As Americans watch with despair, the BP oil spill quickly destroys the earth's oceans and aquatic life.  Americans are sick of the devastation our reliance on oil has forced on our earth, yet we are told we have no choice but to drill until every last drop is gone, to poison the planet until it is completely unlivable.  Yet we have other options, and for the sake of our children, for the sake of the continuation of life on this planet, we must seize them.

Hemp is an ancient plant with innumerable industrial uses.  The diesel engine was originally designed to run on hemp oil, and in 1940 Henry Ford found that automobile doors made of hemp plastic were stronger than those made of metal.  Hemp plastic is biodegradable.  Yet we do not run our cars on hemp oil, and we do not make our plastic out of hemp.

The official reason is that hemp is related to marijuana.  The unofficial reason is probably because the oil companies have contributed so much to political campaigns for decades that their hegemony cannot be questioned.

And so we have bankrupted our country going to war after war to defend oil interests.  We have befouled our oceans.  We are told over and over we have no other options than to be a petroleum-based civilization, and to defend petroleum at all costs.  But this is not true.

Following the 1973 oil embargo, an alternative energy movement started and was quickly killed.  At the time, the widespread argument against alternative energies was that the technologies were not ready for our volume of consumption.  Now, almost 40 years later, we are once again told we cannot get off oil because the alternatives are not ready.  However, if we had seriously invested in alternative energy sources like hemp 40 years ago, we would have become leaders in green industries.  We would not be faced with our massive unemployment problems.  We would not be deeply in debt for the decades of war we have fought to secure rights to foreign oil sources.  We would not be losing our status as a world power.  Our oceans would not be poisoned.

This petition seeks 1) to make industrial hemp agriculture legal; 2) to support initiatives to create financial incentives for technology startups and venture funds to create and market hemp-based substitutes for petroleum products.