THIS ROAD TRIP HAS A CAUSE: TOUTING BENEFITS OF LEGAL HEMP

Grayson Sigler has never considered himself an activist.

He's just a classical pianist and composer from Hampton with a penchant for
environmental causes and a brother who owned a 1983 Mercedes with a diesel
engine. Sigler's brother generously loaned him the vehicle, which has
become known in cities from Washington, D.C., to Watertown, S.D., as the
Hemp Car.

In July, 33-year-old Sigler turned a trip across the country to visit a
friend in Seattle into a public-awareness campaign touting the benefits of
legal hemp.

Hemp, from the same plant as marijuana, remains illegal to grow in the
United States. But the hemp seed also can be turned into industrial- grade
oil and blended with petroleum to make biodiesel fuel, similar to that made
from soybean or peanut oils, to run a diesel engine.

The Hemp Car gets 27 miles to the gallon -- the same as it does on regular
diesel gas -- and had traveled, as of Tuesday, 4,300 miles to Regina,
Saskatchewan, using a now-banned plant that George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson grew.

With about $30,000 from several sponsors and a load of 500 pounds of hemp
biodiesel fuel, much of it donated from producers in the United States and
Canada, Sigler travels with his wife, Kellie, and Hampton pals Scott Furr
and Charles Ruchalski, who are filming a documentary about them. Folks
across America's heartland have noticed the white station wagon emblazoned
with multicolored banners.

"I do think we're making an impact," Sigler said Tuesday via cell phone
from the Hemp Car, somewhere in central Canada. "Americans love cars.
Americans don't know anything about hemp."

Sigler argues the cost of industrial hemp oil per gallon would drop from
about $4 wholesale now to about 30 cents if U.S. farmers could legally grow
the plant. Companies can process the oil under current laws but must import
the sterilized hemp seed from other countries, usually Canada and China,
which adds to its expense and becomes cost- prohibitive to sell to the
average driver.

Environmentalists consider the legalization of hemp a no-brainer. It's a
renewable source of fuel that involves none of the environmental impacts of
petroleum, which is limited in supply and dependent on foreign providers.
Hemp biodiesel burns cleaner, emitting about 10 percent of the carbon
dioxide that gasoline-fueled vehicles do and none of the hydrocarbons
released by petroleum-based diesel.

It's one of the best sources of nutrition, according to its proponents,
sold in many health food stores at about $75 a gallon. Hemp fibers weave
into extremely strong rope and durable clothing.

"It's a wonderful thing," Sigler said.

Some farmers have rallied around the hemp cause, seeing the many products
derived from the plant as a source of needed revenue and a savior for land
damaged by chemically grown grain crops, not to mention a fuel for their
own diesel-powered equipment.

The nation's colonists depended on it, Sigler said, for everything from
food to clothing to heat. Nine states, including Virginia, have passed
resolutions allowing for hemp production if Congress ever lifts the federal
ban.

"Canadian hemp is being trucked past dying South Dakota farms," said Bob
Newland, a founder of the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Council, who
traveled across his state to see the Hemp Car. "Seventy-five percent of its
potential is in its use as a food for humans and animals and in its
biomass, for fuel, and its oil."

But hemp also carries the political and moral taint of marijuana, one of
the major obstacles to its legalization. Law enforcement groups, such as
police officers and prison guards, continue to lobby against it. "The two
are associated in the American psyche," Sigler said. "It's called the
rope-versus-dope debate."

Hemp and marijuana both come from the cannabis plant but are different
variations of it. Hemp has few, if any, of the psychotropic properties of
its sister weed and would typically make people sick if they smoked it,
Sigler said.

The American Farm Bureau remains neutral on the hemp issue, said group
spokesman Don Lipton. Many farmers support the legalization, he said, but
others have bent to the argument of opponents who believe it would weaken
the war on drugs.

That didn't stop Sigler and his Hemp Car crew from accepting sponsorship
from prominent pro-pot lobby group NORML, the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws. Sigler does believe the prosecution of
pot-smokers is "unjust" but, more importantly, sees the power of that
movement's tens of millions of supporters.

"No one at all has come up to me and expressed any discontent with the
project," he said. "I challenge so many people who support the ban to come
out and debate this, and they will not do it. I would love it because I've
done my research. And I know what's right and wrong."