Hello.
What an interesting topic here ! It's a shame I didn't find it earlier.
I expected people to be unfriendly to that plant, because of long time war on drugs worldwide, combined to hard work to discredit it.
As said raymondo, we can't argue on hemp, based on a taxonomic point of view. Cannabis genus is considered to include 3 to 4 distinct types, considered as different species or included as sub-species of Cannabis sativa :
Cannabis sativa (sativa = cultivated) or Cannabis sativa subsp. sativa
Cannabis indica ("from India") Cannabis sativa subsp. indica
Cannabis ruderalis or Cannabis sativa subsp. spontanea
and sometimes Cannabis afghanica or Cannabis sativa subsp. kafiristanica, which grows high in the mountains of Hindu Kush. It's often treated as Cannabis indica, although, its size is far smaller, its leaves are broader, longer, larger, darker green, and the female flowers are extremely resinous, to protect against this harsh climate. These different specific characters justify considering it as a different, extremely potent, sub-species.
Of those distinct, wild populations, only one could be considered as "non-drug", as it's considerably less potent than others : Cannabis ruderalis. Somehow, this is of few interest, because it's very low and grow on a short season, so, it's a very bad fiber and seed producer compared to Cannabis sativa. It's absence of vegetative growth (no need of shorter days to begin flowering), controlled by a single recessive gene, makes it an interesting parent for breeding super early varieties from very late, tropical, recreational varieties.
All these species produce fully fertile hybrids and hybrid populations are not rare in the wild. They also all have a strong tendency to become a weed where introduced (yes, the wordplay was deliberate ;D)
Contrary to what popular beliefs say, you can't just consider Cannabis indica as marijuana and Cannabis sativa as industrial hemp, when the most appreciated varieties for recreational use are pure sativas. Cultivation simply neglected potency for fiber and seeds purpose and enhanced it for recreational/medicinal use.
You can see it as a double-faced entity. I see it a bit like table/wine grapes : selection led to very different look, taste, use, but they're the same plant nevertheless. Humans did the same for a lot of other crops, used for different purposes.
A more extreme example could be poppies (Papaver somniferum) : ornamental poppies on one hand and opium poppies, used to extract morphine and make heroin, on the other hand. You can legally grow every poppies you want in most of countries, as far as you don't make opium or consume them. It could be funny if I wasn't so easy to do, or I wasn't dealing with the drug considered the most harmful of all.
In fact, few people considered fiber hemp as a drug for centuries, when it still was an elemental agricultural resource, even if it would be considered so, now that we took the limit as low as 0.3% or 0.2% THC.
The last point also explains why recent varieties, that only are authorized for cultivation, are ridiculously short compared to high sativas :
As PatrickW, who lives in the most tolerant country in Europe regarding its recreational use, I'd like to make a "state of the art" concerning France.
Figures place France as the first country in Europe for regular or occasional consumption, while the law is one of the most repressive.
Contrary to other countries, the subject is almost never mentioned in the medias, surely because it's forbidden by the law to speak well of drugs.
Hopefully, industrial hemp is becoming more and more popular for ecological isolation, instead of glass wool, which is largely suspected to be carcinogen. It's also legal for farmers to grow it, but needs permissions, the legal rate is 0.2% THC, it's forbidden to sow farm seeds (you depend on seedsmen so they can sell it the price they want), you have agents all the time on your field, and, to my opinion, it yields low compared to what this plant is able to produce.
For amateurs, expensive fines and prison are enough to put you off trying it.
There are a lot of other things to do with it, as said before, but also include pain relief, authorized in some countries as Canada. We treat pain with opioids that are very addictive and psychoactive drugs, that must be dosed with care, so why not to try less extreme drugs first if it helps ? Some of its components (the cannabinoids) even have no psychoactive effects at all but are also promising for other health issues.
There also had a farmer in Switzerland, Bernard Rappaz, that legally made cosmetics, pasta, wine, essential oils, herbal tea... with it during the 90' but justice finally took care of him...
;D
