Newsgroups: alt.hemp,alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs
From: [w--ch--d] at [polaris.cv.nrao.edu] (Warren Richardson)
Subject: Re: Founding Fathers and Pot: a retraction.
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 17:34:27 GMT



	   May 12-13 1765: "Sowed Hemp at Muddy hole by Swamp."
	   August 7, 1765: "--began to seperate (sic) the Male from
	   the Female Hemp at Do--rather too late." 

   George Andrews has argued, in _The Book of Grass: An Anthology of 
   Indian Hemp_ (1967), that Washington's August 7 diary entry
   "clearly indiactes that he was cultivating the plant for medicinal
   purposes as well for its fiber." [7]  He might have 
   separated the males from the females to get better fiber, Andrew
   concedes--but his phrase "rather too late" suggests that he 
   wanted to complete the separation *before the female plants were
   fertilized*--and this was a practice related to drug potency
   rather that to fiber culture.


	When producing hemp for seed, a common use as the seed oil is
	valuable, the males were typically removed immediately after
	they pollinated the females. This allowed extra sunlight to
	reach the females in the thickly planted plot, and increased
	seed production. Also, by preventing over-pollination, the
	individual seeds will be larger, and more suitable for oil
	production. 

	I think that if Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had
	used locally grown hemp for medicinal or recreational purposes,
	they would have written about it. Jefferson in particular had
	a real penchant for writing about nearly everything. On the 
	other hand, the use of hemp was common in Africa, so the 
	slaves might have been partaking, and this wouldn't have been
	written down.

					Warren Richardson
					[w--ch--d] at [nrao.edu]


   ===============================================================================
   Tom Swiss/[t m s] at [cs.umd.edu]  |  "Born to die"   |   Keep your laws off my brain!
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       Prohibition doesn't work. End the War on Some Drugs. Hemp for Victory!
    "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
     as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein