Mount Joy, Pa.--Call it a pipe dream, but when farmer M. Jane Balmer
imagines the future of agriculture in Lancaster County, it is filled with
tall, sturdy fields of hemp.

Burned by sagging tobacco sales and worried over sluggish prices for other
crops, Balmer has joined a small but increasingly vocal group of farmers in
Lancaster County and elsewhere who are looking to boost their fortunes by
raising industrial hemp, the nonintoxicating cousin of marijuana.

"It would fit right in as a replacement for tobacco," says Balmer, 60, a
widowed mother of two who raises corn, barley, wheat, alfalfa, soybeans and
chickens on two 200-acre farms in this pastoral borough 10 mile from the
Susquehanna River.

But farmers high on the idea of raising hemp face a major obstacle: Growing
the plant, which looks like marijuana but contains much lower levels of the
intoxicating chemical THC, has been illegal in this country for much of the
last 60 years.

Federal officials argue that allowing hemp farming would create problems in
enforcing pot laws. In addition, they say, it has little commercial value
and is a "golden egg that doesn't really exist."

Hemp advocates insist that farmers would find a ready market. Plants and
seeds legally imported from China, Canada and elsewhere are already sold in
pretzels, sneakers, nutritional supplements and even Frisbee-style disks.

They argue that paper products made from hemp are environmentally friendly
because they don't kill trees. Some stores even sell lingerie made from
soft, silk-like hemp fibers.

So when Balmer considers the uses of hemp, she can't help but see dollar
signs. A lifelong farmer and county representative for the American Farm
Bureau, she has grown tobacco for 40 years but says cigarette makers, facing
massive settlements for government and private lawsuits, no longer pay what
they used to for her crop.

"Twenty years back, we had 30,000 acres of tobacco raised in Lancaster
County," she says. "This year, we will see 12,000. Twenty years ago, it was
a $20 million industry. This year, it may be $7 million. Most of us are
selling tobacco at a loss."

Though some farmers, especially those in Western agricultural states, have
been working with entrepreneurs and even with activist/actor Woody Harrelson
to push for the legalization of industrial hemp, government officials say
lifting the weed ban would intensify problems in the policing of pot and
would send the wrong message.

"A potential by-product of hemp production would be a de facto legalization
of marijuana cultivation," says Terry Parham, a spokesman for the federal
Drug Enforcement Agency, adding that fields of industrial hemp could conceal
marijuana plants. "We don't consider it prudent to change the status of hemp
as a controlled...drug."

Advocates of industrial hemp scoff at such arguments. They say the plant has
50,000 legal uses and suggest that the restrictions are unfair to
law-abiding farmers and a hindrance to entrepreneurs looking to turn the
stalks, seeds and oil into products and profits.

Hemp advocates promote the idea that an acre of the plant can fetch upward
of $500, compared to the $375 that Lancaster County farmers get for an acre
of feed corn.

Drug-enforcement officials dismiss those numbers as unrealistic because they
are based on the unproved assumption that demand for hemp products will
quickly expand if the plant is legalized.

Hemp hasn't always been dogged by such concerns.

A staple of colonial agriculture, industrial hemp was farmed by George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Rolling acres of tough, lanky
cannabis grown for rope making were so common in Lancaster County in the
last century that the townships of East and West Hempfield were named in
their honor.

But it has been illegal to grow hemp in the United States since 1937, when
federal officials outlawed all forms of cannabis.

Though some cannabis experts say it would be possible for drug-enforcement
agents to distinguish between mature hemp and marijuana plants, the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the DEA say the only
surefire way to tell them apart is through chemical analysis.

"People have been saying that you can tell the difference by flying over a
hemp field," says Bob Weiner, a spokesman for the White House office, "but
our own studies have shown that while you can make a chemical difference,
you can't make the distinction from a helicopter."

The White House office also questions hemp's viability as a cash crop,
citing federal studies that dismiss it as a novelty. Hemp advocates point
out that the United States lifted its hemp ban during World War II so that
the defense industry could use the fiber.

But the White House office said the hemp industry collapsed after nylon was
invented and hemp-farming subsidies were stopped.

Despite those arguments, some states are trying to determine whether hemp
could, indeed, ease financial pressures on farmers. Hawaii already has
cleared the way for growing industrial hemp. Minnesota, Montana, North
Dakota, Vermont and Virginia have hemp bills pending.

And Iowa, Kansas and Oregon have authorized research on hemp or have
recently considered bills calling for legalization.