STATE SUPREME COURT HEARS HEMP CASE

Actor’s Lawyer Says Law Is Too Broad

Three years ago the actor Woody Harrelson walked onto a field in Lee County
and planted four hemp seeds.

The sheriff, whom Harrelson had invited to watch, charged him with
misdemeanor marijuana possession, and yesterday the case came before the
Kentucky Supreme Court.

Harrelson and his attorneys had argued before a lower court that a 1992
change in Kentucky law that removed the distinction between hemp and
marijuana from state statutes is unconstitutional.

They argued that the fiber in hemp stalks and the plant's seeds make hemp a
cash crop, one that can be used to make various products, including fuel
and birdseed. As such, it could prove valuable to Kentucky farmers looking
for an alternative to tobacco, they said.

Lee County Attorney Tom Jones argued that that’s nonsense, and said
legalizing hemp would make it difficult if not impossible for police to
root out marijuana.

Harrelson won the case - twice - convincing judges in both district court
and circuit court that a statute that banned hemp along with marijuana was
too broad and arbitrary.

The case landed in the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeals chose not
to decide the statute’s constitutionality, but attorneys for both sides
wanted a further hearing.

Harrelson wasn’t present yesterday as the Supreme Court heard arguments at
the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.

Jones cited a Kentucky State Police sergeant who said he cannot tell hemp
from marijuana and said that if hemp was legalized the state “would be
overrun with marijuana traffickers.”

However, Harrelson’s lawyer, Charles Beal II, said that as the law stands,
even benign uses of hemp are illegal. Technically, he said, Kentucky stores
that sell hemp clothing could be charged with marijuana possession.

Hemp and marijuana are the same plant species, but differ in the amount of
THC - the substance that gives a marijuana smoker his high - they carry.

Beal said hemp has almost no THC and could easily be distinguished from
marijuana. He said permits could be issued that would allow police to know
where legal hemp was being grown, and he said there was a field test that
would allow police to know on the spot whether it was low-THC hemp or
high-THC marijuana.

Beal emphasized he wasn't advocating the legalization of marijuana.

Beal and Jones were peppered with questions from most of the six justices
present.

Justice William Cooper questioned whether one thing should be made illegal
just because it looks like another. “Should we criminalize powdered sugar
because it looks like cocaine?” he asked.

Justice James Keller said he had a hard time understanding what the
constitutional issue was, and said he didn’t see the relevance of hemp's
commercial uses to the argument.

Cooper asked, “Doesn’t this boil down to a decision for the legislature to
make?”

The justices have no timetable to issue an opinion.

In the overflow audience sat Harrelson’s mother, Diane Harrelson, 62, who
lives in Lebanon, Ohio. She wore a floppy white hemp hat and a yellow hemp
dress, and afterward she talked about her pride in her son’s activism and
about the master’s thesis she is working on at Antioch College.

The subject: “Is hemp paper in our future?”

She said she had no use for marijuana. “It’s a stupid waste of time,” she
said. “I don’t even like to take aspirin.”