FALSE VILLAIN

One way to sustain a struggle even when it is being lost is to exaggerate
and extend a threat to peripheral or even non-related subjects. This
appears to be the thinking of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration,
which is considering regulations to ban personal-care products made with
hemp-seed oil.

Presumably alarmed that some businesses, like The Body Shop, are selling
personal-care products like lip balm, shampoo or lotion made with hemp-seed
oil, the DEA is working up an extended interpretation of existing law to
ban all products that allow THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana,
to enter the body. Hemp-seed oil has trace amounts of THC in it.

The issue, and specifically the DEA's rule-making regarding these products,
seems an invitation to needless and expensive legal battles. Beyond that,
it is hard to get away from the idea that the DEA's proposed rules are
anything more than a red herring of some sort.

Hemp, while it is related to the marijuana plant, has been associated with
rope, paper, clothing and personal-care products. Unlike its marijuana
relation, it is not directly associated with getting high, mellow or
otherwise physically or psychologically altered on a temporary, or
permanent, basis.

The DEA, along with a variety of other federal, state and local agencies,
has been prosecuting the drug war for years. The war has been a losing
proposition, although it has been a rousing success in terms of providing
decent livings for drug warriors and in divorcing the citizenry from the
degree of personal liberty this country's founders figured should be the
birthright of every citizen.

A new drug-war villain like evil hemp-seed oil is not needed. Drug warriors
should focus on real drug problems, not create fictional new ones with
which to grapple. Hemp has been a useful agricultural commodity for
hundreds of years. Barring any evidence that personal-care products made
from it are popular expressly because they enable their users to tune out
from contemporary society, the government and its agents should leave hemp be.