THE THINGS WE DO...: Beyond the smoke (08/15/99)

THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

Beyond the smoke

So what's the big stink about cannabis anyway? I have it in my home year-round, and bring it out for our most important family occasions. To me it is special, but not in the way you think. Because of the permeating, lingering aroma and the effects of marijuana smoke from the 1960s, many North Americans panic at even the mention of the hemp plant, no matter what its benefits. But while marijuana and hemp are the same species, cannabis, they are not the same. The fear of the hallucinogenic effects of cannabis blinds both the general population and the authorities to its practical and medicinal uses, which are prevalent in other parts of the world.

While marijuana and its effects remain in the headlines, more and more Canadian fields are being sown with hemp. In mid-April, Consolidated Growers and Processors of Canada Ltd. announced the construction of the largest hemp processing plant in the world in Dauphin, Manitoba. The first hemp processing plant in Canada since the 1930s, it will be an enormous economic boost to Dauphin, creating at least 100 permanent jobs. The two-operation (fiber and seed) plant will be built on about 60 hectares of land and will process hemp grown on 20,000 hectares in the region. The plant will cost about $25 million, and will be operational by the spring of 2001. Ukrainian and other Eastern European advisors have been involved in the stage of plant cultivation. Because the black-soil-rich Manitoba Parkland region in which Dauphin is located has a very large Ukrainian population from the first settlements over a century ago, hemp in a way, hemp is returning to its traditional Ukrainian roots.

Even though I am a baby boomer, I must be culturally deprived, because I smoke neither grass nor tobacco. Yet I am quite comfortable with hemp. I inherited a tablecloth from my mother-in-law that she made over 60 years ago in her village of Rybnyky, Ternopil region, Ukraine. This is not an ordinary store-bought table cloth. She made it from scratch, real scratch: sowed the hemp seeds, cultivated and weeded the plants, harvested and soaked them, retted, swingled, braked them, spun the fibers, wove the threads and embroidered the fabric once it was woven. The tablecloth is in remarkable condition, with the embroidery still vibrant, and the slightly off-white-with-a-touch-of-grey fabric still smooth and strong. Reverently I bring this tablecloth out only for Christmas Eve and Easter, and for special family celebrations such as christenings.

I also have a hempen embroidered blouse from the Yavoriv region, near Lviv, in western Ukraine, that is 60 to 70 years old, homespun, hand-sewn, and embroidered. My mother brought it back in the 1970s from her only visit to Ukraine since leaving home involuntarily during World War II. In addition to the lavish embroidery, the seams and gathers themselves are the result of fine, fancy handiwork. I doubt I could handsew a garment with such attention to both strength of construction and finery of detail. I was thrilled to receive this antique shirt, and wore it on the next Sviat Vechir (Christmas Eve). However, when I sent our family Christmas photograph to my mother, her response was unexpected. She was upset that I wore this blouse, and to my bewildered questioning replied that "in our family [i.e., her formerly wealthy family in Ukraine] we wore only the white linen cloth, never the greyer hempen cloth [which poorer families wore]. Don't wear that blouse again!" Over half a century later, family status still mattered to her.

These are my tangible connections to hemp. The plant has been around in Europe since the beginnings of agriculture back in the Neolithic (New Stone Age). As a textile plant, for Ukrainians it has been an important source of fabric, bags and rope. It has male and female plants, with the male plant producing the finer fiber for fabric, the female plant producing seeds and the rougher fiber for cord and sacks. As a food source, hemp oil was and is regarded as absolutely the best vegetable oil around. Mention hemp oil to Ukrainian old-timers (either from the Canadian prairies or from Ukraine), and their eyes light up and their faces beam - the pampushky (filled doughnuts) fried in this oil are out of this world. Back in the 1960s, there were news reports of Ukrainian farmers in Alberta being up in arms over the RCMP prohibiting them from growing "konopli" [hemp] - why, everyone knows that it is the best-tasting and healthiest food oil with the lowest cholesterol level! What do you mean people smoke it?! No kidding? Why would they do that?!

In Ukrainian tradition, hemp has both a practical and a ritual significance. As the two earliest fibers used by humans, flax and hemp are more than just sources of food and cloth, they are symbolic. Christmas customs celebrated in every Ukrainian Canadian home on Christmas Eve originated in prehistoric times, and the now sometimes incongruous rituals reflect that antiquity. We no longer sprinkle hemp, flax and poppy seeds under the tablecloth to symbolize fertility, and we no longer present the carolers with "povismo," hanks of hempen and flax fibers ready for spinning. These traditions are no longer practiced, because of our mostly urban lifestyles, and because these fibers are not cultivated as frequently in North America. Nowadays, a check for a charity or for an organization and some refreshments are the norm for carolers. In Ukrainian tradition, the earliest "gifts" to mankind are still celebrated at Christmas: the first everyday grains, the gathered foods and fibers for clothing. The pre-Christian koliadky sing about the first golden threads being spun and the fabrics being woven. Throughout Europe, including England, there are remnants of ancient rituals celebrating hemp.

Sure, sure, all this is interesting, but get to the smoking part! Sorry to disappoint you, dear reader, but in Ukrainian tradition there is little to report on the hallucinogenic front, and no mention of smoking at all. Herodotus does mention that the Scythians threw hemp seeds on the hot rocks in their saunas, and then emerged laughing. They lived on the territory of Ukraine and may have been some of our ancestors, but in all my research I have found no mention of hemp products being used by Ukrainians to get high (except in recent times, under influence from the West). When I ask old-timers about smoking the stuff, they look at me strangely. "It stank! Who would want to smoke that?!" "We wouldn't even feed it to the geese!" "After it soaked in the pond for two weeks, do you think anyone in their right mind would want it?" They, like I, did not even understand what part was smoked.

One woman said that hemp was sown thickly, because each stalk meant that much more fiber, so there were few leaves along the sides. Only later did I learn that the best smoking was from the tops. My mother-in-law mentioned how difficult it was to weed the hemp, because you could only work in it for short periods of time, since after a half-hour or so you had a terrible headache from the smell, especially on a hot sunny day. This very strong smell is noted in folklore, and the saying "He jumped out like Philip out of the hemp" [vyskochyv iak Pylyp z konopel] describes a rabbit hiding himself and his scent in the hemp stand, and then jumping out, dazed from the smell, after his pursuers have passed. In western Ukraine, under Polish rule before World War II, Ukrainian farmers grew tobacco illegally (to avoid high Polish taxes). Ironically for us now, they hid their tobacco by planting it inside stands of legal hemp, which was higher and smelled much stronger than the tobacco.

Hemp was used medicinally as a painkiller, especially during childbirth labor and other extreme pain, for sleep-inducement and as a poultice. No matter which Ukrainian medical or folk source I check, hemp is listed as a medicinal plant, with no mention of smoking (even for medicinal purposes) or hallucinogenic use. The encyclopedic dictionary Likarski Roslyny (Medicinal Plants) published in Kyiv by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1991, lists konopli posivni [seeding hemp], cannabis sativa as one of the 1,297 medicinal plants of Ukraine cultivated as a textile and oil-producing plant that often grows wild. The seeds (semen cannabis sativae) and the tops of the female plants (with the flowers and leaves) are used for medicinal purposes. In folk medicine, an infusion of the leaves is used as a sedative, an analgesic, and a hypnotic (sleep-inducer). Hemp "molochko," i.e. "milk" - an infusion of crushed hemp seeds - is used as an antiseptic, diuretic, softener, emollient and a general tonic. The infusion is prescribed for infections of the digestive and genital-urinary tracts, hemorrhoids, dropsy, scrofula, tuberculosis, nervous exhaustion and hypoalactia. Folk medicine suggests hemp seed sauteed with salt as an aphrodisiac ("strengthens sexual activity" - the oldtimers' Viagra?). As an analgesic poultice, heated and crushed hemp seed is applied to ease the pain of mastitis, chronic rheumatism and burns, and to soften boils and abscesses. Cannabis is used internally and externally, sometimes in combination with other medicinal plants.

The non-medicinal hallucinogenic use of cannabis and poppies (papaver) began only a few decades ago in Ukraine, under Western influence. There have been stories of poppy pods disappearing overnight from gardens with the alleged addicts apparently unaware that it is only the unripe pod that produces the latex for opium. While there may be a remnant of the drug in the dried poppy seeds (as those who have taken a drug test after eating poppy seed bagels found out), but it is minute.

Renowned Canadian poet Andrew Suknaski wrote "Konopli" ("The Land They Gave Away," Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1982). In it "dido's" [grandfather's] friends suffer withdrawal pangs because of the scarcity of tobacco during World War I, and smoke whatever leaves are around, from bullrushes and nettles, "and simply anything." But Suknaski's dido [in this case, great-grandfather]: "... silent as granite in his corner of the living room, was often lost in a cloud of rising smoke like a chimney on a cold windless winter morning, baba coughing and chiding dido ... dido always mumbling between well-spaced blissful eternities and keeping his secret. 'Faino babo ... faino ... vse bude iak zoloto' ... [beautiful, old woman, beautiful ... everything will be like gold!] " But this dido's "secret" indicates that cannabis was not ordinarily smoked, since the other didos try smoking many other things first, and not konopli.

The cannabis grown for fiber differs in potency from that grown for hallucinogenics. The line often repeated is that one would have to smoke a field of the former to get any semblance of a high. Now that marijuana use is being eased in legally for medicinal purposes, and Canadian fields are growing industrial hemp for fabric, cord and paper on an experimental basis (hemp fabric, what a novel concept, eh?), maybe North American society will accept the ancient practical uses of this useful medicinal and fiber plant. We need to look beyond the smoke - and the smoking - to see the positive uses of this ancient plant. How does the song go? Everything old is new again.

I long to taste pampushky fried in hemp oil.

An abridged version of this article appeared in The Dauphin Herald (May 25).

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