Читать книгу Craig Lee's Kentucky Hemp Story - Joe Domino - Страница 3

I want this book to help others excel within the American hemp industry. It’s time for one era of hemp advocates to pass the torch on to the next generation.

In gratitude for all the help I’ve received—throughout my industrious career—I feel obliged to return posterity the favor. And the only method I know how is through storytelling. I hope the challenges I’ve encountered will enlighten the reader on the re-birthing of an exciting new American industry. A green industry filled with good-hearted individuals that deserve a fair playing field to exercise their passions. A fairer playing field than the one I inherited when my long and strange hemp journey first began.

Unfortunately, arcane U.S. policies still hamper the proliferation of a domestic hemp industry, even today, in 2019. The status quo struggles to recognize the value of an American hemp industry that will create jobs, reduce carbon emissions, spur innovation, and lessen our nation’s reliance on foreign imports.

The facts don’t lie. Hemp is the fastest growing source of cellulose biomass on Earth and is the most obvious resource to replace trees for paper. Moreover, hemp has a superior seed oil that once fueled the tanks of the third reich. Hemp has persistently enhanced the livelihoods of homo sapiens for as long as there has been agriculture. Hemp is patiently awaiting its destiny to become the planet’s most important sustainable bioresource.

I speak from thirty years of experience when identifying the crucial problem facing the hemp industry in America. The problem is the severe lack of education. Education! Education! Education! I consider myself, first and foremost, a hemp educator. In other words, I take the responsibility of sharing my knowledge about this industry seriously. And I am rapidly becoming an endangered species as the industry becomes larger and greedier.

When I first began my hemp journey, in 1993, very few people could “walk the walk” and “talk the talk.” You could fit the industry around a crapshoot table. Everybody knew you by name. And there was a mutual respect amongst pioneers. Manifesting the role of an Industrial Hemp Advocate took guts. This industry became a higher calling for many. Joining this industry was like taking a leap of faith down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole. This Industry changes lives. It certainly changed mine.

Many of my close friends called me crazy for pursuing an industry where the primary input was illegal. So with such little upside, why did ole’ Craig Lee jump in with two feet and never look back? Besides having more energy than I do now, in 2019, at the ripe age of sixty-two? I’ll be happy to explain.

I became a hemp activist because I felt it was the right thing to do. My commitment to the hemp industry was an extension of my lifelong support for my countrymen, friends, and family. It was a sacramental effort—for all those that I loved—whether they knew it or not. I was a full-blooded American patriot that naively believed my government was making an honest mistake. A forgivable mistake, at least I thought, confusing hemp, “that bracelet material,” with a schedule one drug. Once I dug deep into the illegality of cannabis, I was astonished by what I discovered. By simply germinating hemp seeds, one was committing a felony. Moreover, any interstate or international trade of cannabis seeds was a federal offense. Each crime carried heavy time.

Once hempsters nationwide began politically and financially organizing in the late 80s and early 90s, no one was doing so for personal gain. These early upstarts were beginning an industry from scratch for the sole purpose to protest the government’s draconian grip on the local farmer.

With limited resources, this transnational band of passionate hemp activists attempted to reverse seventy years of government brainwashing. Their stance was as hard lined as their oppositions’—legalize overnight or lock us up!

The harbingers of the political hemp movement were humbled quickly. There was a much steeper climb to legalization than anyone first anticipated. But, with every small victory, the cause grew. And, with every devastating defeat, the cause learned and responded in kind. Without a coherent playbook to keep everyone on the same page, a lot of our early efforts were in vain. We shot ourselves in the foot a lot. We learned fast not to taint our industrial hemp messaging with talk of marijuana legalization.

To move the cannabis issue forward, hemp and marijuana needed independent platforms. Marijuana was that elephant in the room that entangled one leaf with one substance. All cannabis cultivars were the same in the law’s eye. Low-THC industrial hemp was recognized as a schedule one drug without exception. That “bracelet material,” the DEA claimed, was some pretty dangerous stuff.

Beyond legal impediments, no infrastructure existed in the U.S. to process hemp into viable raw material for manufacturers. After seventy years of hemp prohibition, the powers that be were content subsisting on corn, soy, tobacco, and cotton. The hemp critics were quick to remind us of that fact too: “There’s no market for hemp! It’s safer for farmers to stick with the staples.” Yet, there was nothing going to prevent my peers and me from unleashing the next generation of green innovation. A more sustainable future driven by foods, composites, textiles, and fuels made with hemp. Wasn’t being an environmentalist and a capitalist the most American thing to do?

Here’s the point: if you don’t wake up and smell the roses—then they may take the roses from you too! Just like that. No more roses. Would you like that? Does this sound very democratic to you? True advocates lift their noses to smell a trail with bloodhound efficiency. They will exploit the entire flower supply chain to discover where, and at what exact point, the rose disruption occurred. No one has the right to take your roses. And no one has the right to take away the one crop I’ve spent a quarter century liberating.

The father of the modern hemp industry, Jack Herer, convinced me of the miraculous potential of a hemp-based economy. My aspiration is to convince the reader what Jack and I have already accepted as fact: hemp is a miracle that can save the world.