STORE OWNERS SAY HEMP IS VERSATILE PLANT

SOUTHERN PINES -- William Dean started off his career as a stockbroker.

Now he's buying and selling hemp products retail. The 28-year-old Dean, an
upstart pro-hemp entrepreneur who was born and raised in Moore County,
envisions an expansion of his budding hempire.

One day he hopes to open stores in Fayetteville and Sanford and perhaps
even beyond.

For the time being, Dean and his wife, Gwen, own and operate Flowland
Hemporium & Smoke Shop just off U.S. 1 at one end of a sun-bleached yellow
aluminum siding strip mall on West Morganton Road. While there are other
stores and flea market booths around that dabble in such specialty items,
this business may be the only one in the Cape Fear region that's based
around -- or as Dean put it, "dedicated to" -- hemp wear and other
hemp-based merchandise.

Flowland sells casual shoes made from "industrial" hemp, men's and women's
hemp sandals, hemp beach shirts and swim suits, hemp dresses, jeans and
overalls. Hemp yarn, hemp wax, hemp "hacky sacs," hemp heating rub and hemp
mineral bath. Hemp guitar straps. Even hemp pretzels.

Hempzel Pretzels, as they are called, are priced at $3.79 a bag.

Then there are the "alternative undies," which were neatly folded on a
table on a recent visit to the store. "They're a hemp-silk blend," Dean
said, "to not be too scratchy." There's a line of hemp-cotton blend
clothing on the racks, such as the men's sports shirts for $27.95. Not
everything sold here is created from hemp. There's lots of other stuff for
those who align themselves with the counterculture set: body jewelry,
posters, tapestries, beading supplies, incense and a wall display of
stickers. Some of the stickers, like those bearing images of Jimi Hendrix
and Janis Joplin, pay tribute to the once-ripe psychedelic San Francisco
scene of the 1960s; others are testament to the cult following that
surrounds television's "South Park" and the Vermont-based rock jam band Phish.

There is a stigma to this sort of college town-like business, and the
twentysomething owners are aware of what they're up against with, for lack
of a better word, the establishment. Hemp is controversial, a kissing
cousin to marijuana and hashish. And the smoke shop side of the operation,
where "water pipes" and hand pipes and rolling papers are sold over the
counter, adds yet another subterranean dimension that has traditionally
drawn the disapproval of mainstream America, anti-drug activists, our law
enforcement agencies and the politicians on Capitol Hill.

Without blowing smoke, there is a direct link to the drug culture.

"We'd been discussing opening a shop like this for two years before we did
it -- what we've got in the back and the hemp (merchandise) that got
incorporated into it," said Gwen Dean, a 26-year-old horse lover from
Pennsylvania and the mother of two young children. "I think it's all about
how you go about doing it. You're pretty much walking on eggshells all the
time. We don't want to get people offended. People start talking.

"If we just stay on a good note with the community, I think we'll be all
right."

The couple opened the store just before Christmas last year. From the way
William Dean talks, the business has been a big hit: "If the business that
we're doing now in a bad economy is any indication of what business would
be like in a good economy, I can't wait for a good economy. I'm probably
doing double what I thought I'd be doing here."

That might seem surprising, considering that this hemporium stands in a
retirement community. This is a place that, when the locals talk grass,
chances are it's pertaining more to your common Bermuda or hybrid varieties
that grace the fairways of the 30 or so golf courses in the nearby
Pinehurst area rather than funny cigarettes.

Scott Gibson manages the Shrimp Eatery restaurant that operates two doors
down from Flowland. "You'd be surprised," he said. "I see quite often older
people in there buying beads and crafts. Maybe it's out of curiosity. They
sell a lot of nice clothes in there."

The 42-year-old Gibson, for one, is high on hemp clothing.

He bought a pair of hemp blue jeans about eight years back in Canada, and
he still wears them. He said he'll go through a regular pair of denim jeans
in four or five years.

Most of Flowland's regular customers, Dean said, are ages 18 to 25. But
golfers, doctors, lawyers, even grandparents have come in to check out the
goods. "This morning," he said one day last month, "I had a lady come in
who was at least 90 years old. She saw the stuff and the books about it
(hemp). She said she would be back in to see me. My grandmother has come in
here and bought from me. Everybody can use these products.

"If you just break that mind set that's been ingrained in everyone's eyes
about hemp. And marijuana, too."

And that's the part of this industry that scares a lot of folks away.

The cultivation of hemp is restricted in the United States because the
illegal drugs marijuana and hashish are obtained from hemp plants. Candi
Penn is on the board of directors and runs the office of the Hemp
Industries Association in Occidental, Calif. It's a trade group
representing about 300 hemp companies around the world. These range from
farmers and research companies to manufacturers and retailers.

Penn said a dozen states have passed legislation supporting the legal
growth of industrial hemp. "Maybe another half dozen tried to pass it, and
it hasn't passed yet," she continued. "The way it's set up federally: It's
licensed by the DEA. The Drug Enforcement Administration does all the
licensing of cannabis. It hasn't been differentiated that cannabis and hemp
are different."

Currently, the only legal hemp crop grown in the United States is at the
University of Hawaii, according to Penn. The federal government has denied
the requests of all other states. The University of Hawaii is in its second
year of growing a test plot and developing breeds for the Hawaiian climate.

"You have to construct a 12-foot-high barbed wire fence," she said, "and
have a 24-hour surveillance system."

Hemp is a plant sometimes grown for its strong fiber. Hemp fibers are
obtained from the plant's woody stem and used to make, among other things,
ropes, cords, twines, textiles, plastics, insulation and other building
materials.

The biggest misconception about hemp, Dean said, is that you can smoke it
and get stoned: "I think the old saying is that you'd have to smoke a joint
the size of a telephone pole to get high. To even care about what you're
getting."

Hemp contains less than 1 percent of tetrahydracannabinol (THC), the
psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, according to studies done by Leson
Environmental Consulting of Berkeley, Calif. By contrast, marijuana has up
to 14 percent THC.

At this time, the DEA is reviewing the importation of cannabis seeds and
oil because of their THC content. "The government is also concerned that
hemp cultivation may be a stalking horse for the legalization of
marijuana," states a report on Programs and Initiatives to Prevent Drug Use
in the National Drug Control Strategy: 2001 Annual Report. That comes from
the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

According to a recent report by the Department of Agriculture, American
markets for hemp fiber, yarn, fabric and seed in 1999 could have been
produced on less than 5,000 acres of land. "Further," the report said, "the
potential exists for these markets to quickly become oversupplied.
Uncertainty about long-run demand for hemp products and the potential for
oversupply discounts the prospects for hemp as an economically viable
alternative crop for American farmers."

'Hemp Is Not Dope'

"Pro-Hemp" and "Before You Say No Learn About Hemp" and "Hemp is Not Dope"
are some of the signs posted on the front glass of Flowland Hemporium &
Smoke Shop. Next to a mailbox is a poster of a dollar bill that reads:
"George Washington was a Hemp Farmer."

William Dean got the idea for this business when he attended the 2000
Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, with his then seven-months pregnant
wife and her mother and his wife's brother. That was during the time that
Dean was living off his 401K following a five-year job as a stock broker in
New Jersey. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
in 1995 with a degree in marketing.

Four years before that, he graduated from Pinecrest High School.

He's a local boy.

His wife, Gwen, is from Edinboro, Pa., which is about 15 miles south of
Lake Erie. She's an equestrian in an equestrian town, and she has competed
in dressage and jumping events. They met at a bar in Southern Pines.

When he got the chance to go to Sydney, Dean visited a small hemp shop just
north of the city in the Blue Mountains. "They had a few shirts, a variety
of hemp products," he said. "I had never seen a store dedicated to it. At
that time it didn't spark me."

He spoke from the office in the back of his shop as Jimi Hendrix's ragged
but right, machine-gun interpretation of "The Star-Spangled Banner" played
inside the store. "We came back from Sydney, and I was thinking about it
more and more," he said.

Last October, he began researching the business. What was out there? What
kind of distribution was available for these kind of products?

Another local man, the dread-locked Anthony McLeod, was working behind the
counter on this day. He helped the Deans open the place. William Dean has
known him for 14 years. They went to Pinecrest High School together. They
used to skateboard together.

When they first opened for business, Dean said the cops came a-calling.
"Which I think they do with every new business," he said. "They saw the
(smoking) products we had and just kind of laughed and couldn't believe it
was legal and OK as far as they were concerned.

"It's A Legal Industry."

Early on, Flowland Hemporium & Smoke Shop was probably 70 percent "head
shop" and 30 percent hemp products, Dean said. Now, he figured it was more
like 50/50.

He said he has never been harassed by local law enforcement officers for
trading in what is commonly used for drug use. "We're selling products you
can get over the Internet," he said. "You can go to Raleigh and find them
in the flea markets there. Go to Fayetteville. Anywhere."

Sgt. David Pait is with the Fayetteville Police Narcotics Vice Suppression
Unit. In Fayetteville, stores are allowed to sell "smoking-type items" as
long as there are tobacco products on the premises, he said. "Most of your
head shops," he added, "what they're doing is selling pipes and smoking
devices. But they're also selling tobacco, which is perfectly legal. It's
just like selling a pipe in the store in the mall."

A customer must be 18 to buy the "bongs," the hand pipes, the rolling
papers and the tobacco products sold in the back of the store, according to
Dean. He and his wife said they check I.D.'s

At the rear of the store, there's a small overhead sign that reads "Smoke
Shop." That leads into the head shop portion of the business. It's like one
of those private "Adults Only" sections in a video rental store.

In the room are the smoking-type items and the pocket scales and the herbal
and clove cigarettes. Domestic tobacco products are available. Off to one
side, copies of the magazines "Cannabis Culture" and "High Times" are
available for sale.

Dean figured that he probably sells more pipes than anything else in the
back shop. "Actually," he added, while looking at a display of hand-blown
glass hand pipes, "we have people who just buy the glass. I just have a
deep appreciation for the art side of blown glass."

Among the glass hand pipes are those made by a self-taught craftsman in Troy.

A few customers filtered through the store on this late morning, but not
many. Some came in to gab with Dean and McLeod. Four young men entered the
shop and headed directly to the back. Discreetly, they made their purchase
- -- a hand pipe -- and left the establishment.

"It's part of the store, and we can't avoid it. It's our main business,"
Gwen Dean said. "If we ID and they have proper ID, what they choose to do
with that product after they walk out the door is their decision."

While there's good turnover on the pipes, the hemp clothing is slow to move.

The clothing is not inexpensive, but then again, neither is the merchandise
sold at such places as The Gap or the Disney Store in the mall. "All the
fabric has to be imported to the U.S. People don't understand the hemp
industry," said Gwen Dean. "They don't understand why it's so expensive.
They also don't understand its durability. It doesn't shrink. It's
wonderful stuff. What we're trying to do is educate."

"A lot of people think about hemp as being very heavy," her husband said.
"It breathes very well. I can't stop talking about it because it's my
business."

Which leads into an obvious question: What will their two children -- ages
3 and 10 months -- think when they're old enough to know what their parents
are selling inside the Flowland Hemporium & Smoke Shop?

"That we're cool parents," Gwen Dean said, before pausing for a second. "I
don't know. I've often thought about that and how it will come back. I
think the generation below us is going to be a lot more open-minded,
hopefully, as far as that's concerned. Hopefully, by the time they get to
be 18, things will have changed a little bit."