yeah, sure…. if they want shitty, shitty marijuana.

It would be like growing sweet corn and dent corn together.  Yeah, they look similar at a distance and they’re closely related, but you don’t want them next to each other as they’ll cross pollinate and you’ll end up with bad versions of both.

Same deal here.  a patch of marijuana grown in an open field of hemp IS going to get contaminated and it’ll lower quality of BOTH crops.  Your hemp farmer doesn’t want that and if likely going rip out any patches trespassers try to add for same reason. 

and the big issue is not even the THC content.  Because most quality marijuana is intended to be grown indoors or greenhouses, its a dwarf variety. Short.  Fiber hemp is bred for height so as to maximize fiber production.  super tall. It’s going to be really obvious, really fast if you’ve got both in the same field even before you get to the point of pollination. what’s this runty bullshit doing in my field?

They also have different growing needs with regards to spacing, harvest time, etc. so the argument that you can hide marijuana in industrial hemp fields are basically bullshit.

anyway… aside from paper, hemp fiber can also be used to make earthquake resistant concrete that’s actually LIGHTER than conventional concrete while being stronger. It’s better at resisting flexing or warping, so ideal for stuff like bridges and highway supports as it’ll better resist large temperature swings and vibration. (”hempcrete” is slightly different, but makes great fire resistant insulation)

But my uncle was already a master carpenter when he went into prison, and a talented artist. The prison system of the United States had my uncle working for contractors to design and work on buildings for something like a dollar and fifty cents an hour, while promising him that every two days he worked, he would get a day off his sentence. (Anyone want to take a wild guess just how true that was?) And all those years working and spent in a prison cell, my uncle actually got better at his art and his skill. I started sending him books based on my major, botany, and he actually started working on designs that incorporated plants and solar power, from what he understood of the subjects. True solarpunk.

At fifty, when my uncle was released, he was happy to be out. Only for the prison system to try and force him back in. A minor drug charge from thirty years back, after he’d already been in prison for twenty, and a judge wanted to send him back for another ten years.

Don’t think for a second it wasn’t because the privatized prison system was profiting off him, and don’t think for one moment that he is somehow special. The privatized prison system uses prisoners as firefighters, as clean-up crews, as “contractors” for private companies, doing everything from sewing your bedclothes to building the house you live in. And they make almost nothing, then get out of prison and find the skills they acquired in prison mean shit, because no one will hire them and they can’t vote to change that.

My uncle is fifty-four years old and he has spent most of his life in prison, not even for a violent crime, mind you. He and his friends got caught smoking weed in an apartment, some twenty years back, and one of the people there had some coke on them. The judge “made an example” of them all, and they all got ten-fifteen year sentences. They all spent a decade and longer having their skills exploited with promises that never came through.

Just like everyone else in the prison system today.

do you think they were given the most royal proud mama smackdown by McGonagall like “ how DARE you infiltrate a death maze you are ELEVEN and miss granger how on earth did you solve my chessboard i”

and hermione interjected like “oh professor it wasn’t me. i’m useless at chess. it was ron.”