While alcohol kills 150,000 Americans a year, prescription drugs kill 100,000 and cigarettes finish off another 250,000, death caused by marijuana smoking is practically unheard of. The drug war is a huge industry, run at taxpayer expense. The industry that can be built around cropping and processing industrial hemp and manufacturing its varied products, however, could lead to true self-sufficiency for many tribes. Industrial hemp has been a lucrative agricultural product for centuries with multiple applications. It is grown by farmers in dozens of countries.
Industrial hemp is useful in making paper, clothes, medicines, foods and even building materials.
It has excellent profit margins in production of oil for manufacturing nut butter, shampoos and cosmetics. Hemp stalk's anti-bacterial qualities makes it popular for making horse bedding. Additionally the crop improves soils by adding nitrogen and is potentially an ecologically renewable source of fiber for making paper without cutting trees. Undeterred by the FBI raid on industrial hemp fields in the Pine Ridge Reservation, Navajo Nation farmers are pressing for their own law. The Navajo have started by changing a previous tribal law that allowed for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.