HIATUS FOR HEMP

Appeals Court Tells DEA To Mellow Out

The decision may lead to a round of jokes about what the justices on the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have been smoking. But the ruling is both
sober and sensible: A court panel says the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
overstepped its bounds in 2001 when, without public notice or comment, it
used the Controlled Substances Act to ban all foods containing hemp from
American store shelves. That arbitrary action put a budding American
hemp-food industry under a serious cloud. The cloud hasn't dispersed just
yet. The DEA still wants to ban the sale of foods that contain any amount
of "tetrahydrocannabinol," or THC (which is found both in hemp and its
plant-cousin, marijuana.) But it will first have to show evidence -- to the
same court -- that the trace amounts of THC found in certain brands of
hemp-containing veggie burgers, energy bars, waffles and salad dressings
are significant enough to get consumers high. Thus far, DEA lawyers have
only expressed a suspicion.

Hemp food makers say you'd have to eat a hundred pounds of hemp granola to
get a buzz. (Surely, for the determined, there must be easier and less
fattening ways.) Hemp advocates point out that the sturdy, easily grown
plant contains more than just THC. It features healthful vitamin E and
omega-3 fatty acids -- the stuff your cardiologist keeps telling you to eat
more of. If the DEA wants to keep Americans from eating hemp foods, it is
going to have to prove those foods pose a real risk.