The Social, Political, and Cultural Aspects of Hemp and Human Society

J. Carringer
July 22, 2024 (Original publication 08/12/22)

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Introduction: “Social, political, and cultural aspects of hemp in human society”

After thirty years of study and work within the cannabis industry in various activist roles and manufacturing and consulting projects, I realized that so much of my knowledge was based on hearsay, anecdotal stories, unverified or unsourced accounts, and urban legend that has been propagated throughout the industry that I willingly embraced as unsubstantiated fact. When I first began outlining this paper in my head, I believed that I had a very clear story to tell about the social, political, and cultural aspects of hemp and human society, but as I have gone further down the rabbit hole into peer-reviewed research and historical evidence, I have found that of all of the sectors of cannabis culture, my sector of industrial hemp, appears to be significantly influenced from decades of unsubstantiated claims and unverified historical accounts being the basis for modern industrial planning and projections.

Cannabis prohibition placed industrial hemp in a time capsule based on industrial work and manufacturing that was all but frozen post-WWII. Additionally, it is clear from the limited historical sources that though hemp was produced and used as an industrial, agricultural resource, much of its notoriety was based on theoretical possibilities during the early turn of the 1900s. The reality is that hemp production never had a firm agricultural foothold in the United States as compared to crops such as corn, wheat, or soy. It is worth noting that Great Britain tried to push hemp agriculture heavily in Colonial America early in their establishment and right up to the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War (Barrow, 1963, Woodward, 1929, Nettels, 1931). Further, the supply chain and manufacturing infrastructure for industrial hemp in the United States has never been sustainably established for long enough to benefit from economies of scale and realize many of the hopeful projections assigned to the crop. Everything from global politics to the evolution of agricultural and manufacturing processes of crops that produce similar product lines as hemp has impacted its relationship with humanity.

This paper provides an abridged historical account of the interaction between humanity and cannabis sativa, indica, and hemp to establish historical precedence (cannabis sativa, indica, and hemp are defined further in the “What is Cannabis?”). Further examination of modern "cannabis culture" will include personal experiences and perspectives, as well as a variety of references including peer, reviewed works to provide an ethnographic snapshot of the current state of social, political, and cultural aspects of hemp and human society.

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