USA Today: Industrial Hemp Support Takes Root

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-22-hemp-crop_x.htm

'Industrial' hemp support takes root

By Donna Leinwand

USA TODAY
November 22, 2005

David Monson is a conservative Republican in North Dakota's legislature.
He's also a farmer who believes that a new cash crop could revitalize his
state's agricultural industry, which has been suffering from poor harvests
and depressed soy and corn prices.

That policy has led to an explosion in goods containing high-fiber,
high-protein hemp that has been fueled by Americans' thirst for organic
products - and perhaps by the tie some consumers see between hemp and
marijuana, a counterculture symbol for decades. It also has put the cannabis
plant at the center of a battle between unlikely foes: angry farmers such as
Monson who are leading increasingly vocal calls for the U.S. government to
legalize the growing of what's known as "industrial" hemp, and federal
anti-drug officials who say that allowing such crops would create a slippery
slope toward legalizing marijuana.

Led by Monson, North Dakota's Legislature has passed laws to make hemp
farming legal - if the U.S. government ever allows it. The laws would
require hemp growers to undergo criminal background checks and agree to
subject their plants to tests for THC.

Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Montana and West Virginia also have passed
hemp-farming bills. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced such a bill in
Congress in June, but it hasn't advanced in the face of opposition by the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House's anti-drug office.

The DEA says allowing farmers to grow hemp in the USA would undermine the
war on drugs. It says marijuana growers would be able to camouflage their
crop with similar-looking hemp plants, and that DEA agents would have
difficulty quickly telling the difference.

"Let's not be naïve," says Tom Riley of the White House Office on National
Drug Control Policy. "The pro-dope people have been pushing hemp for 20
years because they know that if they can have hemp fields, then they can
have marijuana fields. It's ... stoner logic."

Monson says he and his supporters don't intend to grow illegal drugs. "We
have answers for all the (DEA's) concerns."

Other North Dakotans say they resent attempts to cast an agricultural and
economic issue as a "pothead" movement. "It's a silly argument," says North
Dakota Agricultural Commissioner Roger Johnson. "Does (Monson) sound like a
druggie?"

Johnson says North Dakota and other states are considering a lawsuit to
challenge the ban, he says. "It's legal for us to import the (hemp) stalks
and the seed and turn them into clothes and food, but it's not legal for us
to grow it. What's the sense in that?"

Expanding product lines

During the past five years, hemp products have popped up all over the
marketplace.

Health food stores stock Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps and French Meadow
Bakery's Healthy Hemp Sprouted Bread. Celebrities such as Sex and the City's
Sarah Jessica Parker have sported Deborah Lindquist's silk and hemp-blend
clothing. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jackson Browne and the Foo Fighters
have used hemp-blend paper from Living Tree Paper for CD inserts.

"It's growing by leaps and bounds," says Carolyn Moran of Living Tree Paper
in Eugene, Ore. Living Tree uses Canadian-grown hemp in its products. She
expects sales for the 12-year-old company to double this year to $4 million
and to rise because people concerned about the environment "are willing to
pay a little more for green products."

Lynn Gordon of the French Meadow Bakery & Café in Minneapolis introduced
hemp bread to her customers in 2000. "It's high in fiber, high in protein,
vitamin E, essentially fatty acids. It's high in everything, but you don't
get high from it," Gordon says.

Hemp products still account for only a small percentage of the $15 billion a
year market for organic goods, but the Hemp Industries Association says
sales are rising by 50% a year. Gero Leson, an agricultural researcher in
Berkeley, Calif., says hemp products will account for about $15 million this
year in retail food sales and $40 million in cosmetics and body products.

In Canada, hemp farmers are boosting production to meet rising demand, the
Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance says. Canadian farmers planted more than 24,000
acres of hemp this year, nearly triple the 2004 total.

In 1999, the DEA moved to ban imports and production of hemp food products
that could contain trace amounts of THC. Sellers of hemp goods took the
government to federal court, and while the case was active many stores
declined to stock hemp products. The hemp product sellers won their case in
February 2004, and imports of hemp fiber, seed and oil accelerated.

"Now that the DEA cloud over the market has lifted, sales are really
exploding," says David Bronner of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, founded by his
grandfather in Escondido, Calif.

'Serious commodity'

Growing hemp used to be legal in the USA. During World War II, the
government urged farmers to grow it for much-needed rope and textiles. But
in 1970, Congress designated hemp - along with marijuana and heroin - as a
"Schedule 1" drug under the Controlled Substances Act, making it illegal to
grow hemp without a license from the DEA.

Today, the USA is the only developed nation that has not established hemp as
a crop, the Congressional Research Service says. Great Britain lifted its
ban in 1993; Germany did so in 1996 and Canada followed two years later. The
European Union has subsidized hemp production since the 1990s.

Bronner says hemp should be disassociated from illegal drugs. He compares
hemp with poppies, which produce both opium and the poppy seeds used on
bagels. "A poppy seed has trace amounts of opiates, but they don't hassle
(makers of) poppy seed bagels. No one is smoking industrial hemp."

North Dakota's involvement is key, Bronner says. "This is becoming a serious
commodity. You have farmers in North Dakota dealing with depressed soy and
corn prices. They see Canadians farming industrial hemp. Why are we cutting
American farmers out of this rapidly emerging market?"


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