(Apologies to those on the above list who are not interested.) Dear Mr. Phillips, >Hemp does not require any chemicals to grow a healthy crop (the Chinese >and others have grown it for thousands of years without chemicals!!). Are you quite sure that they have grown it on the scale and with the regularity required to satisfy this and other nations' needs for paper products? I find it difficult to imagine that this would be the case, and I will welcome evidence to the contrary. >It also does not require bleaching. Given the paper industry's tendencies >to use bleach (which produces dioxin as a byproduct) in the USA, this I don't accept this as a relevent statement since you haven't yet cogently rebutted my earlier assertion that the bleaching is not a *necessary* part of paper production. >makes better since. The only reason why hemp is not grown for fiber in this >country is because some closed minded people equate it with marijuana >production. In fact, you would die of lung cancer before you would get >stoned from smoking hemp. There is a company in Portland, OR that markets >50% hemp/50% grain straw paper. The reason it hasn't gained popularity >in this country is because the timber industry monopolizes wood products >and the government subsidizes the industry with below-cost timber. The In other words, hemp's too expensive. >argument of owls vs. jobs is bogus because the timber industry exports >billions of board feet of timber to foreign countries particularly Far Would you please clarify why the export industry does not supply jobs? >Eastern countries. You obviously have been influenced by a timber industry >supported university and are unaware of the realities of our world's >native forests. Thankyou for your assessment of my faculties :-) I would be grateful if you would again consider my final questions (repeated below for your convenience), which you do not yet seem to have addressed. >> Please explain how hemp-based paper is more Earth friendly than tree-based >> paper. Please explain why you feel that replacing tree monocultures with >> hemp monocultures will successfully avert the environmental hell you >> foresee so chillingly. Furthermore, I wonder if you'd mind pointing out why asking you questions for which you have yet neither answer nor rebuttal could be seen as my being influenced by a timber industry supported university...or are you basing your assessment on some other, hitherto unsuspected quirk in my character? best wishes, Andrew. Andrew Robinson, Phone : + 1 612 625 5765 (work) Graduate student, + 1 612 644 5512 (home) Dept. of Forest Resources, FAX : + 1 612 625 5212 University of Minnesota, now hit d
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