Indiana Senate Committee Unanimously Approves Hemp Legalization Proposal
Yesterday Indiana’s Senate Agriculture Committee gave unanimous approval to Senate Bill 357, a measure to legalize hemp under state law.
“This is a plant that has been used for centuries throughout the world and has tremendous potential,” says Senator Richard Young, the bill’s primary sponsor.
The proposal now moves to the full Senate for debate, where its passage would send it to the House of Representatives; its passage there would send it to the governor for final consideration.says Senator Richard Young, the primary sponsor of the proposal.
“I wish Kentucky wouldn’t always be in front of us,” Indiana Farmers Union member Pam Patrick said during a public hearing for the measure, referring to the fact that Kentucky recently legalized hemp. “When I see industrial hemp, I see money.”
During the bill’s public hearing, not one individual or organization spoke in opposition.
Over thirty countries allow for the cultivation of industrial hemp, including Australia, Canada, Russia, Spain and China.
The United States is the only developed nation that retains the illegality of hemp, according to the Congressional Resource Service.
– TheJointBlog
NorCalNative
Here’s an important question this type of legislation can help answer.
That is, can hemp-based concrete possibly in combination with traditional cement be used to prevent the shrinkage and cracking of conventional masonry that is such a large factor in the failure of cement poured around fracking wells to prevent groundwater contamination?
Since HempCrete is unsuitable for foundations due to the biodegradable nature of hemp exposed to long-term moisture it cannot be used alone. However, since the carbon-sequestering properties of hemp are so important to the modern era, if HempCrete could be used in combination with regular cement we could help sequester carbon and at the same time reduce some of the effects of the carbon being released into the atmosphere by the cement.
Since current methods of protecting groundwater with a few inches of concrete has a high failure rate due to shrinking and cracking we need to look into this as a way to protect wells and property values, not to mention the health of the people living near drilling sites.
The industry claims a failure rate of 5% of wells as soon as they are drilled and over the lifetime the failure rate for wells continues to rise where at a certain point almost all wells have some rates of leakage. Could hemp provide the answer?