Abstract
Bringing It Home, a documentary film by Linda Booker and Blaire Johnson, covers the past, present, and future of industrial hemp throughout the world, including the United States. The documentary begins by informing the viewers that industrial hemp is legal to grow in nations around the world but is illegal in the United States. With this in mind, the film is separated into three main sections. First, Bringing It Home covers what industrial hemp is and the different uses. These uses include a range of applications, including construction and “hempcrete,” food, textiles, and plastics. The documentary contains interviews with numerous independent entrepreneurs, each of whom talks about the benefits of using hemp to produce goods. These goods include, but are not limited to, door panels for cars, cooking oils and dressing, insulation and drywall, soaps, cosmetics, and clothing. Some of the benefits of hemp are economic, like the fact that using hempcrete, a material with similar uses to concrete, creates a less hazardous construction worksite and therefore requires less safety equipment; while other advantages are health-focused, like its nontoxicity and mold resistance. During interviews with other hemp advocates, other hemp-based products are suggested to have similar economic and physical pros.
Second, the film includes an overview of the history of hemp, starting with the use of hemp for cloth in China in 800 BC and ending with the current political environment surrounding the plant. This section contains numerous examples of the hemp plant being used in significant eras throughout the past. One interesting example in the film pointed out that the paper on which the Declaration of Independence was signed was made from hemp.
The third, and last, section provides a critique of the current U.S. policy and offers insights into the possibilities of industrial hemp use in the future. The film evaluates the potential economic gains that legalization could bring to the United States. Suggested economic benefits include business growth in the United States due to hemp growth, cultivation, and processing as well as employment opportunities that come with business creation. Additionally, the necessary importation of hemp causes the end products to be more expensive. Therefore, legalization may lower the cost of hemp-based goods for the consumer. Other countries have adopted policies allowing industrial hemp’s growth while still controlling the plant’s growth and distribution. For example, the United Kingdom requires a license and a criminal background check for hemp farmers as well as restricts growth to certain locations. Further, the crop is tested to confirm that the plant is of an approved type with low levels of THC.
While the overall topic of this film was quite interesting, I found the organization of topics to be confusing. The film began by featuring a personal account of a father, Anthony, who was using hemp to build his daughter, Bailey, a chemical-free home. Bailey is nonverbal and on the autism spectrum, and Anthony contends that she experiences environmental triggers due to the traditional construction of their home. He believes that homes built with hempcrete offer a healthier option that lessens negative health outcomes. While this was an emotional and attention-grabbing story and shows how industrial hemp can benefit individuals at a micro level, it did not fit within the structure of the rest of the film’s more macro perspective on how industrial hemp can be advantageous to the U.S. society as a whole.
Additionally, there is a point in the film where Anthony himself suggests that “nobody knows if it’s the air we’re breathing, the water we’re drinking, the food we’re eating, the medicine we’re taking . . . ,” referring to issues with human well-being, including autism. This specific quote illustrates that there is great uncertainty in the causes of disorders and diseases today, which led me to desire the views of a scientist to explain to the viewers the scientific background of hemp and its known benefits. The lack of a scientific perspective is a noted deficit of the film. There were numerous people interviewed, but nearly all were entrepreneurs or lobbyists who had a vested interest in hemp. There lacked a scholarly or scientific perspective of whether hempcrete really is cleaner and why or to explain whether hemp cloth is more natural and better for people to buy. The film contains a thorough discussion of the perceived benefits of hemp and how other countries are growing the crop and profiting, but the film fails to offer an unbiased independent perspective on the validity of the claims of health benefits.
In addition, I had hoped the film would offer more integration of the impact of hemp from the criminal justice perspective. The film contained an interview with one criminal justice lobbyist, John Lovell of the California Narcotic Officers Association and the California Police Officers Association, but failed to delve deeper. In fact, the only suggestion as to why criminal justice officials are in opposition to industrial hemp legalization is offered by a lobbyist for a nonprofit called Vote Hemp, which advocates for the removal of barriers to hemp farming in the United States. This lobbyist states that law enforcement claims that officers cannot tell the difference between marijuana and hemp plants in farm fields. He calls it “ridiculous” and points to the “more than 30 different countries [where industrial hemp is grown] where law enforcement doesn’t have a problem.” While the film details the benefits of industrial hemp, it does not give a thorough explanation of why criminal justice officials believe it should remain outlawed in the United States. The film is almost entirely focused on advocating for the legalization of industrial hemp growth in the United States, but I believe the justification for this process would have been stronger if the documentary had presented the flip side of the argument more completely.
The target audience of the documentary seems to be environmental activists. Most of the film is focused on the health benefits of using hemp products, like hemp oil and fabric, as opposed to traditional products, such as olive oil and cotton. Bringing It Home may also be informative for economists because the film also stresses the monetary gains that the United States could have if hemp was legalized. Growing hemp plants is currently restricted in the United States, but the purchase of hemp products is not. Therefore, the United States is forced to import hemp goods, which leads to lost revenue from taxes, wages, and employment. In 2012, Americans bought $450 million worth of hemp goods, all of which were grown in other places. A specific example is Nutiva, an American environmentally conscious food supplier, which is the largest purchaser of organic hemp in the world. The company buys 3 million pounds of organic hemp seeds from Canada each year, leading in loss of economic opportunity for the United States. While Nutiva primarily focuses on hemp seeds, oils, and shakes, other examples of hemp-based items that Americans import from other nations include mayonnaise and salad dressing, milk, cosmetics, soap, and fabric.
In addition to benefiting community activists and economists, I believe that this film could be used in an upper-level undergraduate sociology and/or criminal justice classroom. Specifically, this film would be a useful addition to a Drugs and Society or Deviance course as well as an Environmental Sociology or Sociology of Health course. While it is valuable, I would strongly recommend that instructors use this film in tangent with other resources. When including this documentary as part of the curriculum in crime-focused classes, it would be important to give students more information from the criminal justice professionals’ perspective as to why industrial hemp growth should remain illegal because they may face this argument in their future careers. In a Drugs and Society course, this film could also be used when discussing the changing views of drugs in American society. It offers a brief but informational history of hemp, which would fit well within the class periods regarding the history of drug use and drug regulation in the United States. When used in an Environmental Sociology or Sociology of Health course, it would be a beneficial film to give students information about society’s ever-changing views on different environmentally sustainable and body-nourishing food options.
For both criminal justice– and health-focused classes, I believe students would benefit from a discussion following the film. Due to the controversial nature of the topic, I believe that the instructor would be the best discussion leader. Dialogue could center on a variety of topics, including who benefits and who loses from legalization, possibly centering on large corporations, like Monsanto, and their interests in the industrial hemp debate. Within a criminal justice course, it would be worthwhile to focus on whether the growth of industrial hemp in the United States would be a step closer to marijuana legalization and what that means to criminal justice policy. Additionally, it would be important to address whether law enforcement really can tell the difference between marijuana and hemp and whether criminal justice officials have the time and expertise needed to monitor hemp’s growth. For this criminal justice–focused conversation, it would be constructive to address the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) arguments against legalizing industrial hemp. The DEA’s stance focuses on the difficulty of distinguishing between plants as well as the possibility of using industrial hemp to get high (Grim 2013).
Overall, I believe that Bringing It Home would be a beneficial addition to an undergraduate classroom. The documentary is very informational, but due to its positive bias toward industrial hemp legalization, I caution instructors against using this as a stand-alone resource. I suggest using it in conjunction with an open conversation, with extra resources featuring opposing views on industrial hemp, like the DEA’s arguments critical of industrial hemp, in order to give students a more broad understanding of all of the processes at work, including politics and economics.