Our view: Let’s legalize hemp

Editorial

 
Hemp is not marijuana.
It looks like marijuana.

It’s related to marijuana.

But it’s not marijuana.

You can’t get high off of it. But someday, maybe, you could get rich off of it. Well, OK, maybe not rich. But there might be some money to be made in a plant fiber so useful that it can be used in making things from auto parts to yarn. Not quite A to Z, but close enough.

A hemp car? Really? Apparently so. “Hemp fibers have higher strength to weight ratios than steel and can also be considerably cheaper to manufacture,” reports Alan Crosky of the School of Material Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He and other researchers are working on using hemp fiber to replace plastic in some car parts. The result could be a car that has more fuel efficiency because it weighs so much less, but is still just as strong.

Full Article:

http://www.roanoke.com/opinion/editorials/our-view-let-s-legalize-hemp/article_ee6a4da3-a4ca-5df5-b869-959f5652e452.html