CALIFORNIA SEEKS TO CLEAR HEMP OF A BAD NAME

STRATFORD, Calif. - Charles Meyers politics are as steady and unswerving
as the rows of pima cotton on his Central Valley farm. With his
work-shirt blue eyes and flinty Clint Eastwood demeanor, he is
staunchly in favor of the war in Iraq, against gun control and
believes people unwilling to recite the Pledge of Allegiance should be
kicked out of America, and fast.

But what gets him excited is the crop he sees as a potential windfall
for California farmers: industrial hemp, or Cannabis sativa. The
rapidly growing plant with a seemingly infinite variety of uses is
against federal law to grow because of its association with its evil
twin, marijuana.

Industrial hemp is a wholesome product, said Mr. Meyer, 65, who says
he has never worn tie-dye and professes a deep disdain for dope.

The fact were not growing it is asinine, Mr. Meyer said.

Things could change if a measure passed by legislators in Sacramento
and now on Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers desk becomes law. [The bill
reached Mr. Schwarzenegger last week; he has 30 days to sign or veto
it.]

Seven states have passed bills supporting the farming of industrial
hemp; their strategy has been to try to get permission from the Drug
Enforcement Administration to proceed.

But California is the first state that would directly challenge the
federal ban, arguing that it does not need a D.E.A. permit, echoing
the states longstanding fight with the federal authorities over its
legalization of medicinal marijuana. The hemp bill would require
farmers who grow it to undergo crop testing to ensure their variety of
cannabis is nonhallucinogenic; its authors say it has been carefully
worded to avoid conflicting with the federal Controlled Substances
Act.

But those efforts have not satisfied federal and state drug
enforcement authorities, who argue that fields of industrial hemp
would only serve as hiding places for illicit cannabis. The California
Narcotic Officers Association opposes the bill, and a spokesman for
the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington said the
measure was unworkable.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican running for re-election, has been mum
on his intentions, with the political calculus of hemp in California
difficult to decipher. The bill was the handiwork of two very
different lawmakers, Assemblyman Mark Leno, a San Francisco Democrat
best known for attempting to legalize same-sex marriage, and
Assemblyman Charles S. DeVore, an Orange County Republican who worked
in the Pentagon as a Reagan-era political appointee.

Their bipartisan communion underscores a deeper shift in hemp culture
that has evolved in recent years, from ragtag hempsters whose love of
plants with seven leaves ran mostly to marijuana, to todays savvy
coalition of organic farmers and health-food entrepreneurs working to
distance themselves from the drug.

Hundreds of hemp products, including energy bars and cold-pressed hemp
oil, are made in California, giving the banned plant a capitalist
aura. But manufacturers must import the raw material, mostly from
Canada, where hemp cultivation was legalized in 1998.

The new hemp entrepreneurs regard it as a sustainable crop, said John
Roulac, 47, a former campaigner against clear-cutting and a backyard
composter before founding Nutiva, a growing California hemp-foods
company. They want to lump together all things cannabis, said David
Bronner, 33, whose familys squeeze-bottle Dr. Bronners Magic Soaps,
based in Escondido, Calif., are made with hemp oil. You dont associate
a poppy seed bagel with opium.

The differences between hemp and its mind-altering cousin, however,
can be horticulturally challenging to grasp. The main one is that the
epidermal glands of marijuana secrete a resin of euphoria-inducing
delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or T.H.C., a substance all but lacking
in industrial hemp.

Ernest Small, a Canadian researcher who co-wrote a major hemp study in
2002 for Purdue University, compared the genetic differences to those
that separate racehorses from plow horses. Evolution, Mr. Small said,
has almost completely bred T.H.C. out of industrial hemp, which by law
must have a concentration of no more than three-tenths of 1 percent.

To its supporters, industrial hemp is utopia in a crop. Prized not
only for its healthful seeds and oils, rich in omega-3 and -6 fatty
acids, but also its fast, bamboo-like growth that shades out weeds,
without pesticides.

Simply put, you create a jungle in one year, said John LaBoyteaux, who
testified in Sacramento on behalf of the California Certified Organic
Farmers association. Theres a growing market out there, and we cant
tap it.

The bill before Governor Schwarzenegger is the latest installment in a
hemp debate that reached its height in 2004, when the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals said that federal antidrug laws did not apply to the
manufacturing or consumption of industrial hemp. The court ruled that
decades earlier, Congress had exempted from marijuana-control laws the
stalks, fibers, oils and seeds of industrial hemp, and that the
government had no right to ban hemp products.

That opened the floodgates for Patagonia hemp jeans and the Merry
Hempsters Zit Zapper (with hemp oil).

Patrick D. Goggin, a lawyer for the Hemp Industries Association and
Vote Hemp, said there would probably be legal snarls to work out with
the California legislation, assuming it is enacted, so that farmers
would not be placing their property in jeopardy if they chose to grow
industrial hemp. But if the federal government clamps down, Mr. Goggin
said, were prepared to raise the issue in court.

Were trying to get an arcane vision of the law contemporized, he
added.

Rogene Waite, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration,
said the agency would not speculate about pending legislation.

The bills adherents point to hemps hallowed niche in American history.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson cultivated hemp (neither effort
was profitable). Colonists boats sailed the Atlantic with hempen
sails. Old Ironsides carried 60 tons of hempen sail and rope. The word
canvas, in fact, is derived from cannabis, a high-tensile fiber
naturally resistant to decay.

Hemp flourished as an American crop from the end of the Civil War
until the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act ended production. During World War
II, when Japan seized the Philippines and cut off supplies of Manila
hemp, the crop got a brief reprieve in the United States, where
farmers were encouraged to grow Hemp for Victory, for boots, parachute
cording and the like. But contrary to lore, most such hemp was never
harvested.

Today, China controls about 40 percent of the worlds hemp fiber, and
its ability to flood the market could result in price fluctuations the
American farmer would have to weather, said Valerie Vantreese, an
agricultural economist in Lexington, Ky. (Kentucky was once the
leading hemp-producing state).

Hemp is grown legally in about 30 countries, including many in the
European Union, where it is mixed with lime to make plaster and as a
biocomposite in the interior panels of Mercedes-Benzes.

In the United States, the chief argument against hemp has been made by
drug-control officials, who are concerned that vast acreages could be
used to conceal clandestine marijuana, which they say would be
impossible to detect.

California is a great climate to grow pot in, and no one from law
enforcement is going through the fields to do a chemical analysis of
different plants, said Thomas A. Riley, a spokesman for the Office of
National Drug Control Policy in Washington.

To some people intimate with the nuances of marijuana, however, the
idea of hiding marijuana in a hemp field, where the plants would
cross-pollinate, provokes amusement.

It would be the end of outdoors marijuana, said Jack Heber, 67, a
marijuana historian and author who runs a group called Help End
Marijuana Prohibition, or HEMP. If it gets mixed with that crop, its a
disaster.

In North Dakota, the state agricultural commissioner, Roger Johnson,
has proposed allowing hemp farming, and has been working with federal
drug regulators on stringent regulations that would include
fingerprinting farmers and requiring G.P.S. coordinates of hemp fields.

Weve done our level best to convince them were not a bunch of wackos,
Mr. Johnson said.

Fifteen years ago, he noted, there was little market for canola, which
is now a major crop produced for its cooking oil. He sees hemp in a
similar vein and dismisses the fears that it would lead to
criminality.

It would take a joint the size of a telephone pole to have an impact,
he said.

But up north in Garberville, the Central Valley of marijuana, the
lines between hemp and marijuana are often a hazy blur, as they are at
a store called the Hemp Connection, where hemp hats and yoga clothing
are sold alongside manuals on pot botany and Stoneware baking pans
(makes six groovy brownies per pan).

The proprietor, Marie Mills, who said she once crafted paper from
marijuana stalks, remains committed to cannabis in all its guises.

We want to educate people and take away the stigma, Ms. Mills said. We
want hemp without harassment.