MOVE TO LEGALIZE HEMP GROWS IN HEARTLAND

Some 27 states have passed or are considering laws in favor of the crop.

GODFREY, ILL. - Steve Kohller looks out over the winter stubble on his
1,000-acre farm on the Illinois prairie. Several years of poverty prices
for corn and soybeans have him dreaming of a new crop, one that would grow
as tall as 14 feet and, he says, might someday rival soybeans in terms of
cultivated acres throughout the Midwest.

"It's not a savior," he says, wearing only a thin denim jacket against the
bitter February cold. "But it may be the answer we've been looking for."

The crop he's talking about is hemp, whose close ties to marijuana have
long drawn a stern gaze from authorities. But in farm country, where
something close to a depression reigns, the struggle to legitimize
industrial hemp is serious business.

Some 27 states have either passed laws favoring hemp or are considering
such legislation, according to the North American Industrial Hemp Council
(NAIHC). Hemp production is illegal by federal statute, so states generally
call on Washington to alter its policy or set up research plots, which are
required to be fenced and guarded.

Here in Illinois, legislation that would allow hemp research at the
University of Illinois has passed both the state House and Senate and is
currently sitting on the governor's desk, awaiting action.

"You aren't going to solve the corn-, soybean-, and wheat-price problems so
long as we're producing far beyond our needs and the needs of the world,"
says Bud Sholts, chairman of NAIHC. "What this country deeply needs - in
terms of agricultural development and price stabilization - is an
alternative crop of significant acreage that works well in the rotation,
which industrial hemp does."

Hemp proponents call it a miracle crop. Its fiber can be blended together
to create a fiberglasslike material lighter and stronger than steel, which
can be used to make a variety of products, including cars. Hemp can also be
used in textiles, building materials, carpeting, even circuit boards.

As a replacement for petroleum-based products, hemp would lessen dependence
on foreign oil and is a renewable resource. It is also biodegradable. Hemp
car bodies could be shredded and dumped in landfills. More than 30
countries have legalized hemp growing, including Germany, Canada, England,
Australia, and France

But in this country, hemp can't shake its shady reputation. Although both
sides in the debate acknowledge it's impossible for someone to get high on
hemp even if he or she smokes a boatload of it, suspicion lingers.

Drug Enforcement Agency spokeswoman Rogene Waite said a 1998 statement on
industrial hemp that equates it with marijuana still represents the
agency's policy on the matter, but added the DEA is "currently in the
process of reviewing some of the security and other issues surrounding the
regulation of industrial hemp."

Robert Weiner, a spokesman for the White House drug policy office, cites a
litany of complaints about hemp. "From a plane, it's very difficult to
distinguish between marijuana and hemp, so the enforcement side of this
would be extraordinarily difficult."

But Paul Mahlberg, a professor of cell biology at Indiana University in
Bloomington, says law enforcement in Europe has no trouble telling the two
apart. He says hemp grows eight to 14 feet high, is unbranched, and is
planted a few inches apart, like a cornfield. Marijuana plants are
typically three to four feet high, branch out like bushes, and need to be
planted four feet apart.

Moreover, Professor Mahlberg maintains that planting the two species
together would be ill-conceived: When hemp cross-pollinates with marijuana,
it cuts the drug's potency in half, making it useless for illicit purposes.

But White House officials also question hemp's value to farmers. "Hemp is
not necessarily economically viable," says Mr. Weiner, citing an
Agriculture Department report that says US markets for hemp products in
1999 could have been produced on less than 5,000 acres of land.

Jeff Gain, former chair of the USDA's Alternative Agriculture Research and
Commercialization Corp., scoffs at the comment.

"Of course, there's no market if they won't let us grow the stuff," he
says. "We've told the DEA and the others: Go to Detroit and talk to them,
and they'll tell you how important they believe these kinds of fibers are
to the future of the automobile industry. It's no secret."

Hemp proponents contend that widespread public misunderstanding about hemp
has created an atmosphere in Washington in which potential supporters are
silenced out of fear they'll be labeled "soft on drugs," a political kiss
of death. Mr. Gain says the same is true of corporations that would benefit
from hemp products.

But things may be changing. Mr. Kohller and 37 other farmers here in
Illinois have pooled their resources and become minor investors in a
hemp-processing plant in Canada, to learn about manufacturing techniques.
Their ultimate goal is to build a plant locally, at a cost of as much as $5
million, as soon as hemp is legal again in the US.

And some say that day may not be far off. Gain says sources tell him the
draft DEA regulations now circulating in Washington are sympathetic to hemp
growers. "I'm very optimistic that some time in the next year or so hemp
will be legalized on the federal level," he says. "I truly believe that
this crop will rival the soybean industry in about 15 to 20 years."