HEMP BIRDSEED FALLS VICTIM TO WAR ON DRUGS

BY CHRISTOPHER S. WREN New York Times

What do 40,000 pounds of birdseed have to do with America's war on
drugs?

Nothing, says Jean Laprise, an Ontario farmer who shipped the birdseed
to his American customers, only to have it seized when it crossed the
U.S.-Canadian border.

Everything, say the U.S. government and its critics, but for
altogether different reasons.

The birdseed, nearly 20 tons of it, has been locked in a Detroit
warehouse since Aug. 9, when it was impounded by the U.S. Customs
Service. The seed consists of sterilized seeds from industrial hemp.

It's long been legal to import sterilized hemp seeds for bird seed,
but not if they bear any trace of THC, the psychoactive component of
marijuana. Seeds themselves contain no THC, but sometimes they pick up
traces of it during harvesting -- as Laprise's apparently did.

Hemp and marijuana are different varieties of the same plant species,
Cannabis sativa. Hemp is grown legally in Canada.

But while smoking marijuana delivers a high, smoking hemp gives only a
headache. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, varies between 4 and 20
percent of a leaf. In industrial hemp, it's below 1 percent.

The birdseed seized in Detroit had a THC content of 0.0014 percent,
which wouldn't give a bird a buzz.