Industrial hemp is non-psychoactive varieties of the Cannabis plant grown for fiber and seed. Hemp has a remarkable number of beneficial uses, and we support its use in agriculture, manufacturing and trade. Hemp oil improves our soaps because it contains such a high proportion of poly-unsaturated fatty acids which make our soap milder and less drying.
The Bronner family is committed to helping transition our major industries away from polluting, unsustainable materials and methods to cleaner, sustainable ones. Hemp’s excellent fiber can replace virgin timber pulp in paper, glass fibers in construction and automotive composites, and pesticide-intensive cotton in textiles. Because of its huge market potential and high biomass/cellulose content, hemp is an ideal future crop for producing bio-ethanol and bio-plastics. However, the U.S. government, alone among the major industrialized nations, effectively prohibits domestic hemp cultivation — due primarily to the “reefer madness” and confusion regarding hemp’s psychoactive cousin, “marijuana.”
In 2001, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), under the Bush administration, attempted to destroy the U.S. hemp industry, issuing regulations purporting to interpret existing law to declare hemp illegal and seizing shipments of hemp seed and oil at the Canadian border. Dr. Bronner’s funded and coordinated the hemp industry’s protracted and ultimately successful litigation with the DEA, culminating in a clear victory on February 6, 2004 in the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. David Bronner serves on the Vote Hemp board and is currently President of the Hemp Industries Association (HIA).
The Bronner family is supporting Vote Hemp and the HIA’s legal, media, grassroots and lobbying efforts to recommercialize industrial hemp in the U.S. We teamed up with Gertrude Spindler to market her vegan, organic, gluten-free hemp snack bars (ALPSNACK), from which all profits are donated to hemp advocacy.
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