THE N.H. LEGISLATURE SHOULD ALLOW FARMING OF HEMP

In an engagement of either willful misrepresentations or merely honest
differences, New Hampshire legislators are heading toward a fractious
debate over whether to allow commercial farming of industrial hemp.

On October 26, the House Environment and Agriculture Committee is expected
to approve a bill legalizing the cultivation of a crop that's a cousin to
marijuana. The product, which looks pretty much like the leafy drug but
lacks the part that gets you high, is valued in many parts of the world for
fibers that go into textiles, paper and other goods. Granite State
law-enforcement officials don't want hemp growing legalized, saying that
okaying the look-alike plant would send the wrong message to young people.
The police see a conspiracy of potheads posing as farmers, eager to sneak
illegal grass between rows of legal hemp.

Proponents of hemp cultivation, who in recent years have gotten the plant
legalized in Canada, North Dakota and Hawaii, insist that what drug agents
are really worried about is the possible loss of government drug-fighting
grants if industrial hemp were declared legal. The proponents see a
conspiracy of entrenched police forces, in much the same way they blame the
criminalization of hemp earlier this century on large petrochemical and
forest-owning enterprises that wanted the textile and paper-making
industries for themselves.

The hemp legalization bill has been this way before; twice it has gotten
onto the floor of the House, only to lose by tiny margins, the last time by
nine votes. It deserves to fare better. The committee should urge the House
to take a good look at the promise -- and the speciousness of the purported
dangers -- of industrial hemp in New Hampshire.

For starters, industrial hemp is used in this state already. Stores in many
places sell finished retail goods made of hemp, such as clothing, and one
company in Portsmouth actually imports the raw stuff and makes textiles out
of it. This latter point apparently does not bother state police, who say
the importing is a customs issue, not a public-safety issue. Public safety,
they say, is involved when farmers actually go out grow the stuff.

The proposal now before the House acknowledges the perception of danger. It
would require hemp growers to be registered with federal drug-enforcement
officials and the state government. Further, farmers who get permits would
have to buy their seeds from the government. Still further, they would have
to post bonds to cover the cost of drug-enforcement actions if they were
found to be sneaking marijuana into their fields of industrial hemp. And
still further, farmers would be subjected to background checks, to assure
they had no drug-related convictions in the prior decade.

These seem to be reasonable, if perhaps overdone, safeguards to give a
chance to a crop that, for a great many years, played an important role in
American agriculture and that plays an increasingly large role in farming
around the world.

It's unlikely that, if it became legal, industrial hemp cultivation would
ever dominate the farm scene. New Hampshire topography simply isn't made
for that. But the gently rolling hills of the Connecticut River Valley, now
given largely to grain production for dairy farms, could well accommodate
large-scale hemp-farming. Given the perilous state of the New England dairy
industry, it's prudent to think of possible substitute crops.

Foes of hemp counter that it's prudent to consider the drug-abuse
consequences of hemp legalization. Their hand is strengthened by the fact
that some advocates of hemp legalization do precious little to distance
themselves from marijuana. Still, hemp critics owe it to the state's people
and its economy to provide specifics to support their fears of a new drug
scourge if hemp-farming is made legal. The protections in the bill, and the
experience of hemp-farming societies in other countries, offer assurances
to the contrary.