HEMP:NOW WE,RE WEARING IT,EATING IT,EVEN BUILDING WITH IT

Trends: Growing the plant may be illegal in this country,but that hasn't
stopped products made of it from becoming hot sellers.

You know a little about hemp.

Not to much ,of course.A friend used to tell you about it,uh,a lot during
college.

Anyway, what you don't know about hemp is that: A)as a textile/building
material/food product/body lotion, it's not dope; and B)it's one of the
hottest textiles/building materials/food products/body lotions on the planet.

Hemp is so hot that many hemp manufacturers don't even bother anymore with
doper jokes.

The New York hosiery company E.G.Smith Socks recently unveiled two new
products - Ribbed Hemp sweat socks. The brochure for both items reads: "Why
Hemp Socks. Fabrics made from hemp keep the wearer cooler in the summer and
warmer in the winter," adding that hemp is "resistant to pests and mold."

Such restraint is typical in the hemp industry, according to Lisa David,
co-owner of Orange Hemp Co. in Orange.

"Hemp is not mainstream yet. Definitely not.

"But hemp is very well accepted within the eco-friendly community, the
Sierra Club, and people like that," she adds.

"And it's also trendy among kids."

Though it remains illegal in this country to cultivate any of the 400-plus
varieties of cannibis, David says the variety and volume of hemp products
entering the U.S. retail market is growing exponentially as other countries
relegalize hemp as a manufacturing material.

Food (hemp-pesto salad dressing and hemp hot sauce), paper and products
("tree-free" hemp stationery, hemp fiberboard), beauty aids (hemp shampoo
and hemp body oils) and clothing (hemp shoes, hemp shirts, hemp belts, hemp
hats and wallets) are some of the hotter product categories.

"Once people understand hemp, they're open to it," David says. "It's not
for smoking."