With the cannabis boom has come an explosion in consumer use and demand for CBD oil. The market is already a billion-dollar industry and growing bigger each day but education and legal policy lags like a cheetah with a broken leg.

Academic institutions are decades behind on research and understanding how cannabis works with your endocannabinoid system. The majority of the studies and knowledge about cannabis come from Israel - where Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, the pioneer of cannabis research, lives and studies the topic to this day.

What's most frustrating is the United States government holds a patent titled "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants." Yet, they refuse to acknowledge the medicinal benefits of cannabis.

Here at GLAUX CHEM®, we won't stand idly by this nonsense and make every effort to educate our tribe about cannabis. In this exclusive blog, we explain what makes hemp oil and CBD oil different so you can make conscious buying decisions.

What is cannabis?
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, cannabis is a class of flowering plants in the Cannabaceae family. There are three generally recognized plant types in this group and named Cannabis indica, Cannabis sativa, and Cannabis ruderalis.

You visually tell these different plants apart by the shapes and sizes of the leaves. All three of these cannabis plants produce a unique chemical class of fatty compounds called phytocannabinoids.

To understand how these three types of cannabis plants are connected, you can compare them to different kinds of peppers—like bell pepper, a jalapeno versus a habanero pepper. Meaning, all three peppers belong to the same plant family, but each looks, smells, and tastes different


The three types of cannabis plants
How are hemp and marijuana distinguished?
Most people are not able to tell the difference between a hemp and marijuana plant by just looking at one. If you keep up with the news in the cannabis industry, surely you've read or heard stories about law enforcement wrongfully seizing pounds of "marijuana" when the confiscated stuff was hemp. This unfortunate mistake happens all the time.

The real distinction between hemp and marijuana comes from the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) produced in the flowers or buds. Generally speaking, hemp plants produce low levels of THC and will not get you high.

In contrast, marijuana plants are ripe with THC once you smoke or consume marijuana, well, hello, kite city.

Here is a list of things you can use to contrast the two plants:

Hemp

Cannot get you high
Flowers contain less than 0.3% THC by dry weight
Are cultivated outdoors for industrial applications
Seeds, stalks, and leaves used to produce medicine like CBD oil and consumer goods like clothing, paper, fuel, and ropes
Marijuana

Will get you high
Flowers can contain up to 30% THC by dry weight
Farmed indoor or outdoor for medicinal applications
Used to make cannabis oil, extracts, edibles, and topicals
Historical facts about hemp
The first recorded use of hemp dates back to China around 1500 BCE before the time the Egyptians built the great pyramids. Talk about an old plant, whew! These ancient folks cultivated hemp for the production of clothing, paper, food, or as a medicine to treat pain, which is similar to the many applications we rely on the plant for today.

In the United States, historical records suggest the first hemp plants introduced in the Colonies by the 16th century. Hemp was an integral part of our nation during the 1700s that farmers were required to grow the plant. This crop was utilized to fabricate rope and rigging for ships, paper, and fuel, to name a few things.

A fact people do not know is Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. Also, our first president George Washington grew hemp, and the great Honest Abe Lincoln, who famously freed the slaves, used hemp fuel to power his lamps.

How awesome, right? With such a rich history rooted in our past, it is hard to believe hemp was outlawed.


Photo by Matteo Paganelli on Unsplash
Industrial uses of hemp
Hemp is inarguably one of the most versatile and sustainable plants on the planet—anything from cotton, plastic, or petroleum you can make from hemp.

From the plant leaves, stalks, and flowers; every piece of the plant is harvested and processed to produce consumer goods or medicine. Clothes, paper, and plastics, for example, are processed from the high fibrous plant stems that are ripe with a substance called lignan.

Lignan is a tough woody like substance used to make a natural concrete conveniently named "hempcrete." Some perks of using this material as a building block for homes include soaking up carbon dioxide from the air, plus fire and pest resistance.

At a time when our planet is suffocating from plastic pollution, warming, and burning at unprecedented rates, the resurgence in hemp goods is everything our world needs to survive and thrive.

If you need a constant and even supply of cannabidiol throughout the day, consider patches. I buy them through the by link section. They're very convenient for those with a busy schedule and don't have time to constantly apply oil. I apply one patch to my shoulder in the morning, and it lasts for up to twelve hours. It helps maintain a calm state and reduces everyday stress.