Dear Editor
INDUSTRIAL hemp has tremendous potential and Guyana desperately needs another agricultural commodity.

The market for industrial hemp globally includes over 25,000 products.
Guyanese farmers and manufacturers urgently call for the removal of the barriers to facilitate the commercial production of industrial hemp in the country.
Industrial hemp is derived from the same cannabis family as marijuana, but contains insignificant levels of THC, the chemical that gets users high.

Industrial hemp can be used to produce things ranging from clothing, food, building materials, cosmetics and body care products, furniture, textile, automobiles and paints to name a few.

The industrial hemp plant grows quickly, is easy to cultivate and can be used as a staple in any industry; in addition, this plant is a renewable resource that ecologically benefits the environment in which it is planted.

Mr. Editor, the Guyanese people will be thrilled with this revolutionary breakthrough in a time of economic and environmental disaster and when legalised will be lauded as timely solution for a number of Guyana’s pressing problems.

This plant exists and human beings have been using it for thousands of years. In fact research shows that early human civilisation was built on this crop.

It is illegal to grow industrial hemp in Guyana, because of hemp’s unfortunate cousin marijuana; but despite the fact that the two plants are biologically very different and that smoking hemp will not get you high.

The country’s laws make no distinction between the two plants, although Guyana signed unto and appeal for the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotics in 1961, renaming it as a narcotic.

Industrial hemp is a crop with seemly unlimited potential and it’s time for President Granger and his APNU+AFC administration to give the No-objection for its production in the country.

Considering the benefits of growing industrial hemp, not only should it be legalised now, but the government should encourage farmers to grow it.
Regards
Maressa Prahalad