The UK has a burgoining hemp industry, and is the proud "host" of a market leader in hemp insulation products and animal bedding.
Hemcore Ltd Undetered by spools and spools of beauracratic red tape, the Hemcore company soldiered on, became licensed, and made a name for themselves in the world of building and construction materials manufactured entirely from hemp.
This, to compliment an already successful business model within the animal/pet care industry, creating sterilised, dust free bedding for animals from Mice, right up to horses.
British (read:local) farmers are employed, growing hemp 'on contract' to Hemcore. Currently there is around 3500 hectares of industrial hemp standing mid way through the growing season. The same growing season the North DaKota farmers missed due to the DEA and their delaying tactics.
Although this is only a minute fraction of how much hemp the UK has grown in previous years.
Historically a sea-faring nation with a hungry and resource intensive Royal Navy to fit out, at one stage any hemp which was imported into the UK was imported to fill a short-fall in required resources, and filled space on "tall-ships" as they headed back across the globe using the pirate infested trade routes from the Arab nations, north up the coast of Africa, and into European waters as the Rock of Gibraltar and Spain passed by on the starboard beam!
Ah, the romance!
These days of course, things are very different and any claims that hemp could actually benefit us as a nation, a race or a species, are counter-claimed by goverment ministers as "hippy generated, tree-hugging, conspiracy theories", and little else.
They give no credit, no credence to the value, the actual benefits we could glean from growing and harvesting hemp?
Not one government minister will out and out say "we need hemp - we want hemp", because US drug czar John Walters will (frankly) have the UK Prime Minister's gonads for ear-rings if one did and thats not right.
We should have our own autonomy and our own voice when it comes to what is classed as a drug in the UK, and what is not classed as a drug!! The Blue/Grey Man It was conservative leader John Major who was at the helm of "HMS United Kingdom", when he was asked to chart a course for us as a nation, through some (as yet) uncharted waters.
The destination? A unified European currency - the euro!
With our close European cousins and neighbors falling over themselves to sign up, seeing this as a method of writing off billions in their respective national trading deficit's, it was thought that the UK's inclusion in the new currency would also be simply a matter of formality.
But the Conservative party had other ideas, and kept GB PLC playing with its own colored chips, which we still do to this day.
Germany And speaking of our closest neighbors one of the largest and most powerful is playing the "hemp markets" and using its own rules as opposed to those written in washington!
As if to illustrate this, the historically rich region of Bavaria (the area around rural Munich), is celebrating one of its most revered sons - King Ludwig II of Bavaria, with a display...in a hemp field.
Taking over 1200 hours to create, the image of Neuschwanstein Castle, the retreat of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, has been "ploughed" in to a field of hemp.
And it looks amazing!
As well as the image of the castle, the hemp itself has been formed into an image of King Ludwig himself!
Remarkable really, as one of his claims to fame was his passion for building romantic, fairytale castles which, whilst looking very "christmas card" when a sprinkle of snow fell on them, the fact is, none of them were very practical in the true sense of why castles were built in the first place.
They were easy to fight your way into if you were a bad guy passing by looking for a castle to pillage, but they looked great which is all that seemed to matter to the mad monarch.
So obsessed was Ludwig with his castles, that he eventually bankrupted the state!
Spent all their money, on one castle after another and he was eventually declared insane shortly before he drowned in the Stamberg Lake near Munich, in 1886.
Its an interesting story and I hope you will visit the Canna Zine to see the picture of the hemp field.
But there is a far more important note in this article which no-one has yet picked up on, and that is the very last paragraph of the news report.
Verbatim ""The 20,000 sq m (215,000 sq ft) hemp field labyrinth (maze) will be open to the public from July 19 to September 20.""
I'm guessing there will be no age limit placed on the display?
In this case, and according to the laws that you and I must adhere to if we wish to avoid lengthy incarceration, anyone who takes their children to this magnificent display in Barvaria, is guilty in the eyes of the US administration, as well as the US drug czar John Walters, of child endangerment, by exposing their children to this most foul and heinous of drugs.
The US DEA recognises no difference between hemp and cannabis!!
Both you and I know, (as well as a number of other governments across the globe), this is just not true and its time we changed the laws on industrial hemp cultivation once and for all.
Please forward this article to your local representative or member of parliment and ask why YOU are not allowed to grow hemp?
Join us and lets make it happen soon!!
Red Dragon
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