A BOOST FOR HEMP

DEA Reviews, States’ Actions Bode Well For Crop

Genetic engineers are tinkering with the forest. The goal is a fast-growing
tree that’s resistant to disease and pests and is highly pulpable for the
paper industry -- the very sort of plant that nature already has created in
cannabis sativa, better known as hemp.

As timber becomes more expensive and difficult to harvest because of
overcutting in some parts of the world and environmental concerns in
others, hemp becomes ever more attractive.

The legislatures of North Dakota, Hawaii and Minnesota recently enacted
hemp-growing initiatives.

Hawaii hopes to be growing 10 acres of test plots by September. North
Dakota lawmakers looked across the border and saw the successes of Canadian
hemp growers and legalized industrial hemp production earlier this year.

But these state actions will have little practical effect until the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration loosens its ban on the cultivation of
industrial hemp.

Other countries have proven that confusion between industrial hemp and
marijuana is not a problem for law enforcement. The plants are different in
appearance. Hemp contains only an inconsequential trace of marijuana’s
psychoactive ingredient, THC.

As a result of pressure from hemp advocates in Hawaii and elsewhere, the
DEA is at least reviewing the “security” issues surrounding the crop. The
agency is considering what would be an allowable level of THC in industrial
hemp. That’s progress.

Meanwhile, the marvels of genetic engineering also are coming under more
scrutiny. The recent news that genetically engineered corn in the Midwest
could prove fatal to the monarch butterfly population provides a hint of
the possible unintended consequences of such breakthroughs.

Even more dire, the food supplies of developing countries could be
imperiled as the corporate agribusiness giants corner the world’s seed
supply by marketing genetically engineered crops that don’t produce seeds
and, therefore, require cash outlays year after year by subsistence farmers.

Hemp isn’t the panacea for Kentucky’s beleaguered tobacco farmers, contrary
to the claims of some of its advocates. But it is a useful and valuable
crop with a multitude of uses. And it’s been perfected and tested by eons
of natural evolution.