Contributed by Josh Fryfogle
I remember bagging groceries as a kid, and learning to ask that question. I remember the indignance of some customers, the older crowd, who rejected my offer of plastic, often scolding me for even asking.
The narrative on the news was that we were killing the rainforests for our paper - and we bought that, too - even though there were paper mills and planted forests all over the Southeast US, where I worked as 15 year old boy in a grocery store.
There was a huge, so-called progressive push to plastic, from the left-leaning folks. The reasoning was that a very small amount of plastic was needed for grocery bags, compared to a significant amount of wood pulp, to create the necessary tensile strength to carry groceries. Yes, plastic was bad, but in this case, it was the lesser of two evils.
(It reminds me of the Left/Right political paradigm we are taught to believe.)
No one in the conservative Southeast would have dared mention hemp as a source of paper AND plastic, because of the political implications.
Now, in Wasilla at least, the question will be paper or canvas?
Ironic, since the word canvas comes from the word cannabis. How many of these reusable bags will be made of hemp fiber? Why aren’t we growing that fiber here in Alaska?
Because that’s how we used to make bags, with hemp, along with countless other common items, before William Randolf Hearst - the pioneer of yellow journalism (“fake news” we call it these days) - worked with his corporate cohorts to make it illegal.
Hearst was a newspaper man, and he made a strong effort to outlaw hemp production, under the guise of protecting individuals from the dangers of the flower of the plant. Yeah, sure, that makes sense. He just happened to have a big investment in timber. Pure coincidence, I’m sure.
Anyway, here we are, caught in another false paradigm. We are being given this new narrative: Get rid of plastic and go to reusable bags.
There are certain cultivar plants that humans have used for millennia. The idea that making one of those plants illegal was a good idea, without negative economic repercussions, was foolhardy. Of course that hurts the economy - it takes away a multi-use raw material!
Now we’re having yet another debate, this time in Wasilla, about a topic that would and could be moot.
Alaskans could and should be growing hemp for industry and food. Forget the counter-culture, Cheech and Chong propaganda for a minute and think about the actual role of cannabis and hemp in history.
It certainly wasn’t conjured by Santa Muerte, although her scythe has Scythian origins - an ancient people who cultivated and traded the cannabis plant in the ancient world.
The sails that brought people and pot from that old world to this continent were undoubtedly made of hemp. The paper they wrote about it on - history itself - is written on hemp.
And we’re over here in Wasilla, Alaska, ignoring the fact that this whole problem, along with many others, could be negated by a simple acceptance of that same history.
Paper or Plastic?
I don’t really care, as long as it’s made of hemp. Cheaper, cleaner and quickly renewable - better.
Paper, plastic and canvas bags can all be made from hemp. And they are all biodegradable. Really, the only reason we aren’t using hemp for all of these purposes is because of its legal status.
They had to ban it to stop people from using it, so we would adopt petroleum-based plastics into the economy.
More irony.
