The Trillion Dollar Crop

The Trillion Dollar Crop

Chad Doherty

RES 110

July 16, 2010

The Trillion-dollar Crop

The nation’s debt is staggering at 13 trillion dollars, and continues to grow exponentially. Advise Men stated, “In answering the question what is the cause for the national debt, the only one right answer is simply that the country’s government gives out more money than it takes in” (Advise Men, 2008). Through the legalization of Industrial hemp and female marijuana growth, the government could add trillions of dollars to our debt and eliminate it within five years. First, legalizing industrial hemp would alleviate our national debt by trillions of dollars. Second, female Hemp growth in America would gross 43 billion dollars a year. Third, by taxing more harmful drugs, using our own oil and higher taxes we could cut our deficit but not nearly what legalizing all forms of marijuana growth would do. Legalizing the growth of industrial hemp in America would create a new gross national product (GNP).

By legalizing hemp we would create a new GNP, which in turn would eliminate our debt. With the ability to make roads, highways, and foundations out of hemp concrete that would last for centuries, we could eliminate road taxes and costly repairs. Bio-diesel made from hemp seed oil creates oxygen when consumed by motor vehicles, instead of producing acid rain and smog clouds. According to Meints, America could eliminate non-biodegradable plastics and cars by reintroducing Henry Ford's 100-year-old dream of building cars made from hemp with a plastic hemp car body that can withstand a blow 10 times greater than steel without denting, weighs one thousand pounds less than steel, hence improving gas mileage, can run on a vegetable oil-based all natural hemp fuel, and is completely biodegradable (Meints, 2007).

According to Herer, Randolph Hearst held stock in the tree paper companies, and when he found out that hemp paper out produced tree paper, he and the paper industry decided to...