Negative Space: hemp
- Cannabis Comes to the New World
- As with other countries, Americans had to be nearly forced to grow hemp. Drugs such as tobacco were far more lucrative than rope. War changed that temporarily, and at one point we even used hemp as money.
- Drug Sellers On the Net!
- Where to buy drugs on the Internet. Mostly legal drugs, such as coffee and tea, as well as information about drugs, and legal things made from illegal drugs, such as hemp.
- Marihuana Through History
- Note that that’s my title, not the author’s; I haven’t kept the title if this section in my notes. As a rope-making plant, hemp has an ancient, well-documented history. It has long been the best known plant for general rope-making, and every culture that uses ropes seems to know this.
- Rope and Riches
- Where with alcohol, wartime causes governments to repress it, with hemp, wartime caused them to enforce the growing of it. Part of the reason it had to be forced on farmers is that the rope-making process was time-consuming; hemp fields required more time between crops than other plants.
- Uses of Marijuana
- Solomon H. Snyder writes about the history of marijuana use, with an emphasis on medical use and mostly from the 1800s up. One of the interesting points he makes is that the hypodermic needle was part of what reduced interest in marijuana as a medicine. Marijuana isn’t soluble in water, and thus isn’t injectable. A drug that can’t be injected is of less interest to doctors more and more interested in miracle drugs.
