CONTENTIOUS CROP

HEMP FARMERS GET CAUGHT IN THE WAR AGAINST DRUGS

On Aug. 9, U.S. Customs Service officials in Detroit made their move,
seizing 18,000 kg – of Canadian birdseed. It was a simple case of zero
tolerance. The seed came from industrial hemp, which – like marijuana – is
a variety of the species Cannabis sativa. Although it is illegal to grow
industrial hemp in most of the United States, it has always been legal to
import it. On the other hand, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will
not allow any substance containing even trace amounts of
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive agent in marijuana, into the
United States. So on the DEA's instructions, customs locked the birdseed
up. Caught in the middle age farmers like Jean Laprise, president of
Chatham, Ontario-based Kenex Ltd., the company that grew the hemp and sent
it south. If the U.S. zero tolerance policy on industrial hemp continues,
he says, the company's future is bleak. "I'll tell you right now," says
Laprise, "that would break us."

Across Canada, close to 700 farmers have jumped on the hemp bandwagon since
Ottawa legalized it as a crop last year for the first time since 1938. With
14,000 hectares (30,800 acres) already devoted to hemp, they are counting
on continued sales to U.S. manufacturers who use the versatile,
ecologically friendly plant to produce dozens of products, from shampoo and
cooking oil to paper and clothing. Laprise says Kenex, a large farming
operation that has invested millions of dollars in its new crop, has been
shipping hemp to the United States for almost a year. Suddenly, following
the birdseed seizure and a U.S. Customs order recalling 17 other Kenex hemp
shipments, the company faces $700,000 in fines and an uncertain future.
"The DEA is trying to destroy whatever Canadian companies it can," says
45-year-old Laprise, "so they can discourage U.S. farmers and companies
from manufacturing or selling hemp products."

What frustrates Laprise and other growers is that their product has no
narcotic value. The birdseed's THC content of a barely measurable 0.0014
per cent compares with the minimum four per cent – and up to 20 per cent –
found in marijuana. The DEA's unexpected decision to crack down on hemp
imports almost a year and a half after the market opened has stunned
Canadian farmers and the many American manufacturers of hemp products.
Kenex, which has laid off four of its 24 employees since the seizure, is
planning to file a claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), arguing that U.S. officials are interfering with international
trade. And a Sebastopol, Calif., company, Nutiva, which uses Canadian hemp
to make a popular line of granola bars, says it has lost $60,000 since its
supplies were cut off. It and other U.S. manufacturers are contemplating a
class-action suit against the U.S. government to have the DEA back off.

Like Laprise, most of the Canada's hemp farmers turned to the plant in the
belief it was a durable rotation crop with a proven market in the United
States. "It's not hard to grow," says Erling Olsen, who planted eight
hectares on his farm in Warner, Alta. For Kenex, hemp has turned out to be
more profitable than many of its traditional crops, including corn,
soybeans and wheat.

Hemp products have caught on quickly in the United States. But Sholts,
chairman of the North American Industrial Hemp Council Inc., estimates the
business to be worth $225 million annually. Under constant pressure from
U.S. farmers, several states – including Hawaii, North Dakota and Minnesota
– have passed laws allowing hemp crops. But Nutiva's president, John W.
Roulac, says the DEA is trying to quash the industry. The agency, he says,
is trying to protect annual funding of millions of dollars for cannabis
eradication, 98 per cent of which, he maintains, is spent burning "ditch
weed," a free-growing strain of industrial hemp with no psychoactive
properties. "They are trying to cut off our supply so there won't be a hemp
market," says Roulac. "Six months from now, Canadian farmers will have
warehouses bulging full of hemp seed and fiber that can't be sold in America."

A DEA spokesman says the agency became concerned about hemp shipments once
it learned that seeds were being used to create edible products such as
granola bars, beer and cooking oil. "What happens to the people," he asks,
"who are using hemp oil to cook and THC turns up in their drug test?" In
the short term, Roulac says, publicity surrounding the birdseed seizure has
helped increase awareness of hemp products. But Laprise, now a reluctant
champion of the hemp industry, worries that his investment will go up in
smoke. "We're not a group of activists by any stretch of the imagination,"
he says. "We're just Canadian farmers who think we've found a nice rotation
crop."