Up in Smoke: Hemp

It’s standing in the ditch with its scrawny arms outstretched. At its center, the pole-like stem is about an inch thick and slightly faceted. It rises above my head. Its leaves have gone from robust hand-shaped to curled and dried fragments entangled with clusters of little seeds at the ends of each branch. The seeds are small, each with a fragile husk. It is known as feral cannabis, marijuana, ditchweed, hemp, or Cannabis sativa L. It’s a common sight in the ditches around Owl Acres.  

It got there because in 1775 hemp was imported to North America and planted in Kentucky for its fiber and seeds. By 1910 hemp farming was practiced across the Midwest, including Iowa. The hemp may have been smoked as marijuana, but primarily it was sold for industrial uses. And then the government started worrying about it. They thought it would make the young people go crazy and violent, or that using marijuana would lead to harder drugs like opium and heroin. So in 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act which tried to control the sale of hemp by taxing it and making its possession illegal except for very specific industrial purposes. Iowa joined the fray the same year by passing its own Uniform Narcotic Drug Act, making it illegal to possess, manufacture or prescribe hemp and hemp products.  

Wars bring new necessities. During World War II, fiber became hard to get from the usual sources in the Philippines. The shortage forced Congress and the Iowa Legislature to rethink the hemp issue. So in 1942, five years after the first laws were passed outlawing hemp, the government initiated the Hemp for Victory program which encouraged farmers to grow it again. The government built 42 hemp processing plants in the Midwest in 1943, and issued marijuana stamps to the farmers. Over 400,000 acres were planted in hemp between 1942 and 1945. Not to be left out, the Iowa Legislature passed the Narcotic Drugs Act in 1943. This act allowed Iowa farmers to grow hemp if they had a license.

In 1970, Congress made all hemp illegal with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. It designated hemp as a schedule one controlled substance. Forty-four years later, in the 2014 Farm Bill, restrictions on hemp possession and production for industrial uses were relaxed, allowing supervised pilot projects to be conducted by states or universities. In 2018, Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced a bill to legalize production of industrial hemp. It didn’t pass, but the language was included in the 2018 Farm Bill, so now hemp farming for industrial purposes is allowed with some restrictions, and hemp is being considered as a source for biofuel.

Hemp is classified in the family Cannabaceae. Hemp and cannabis are essentially the same plant, although cannabis has been bred to provide higher concentrations of THC, its phychoactive ingredient. Industrial hemp was bred for its seeds and its fiber. The wild plants have been growing and spreading at will for over 100 years, and I am told that smoking the wild variety would be a very disappointing experience. 

Hemp is an annual plant that grows erect from seed every year. It tends to grow in ditches, edge and disturbed areas. During the summer, its leaves look like hands with five to seven long leaflets that remind me of dark green fingers. Plants are either male pollen-producers, or female seed-producers. It flowers in early summer, and seeds mature by mid-October. Flowers don’t offer anything to the bees and butterflies. They are small and wind-pollinated.

The hemp plant is native to Asia and has been grown there for 4,000 years. It was known in Egypt by 1500 B.C.E. and made its way to Ukraine and into Europe by 1000 B.C.E. It was a valuable fiber, food and oil plant and was also known for its recreational and medical benefits. Its fiber has been used in plaster, concrete, textiles, ropes, paper, fuel, fiberboard, insulation, animal bedding, mulch and compost and myriad other applications. Its seeds provide oil that is used in cosmetics, oil paints, shampoos and lotions. The seeds are nutritious and can be eaten or made into “milk”, oil, or cheese substitutes. The seeds don’t contain THC. That’s found in the young buds of the female plant.

This stalk of a once-vibrant hemp plant in the ditch is long past its budding season. It will fall over and feed the birds and mice throughout the winter and reseed the plant in the spring. Come spring, if the county burns the ditches, it will go up in smoke.

Photo by Author. Alt text: Standing upright against the blue sky of late summer, the (in)famous Ditchweed, aka Iowana, aka Hemp.  Hand-shape leaves made of 5 to 7 long, saw-tooth leaflets.  Seed clusters run along rambling branches that stand out from a beefy stem.