Any product presently made from wood fibers or petroleum can be made from hemp with a tiny fraction of the toxic chemicals used to process wood and petroleum products. Hemp was a fundamental part of American history. George Washington grew hemp and strongly encouraged his fellow citizens to grow it as a way of ensuring American independence from imports. Hemp was used to make the sails of the first ships to come to America, and the Constitution of the United States is printed on hemp paper. Although opponents of hemp cultivation insist the crops would confuse law enforcement officials, cannabis legalization activists and environmentalists feel in light of our growing environmental problems, this argument is spurious.
Cannabis legalization is a civil and human rights issue as well.
The war on drugs has made institutionalized racism and sentencing disparity the norm in law enforcement. Despite studies that show African-Americans use drugs at a lesser rate than whites, data from the FBI's 1995 Uniform Crime Report show the black arrest rate for marijuana to be 2.5 times higher than for whites. They have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned at increasing rates since the 1980s, and grossly out of proportion to their numbers in the general population, or among drug users. Nationally, one of every three black males in his 20s is in prison, on parole or probation. In other words, more black youngsters will go to prison than to college.