 100 days, it usually takes 4 to 6 months from seed to harvest. A typical hemp field is highly dense with near-unlimited scalability—one acre of a hemp field have hundreds of thousands of plants—and reaching up to 16 feet high.
“You can’t get high on industrial hemp, even if you were able to ingest an entire field of the stuff,” because it contains a negligible amount of THC and a significant amount of CBD. Policy makers set a limit on how much THC industrial hemp can legally have: no more than 0.3% “on a draw weight basis.”
Marijuana crop takes anywhere between 60 and 90 days to grow within indoor environment, and demands a humid atmosphere “for proper development,” whereas grown outdoor, the plant requires even more care and attention to details. The farmer must prevent the male plants from cross-pollinating its female counterparts “because pollination inhibits a female plant from producing high concentrations of THC. And, of course, it’s the THC that makes a good crop for recreational use.”
Often, at about the sixth week of growth, the farmer checks the gender of the plant, and depending on his goals—industrial hemp, marijuana, or high CBD crop for the pharmaceutical industry—he/she may choose to keep a uni-sex Cannabis field.
When we talk about a hemp industrial revolution, we are talking about the possible number of products, tools, resources, and technologies that we can derive from the Cannabis plant—a number limited only by our entrepreneurial imaginations and governmental hurdles.
Speaking about governments and hurdles, the campaign against Cannabis isn’t new, dating back to the last decade of the 19th century. Led by the Progressive Movement who were great fans of prohibition, the campaign succeeded in pushing forward and enacting four Acts in the span of 9 years: the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), the Poison Act (1907), the Trowns-Boylan Act (1914), and the Harrison Narcotics Act (1914), leading to the establishment of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in 1930.
Harry J. Aslinger ran a campaign, starting in the 1930s, creating a confusion among people around the effects of the plant on mental and physical health. This confusion was made even worse by some farmers who used the word ‘hemp’ as a camouflage to “avoid the stigma of what they were really growing.”
By 1931, Marijuana was outlawed by 29 US states. While Aslinger enjoyed a long career as the Commissioner of the FBN, lasting 32 years in office, and working during the terms of five US presidents: Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.
In 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act came to require “every person who sold any Hemp, Cannabis, or Marijuana products to register with the IRS and pay a special occupational tax, as well as requiring written transfer forms.”
Then came WWII, and the US government started a campaign to promote the production of hemp. War Hemp Industries (WHI) was launched, along with private partners. WHI—along with USDA—encouraged farmers to grow hemp as part of the Hemp for Victory Program (they’d even released a movie: Hemp for Victory [1942]).
As soon as WWII had elapsed, Harry Aslinger started lobbying worldwide against Cannabis, resulting in the 1961 UN’s adoption of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, “a treaty that prohibited the production and trade of specific drugs including Cannabis.”
Article.28, Section.2 of the Convention mentions that it “shall not apply to the cultivation of the cannabis plant exclusively for industrial purposes (fiber and seed) or horticultural purposes.”
In 1965, Activist and Clinical psychologist Timothy Leary was arrested (in Texas) possessing Marijuana. Dr. Leary figured that the Marihuana Tax Act—the ground for arresting him—was unconstitutional to begin with and had gone to challenge it in the Supreme Court. He argued that the Marihuana Tax Act “required self-incrimination, which violated the Fifth Amendment.”
Leary was right. He won the case prompting the establishment to replace the old with the new (a new Act): the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) which went into effect in 1971.
Marijuana was one of these drugs that had been so demonized in my mind that I couldn’t understand why so many people were trying to legalize it.
In 1972, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (also known as the Shafer Commission) produced a report concluding that not even a “single human fatality in the US proven to have solely resulted from the use of Marijuana.” President Nixon rejected the report even though he was the one who had carefully selected the members of the Shafer Commission. The War on Drugs continued.
Just like there were people like Aslinger who lobbied to kill the hemp industry, there were others who were pushing back against their interests and agendas. In 1989, a group of entrepreneurs founded the Business Alliance of Commerce in Hemp. Two years later, the Hemp Council was created to started organizing rallies and events that promoted Hemp products
By 1996, over 300 companies in the US were manufacturing a wide range of hemp products—everything from luggage and soap to paper and toys to seed grain and surfboards.
The potential commercial products that can be made out of the Cannabis plant are near-unlimited; from face wash, shampoo, and soap to a nontoxic hemp bio-plastic biodegradable within six months.
The author, Matthew Harmon, has been researching Cannabis for more than a decade. Born into a religious family and growing up within a conservative 1980s political atmosphere, he used to believe that marijuana is as dangerous as Cocaine and Alcohol.
Nowadays, Harmon is betting that it “will be legal,” with no ambiguity between the state and federal level, “in the next seven years.”
The book reads like an extensive course on the history of the plant, its commercial and medicinal potential, and its future. It is an invaluable resource for every entrepreneur that has ever thought of stepping into the hemp industry. Those who know nothing about Cannabis, and those who’ve been investing in it for years will both enjoy this book.
