DRUG FOES SAY HEMP ADS BLOW SMOKE AT POT ISSUE

Driving past the billboard at highway speed, Michele Somerville saw what
most people see: a prominently displayed marijuana leaf and the equally
large word "hemp." Like most people, what the Harvard mom didn't note was
the company name - Alterna - the shampoo bottle, and the words "Drug Free."

"When I first read it I thought - and this is going to sound crazy - that
it was (medical marijuana) for terminally ill people," she said.

Somerville's review is one of the more benign.

The controversial ad campaign for Alterna hemp hair-care products and
shampoo - which the anti-drug group DARE America called "a subterfuge to
promote marijuana" - blew into the Chicago area in October.

Los Angeles-based Alterna Research Laboratories say the eye-catching hemp
leaf billboards are intended to be "thought-provoking" and
"dialogue-generating" as it and other hemp products companies wage an
uphill battle for cultivation of the crop in the United States.

But some see something else in the ads.

"By seeing a leaf, you would think it (Alterna shampoo) is made from
marijuana," said Kim Frasier, president of the Illinois DARE (Drug Abuse
Resistance Education) Officers Association.

Alterna's trendy hair-care products - stars Kathie Lee Gifford, Pierce
Brosnan and Sandra Bullock reportedly are among its users - are derived
from hemp seed oil.

According to the New York Times, the psychoactive agent responsible for
giving marijuana users a high - THC - is in such small doses in hemp as to
be negligible.

Separating marijuana from hemp on the billboard ads isn't easy to do,
however - especially at 50 or 60 mph.

The shampoo bottle is camouflaged against the leaf, and the words "Drug
Free" are dwarfed by the questionable foliage.

"I'm in school telling children drugs are dangerous, marijuana is a
dangerous thing," said Frasier, who also is an Algonquin DARE officer. "If
they are making it look like the shampoo is made out of this stuff, it's
sending a mixed message to kids."

Company spokeswoman Kimberlee Mitchell said the ads are part of a campaign
to create a new identity for marijuana's much-maligned cousin.

According to Alterna, 10,000 acres of hemp can produce as much paper as
40,000 acres of trees.

The first pair of Levi's jeans were made from the durable fiber.

Henry Ford used hemp in his early Ford automobiles, and BMW uses it to this
day.

Hemp shoes, clothing and bags are now widely available.

Even though hemp is grown commercially in Canada, China, England, Germany,
France and other countries, it's illegal to grow in the U.S., although it
can be imported.

Alterna, meanwhile, is just one player in a larger effort by the industrial
side of the hemp movement to gain wider acceptance. Last month, the North
American Industrial Hemp Council held its annual convention in Rolling
Meadows and Schaumburg to discuss the newest trends in the industry that
this year is estimated to make about $250 million worldwide.

A ground swell of support for what used to be called "ditch weed" has
sprung up in some states.

Hawaii, Minnesota and North Dakota have passed legislation requesting
Congress and President Clinton to pressure the Drug Enforcement
Administration to lighten restrictions on the plant.

In Illinois, one of the top hemp producers during WWII and the earlier part
of the century, the legislature has formed a fact-gathering committee that
is likely to recommend the same sort of legislation by January.

Overcoming the "reefer madness" stigma of hemp has come with controversy
for Alterna both here and elsewhere.

Mitchell said the prominent use of the leaf is absolutely intentional.

"It's aimed at gaining awareness and spurring conversation," she said.
"Hemp has a bad image because it's related to marijuana. What we're working
on is an image campaign. We're taking that image of a leaf and getting the
public to see industrial hemp as a miraculous, non-drug agricultural crop."

Mitchell added, "We could have put seeds on the billboards, we could have
put stalks on the billboards, but no one would have looked twice."

Some 70 of the billboards are sprinkled around the Chicagoland area. They
are expected to remain up through this month.

Among other communities, the ads have been placed in Barrington, near
Hanover Park and Lombard, in Schaumburg and Gurnee, as well as in Harvard
and Woodstock.

The national campaign by privately held Alterna - which, according to one
report, racked up $20 million in sales and spent $3 million on marketing by
March of this year - already has stopped in Los Angeles, San Diego, New
York, San Francisco and Boston.

In Los Angeles, it wasn't greeted with the warmest reception.

DARE America, the national branch of the local effort, was successful in
getting Alterna to remove its hemp leaf ads from 106 bus benches. And then
one of its officials was promptly sued.

Glenn Levant, the president and founding director of the Los Angeles-based
group, said in a newspaper article, the shampoo "is a subterfuge to promote
marijuana."

After Alterna filed suit claiming defamation, the bus bench ads returned.

Locally, the billboards have received a lot of double takes, but no real
organized opposition.

When a billboard popped up a half block away from North Side College
Preparatory High School, a magnet school in Chicago, interim principal
James Lalley contacted the company.

Alterna's Mitchell explained to Lalley, "It's hemp, it's just the same
family, you can smoke a whole field of it and just get a headache," he
said.

But Lalley still doesn't like it.

"It confuses images," he said. "It (suggests) marijuana is something used
in a wonderful product."

Lawrence Hamer, a DePaul University assistant professor who teaches
marketing, takes the criticism a step farther.

Hamer finds it "worrisome" Alterna is using the confusing symbol of a hemp
leaf.

"People will take that as a marijuana leaf," he said. "They know people
will see that as a marijuana leaf. It (the hemp leaf claim) is a cop-out."

But Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, a marijuana advocacy
group, notes a marijuana leaf is even more prominently displayed by the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Nor is Alterna the only hemp seed oil products company to use the leaf for
advertising.

"Those opposed to using the marijuana leaf (for advertising) should take
equal umbrage with the Partnership and DARE using the leaf," St. Pierre
said.

Mitchell takes the criticism in stride.

"The reaction doesn't surprise me," she said. "I just hope bringing it to
the public's attention will show the other side so they can get beyond the
fear and get to the knowledge."