Hemp can make virtually any building material including caulking, cement, fiberboard, flooring, insulation, paneling, particleboard, plaster, plywood, stucco, reinforced concrete, mortar, and biodegradable plastic. Hemp hurd can be compressed into foundations which are seven times stronger than concrete, half as heavy, and three times more elastic. Even under extreme pressure hemp-reinforced buildings will bend, but are less likely to break, and actually continue to get harder and stronger after they set.

Both the bast and the hurd fiber from the marijuana stalk can make fiberboard and other composite building materials. In fact, research in 1993 at Washington State University's Wood Science Laboratory, which was spearheaded by Harrisburg, Oregon lumberyard owner and OCTA Chief Petitioner, William Conde, proved that producing fiberboard from hemp makes a building material that can be, using the primary bast fiber, stronger than steel.

Some studies indicate that an acre of hemp, in addition to its fiber production, will produce 300 gallons of oil that can be used for either food or fuel, plus more than three tons of residual presscake, (Notre Dame 1975) containing substantial nutritional value, including protein. The same acre of hemp will also produce bast fiber, for canvas, rope, lace and linen, and the hurd fiber for paper and building materials.

With new technologies, the cost of hemp had dropped a hundredfold, from $0.50 per ton down to $0.005 per ton, much the way cotton had after the invention of the cotton gin. The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a study in 1916, Bulletin 404, called "Hemp Hurds as a Papermaking Material", which said that hemp hurds made the best grade of paper and produced more than four times as much paper as trees. Hemp hurds are the waste material from producing hemp bast fiber for canvas, rope, lace and linen from the stalks of the marijuana plant. Those stalks produce roughly 15 percent to 30 percent bast fiber, with the remainder being hurd fiber.