DRUG-WAR ZEAL IMPERILS NATURE

When you've run out of logic, ideas, vision, common sense, brains, wit and
innovation, when you've got nothing else to stand on but lazy, exhausted
dogma, chances are you'll do what the U.S. Supreme Court did with Dred
Scott in 1857. You'll dig in your heels, cross your arms and proclaim
something brilliant like, "Well, it's the law!"

That's what's going to happen on or about March 18, when the great American
land whale known as the Drug Enforcement Administration can officially
begin to prosecute businesses that sell edibles made from cannabis sativa,
or hemp.

Now, hemp isn't the marijuana you mix into brownies for watching reruns of
Cheech & Chong's "Up In Smoke." Those guys rolled cannabis indica, which
contains up to 20 percent THC, the psychoactive agent responsible for red
eyes, indolence, munchies and -- in certain illnesses -- pain relief.
Although hemp leaves are indistinguishable from indica, they contain less
than 1 percent THC, meaning you'd scorch your lungs raw sooner than you'd
get a buzz from smoking it. In fact, if you eat hemp, according to a recent
Time magazine article, its THC content is so low it won't even show up on a
urine test.

Why would anyone want to eat bland, chewy, no-buzz hemp? Maybe for novelty
or camp value; maybe for the same reason increasing numbers of American
tourists are visiting Cuba, because the government says you can't.
Health-food advocates tout hemp oil for its "good" fatty acids, and the
consequence is a fledgling $5 million U.S. industry that makes pretzels,
granola bars and pie crust from imported hemp.

But food isn't the primary commercial allure of hemp. Farmers -- especially
those in the fragile tobacco industry -- have pressured legislators in 20
states to study the feasibility of growing legal cannabis sativa at home,
and no wonder. Studies indicate its woody hemp fibers are stronger than
rope, its dense root systems choke weeds with little need for herbicide, it
provides a tenacious buffer against topsoil erosion, and it grows 20 times
faster than trees, meaning hemp crops can produce the same amount of pulp
in less than a quarter of the space.

American farmers, looking with envy at their hemp-growing Canadian
counterparts, want a piece of the global market, which is beginning to
fabricate hemp into everything from car interiors to diapers. That's why
they'll be looking at how avidly the DEA goes after the sativa food industry.

Marijuana cultivation was banned in 1937, nearly three decades before
science identified the THC strain that distinguishes indica from sativa.
(Never mind that the War Department begged farmers to restart their hemp
crops during WWII to offset the loss of imported timber.) Our archaic laws
ban so much as a subatomic quark of THC coming from the American loam
because a) we don't want to look soft on drugs, and b) having to
differentiate legal buds from illegal buds is really a hassle.

Well, hey, even the DEA is human, and mistakes happen. Every now and then,
a missionary plane with innocent children onboard will get blown out of the
sky by drug-fighting jets, or tenured bureaucrats will bribe medieval
lunatics like the Taliban with tens of millions of dollars to please, oh,
please stop growing flora that can expedite their goal of destroying the
West. When you're operating a budget that spends $5 billion more a year
than NASA does to explore the universe, you certainly can't expect diligent
stewardship over every lousy nickel and dime.

But curiously, in their zeal to prosecute the war on THC, congressional
pinheads refuse to contemplate what may be their most effective weapon --
cannabis sativa.

Currently, the drug-war flavor of the month is a bio-herbicide called
Fusarium, a fungus its advocates hope will eradicate marijuana. Critics
worry the oxysporium -- engineered specifically to destroy pot -- will
mutate and destroy other crops and plants in a mindless swath of collateral
damage. What no one is talking about are studies that indicate when
cannabis sativa and cannabis indica share the same fields,
cross-pollination from hemp plants will significantly degrade the THC
levels of indica marijuana. No, wait, there's at least one guy talking
about it. His name is James Woolsey, and he used to be director of the
Central Intelligence Agency. Today, he's a lobbyist for the North American
Industrial Hemp Council. Woolsey says farmers trying to hide pot in a
sativa field would be "stark raving mad." Guess he can actually speak his
mind now that he's off the dole.

But midnight tokers needn't fear tight markets anytime soon. American
policymakers are too stupid and too beholden to bigger vice lobbies. They'd
rather risk destroying the environment than acknowledge reality in an
election year