POT'S KIN IS SEEN AS ANSWER TO SLUMPING GRAIN PRICES

BISMARCK, N.D. - Dennis Carlson sold his first wheat, grown on a
field borrowed from his parents, in 1975, when he was 14 years old. He
earned $4.51 a bushel and resolved to follow his father, grandfather
and great-grandfather into farming.

Nearly 24 years later, spring wheat is selling for $2.91 a bushel, and
Carlson worries whether he can afford to plant next month. "We're
going to get a low price," he said. "And if we get a bumper crop, it's
going to get lower."

Battered by sinking commodity prices and rising costs, Carlson and
other wheat farmers are looking across the Canadian border at a crop
they say could help save them -- if only it were legal. That crop is
hemp, a non-intoxicating look-alike cousin of marijuana grown around
the world for its fiber, seed and oil. But long identified with
marijuana both by law enforcement and the counterculture, it is banned
in the United States as part of the war on drugs.

As farmers from Hawaii to North Dakota to Vermont lobby legislatures
to study hemp's potential and make it legal, they are opposed by
federal officials unwilling to relax drug laws even symbolically,
whether by endorsing marijuana's medical use, or approving a
once-common crop, hemp.

Until recently, the White House's Office of National Drug Control
Policy asserted that making hemp legal would send the wrong message,
"especially to our youth at a time when adolescent drug use is
rising." But in late March its director, Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
indicated in an interview that his opposition was softening.

"If people believe that hemp fiber can be sold in the marketplace for
a profit, and aren't actually trying to normalize the growing of
marijuana around America, to the extent you want to grow hemp fiber
we'd be glad to work with you," McCaffrey said. But as a profitable
crop, he said, "I think it's going nowhere."

But in North Dakota, where the Republican-controlled Legislature
appears likely to enact laws promoting hemp, Carlson said: "We're all
desperate. We're trying to find something that will change our
outlook, and hemp is one of many crops."

It does not help that hemp remains identified with the counterculture,
its products -- from oils to clothing -- often sold in shops that sell
rolling papers, pipes and other drug paraphernalia, its cause cheered
on by marijuana advocates.

"They are our worst enemies," said Gale Glenn, a tobacco grower in
Winchester, Ky. "If marijuana didn't exist, hemp would be growing here
on hundreds of thousands of acres."

Legislation to revive hemp passed in Hawaii this month and has been
introduced in legislatures in North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota,
Virginia, Vermont and Hawaii.

The federal Controlled Substances Act says the government does not
intend to prevent states from legislating in this area. But even with
state approval, hemp growers would need permits from the Drug
Enforcement Administration, which so far has resisted.

"There's widespread bipartisan support for this becoming a crop in
North Dakota," state Sen. Joel Heitkamp said. "The problem is at the
federal level."

State Rep. David Monson, a farmer and school superintendent who
sponsored the North Dakota legislation, said, "I think 99 percent of
the people in my district, when you show them the bottom line, they're
ready to go."

After Canada made hemp legal a year ago, about 5,000 acres were
planted with hemp, said Geof Kime, president of Hempline, a hemp
growing and processing company in Delaware, Ontario.

Monson recalled watching his neighbor across the border in Manitoba
grow 23 acres of hemp that netted about $250 an acre. "When he came
out with all those profits, we were really upset," Monson said.

The harvested hemp can be imported into the United States for
processing, "but we can't grow it ourselves," said Jeffrey Gain, who
promotes the revival of hemp as a director of the North American
Industrial Hemp Council.

Hemp flourished as a cash crop through most of American history.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations.
The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp-fiber paper. Hemp
supplied early Americans with rope, sails, clothing and other
necessities.

But in 1937, Congress enacted a ban on marijuana that came to
encompass hemp. During World War II, after imports of Manila hemp from
the Philippines were cut off, the government distributed seeds for
farmers to grow in a "Hemp For Victory" drive, but once the war ended,
hemp was banned again. By then, synthetic fibers such as nylon were
taking its place.

Environmentalists describe hemp as a renewable, biodegradable resource
that can be used in paper, fabrics, building material and even
automobile moldings. Farmers say it is a crop that needs few
pesticides, shades out weeds, resists erosion -- and can make money.
"This is not a panacea," Glenn said, "but it's one of the answers."