"Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution" Blog Post Four

Hemp serves many purposes beyond its psychoactive qualities. The 181 current signatories of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that have banned production and supply of cannabis are denying humans a vital natural resource that is used around the world and has been used for 10,000 years. The Columbia History of the World says the earliest known fabric was hemp cloth from China, composed 10,000 years ago. Hemp serves as a useful, strong fiber that cultures from Mongolia to Peru have used as food, shelter, clothing, medicine, etc. since the beginning of the Common Era. The oldest surviving paper is cannabis-derived; It's from second century BCE. There is even a famous Chinese medical manual which includes treatments made from cannabis, published a few centuries after the oldest surviving paper. A vast resource such as hemp, capable of growing pretty much anywhere on Earth (except for Antarctica), is deserving of an international-legalized status so that it can be traded and utilized around the world. Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence was drafted on Schedule I, felonious paper, that's tree-free paper for those of you (environmentalists) who wish to save the rain forests.