CANADA'S RELUCTANT HEMP REVIVAL

Government had to overcome 'reefer madness' before legalizing marijuana's
harmless cousin. Mike Blanchfield reports.

Senator Eugene Whelan knows a thing or two about farmers' fields and what
will grow there. After two decades in federal politics, his folksy
demeanour and trademark Stetson hats made him Canada's most recognized
agriculture minister.

Behind the scenes, though, he has been a supporter of a sometimes
controversial crop -- hemp, the distant and non-intoxicating cousin of
marijuana. It's a plant that growing numbers of people believe could
revolutionize farming, save trees and keep poisonous pesticides from
seeping into the environment.

"I was aware of it when I was minister of agriculture. We just didn't do
anything about it," says the Trudeau-era cabinet minister.

"I can remember when you talked about hemp or marijuana, my God if you
talked about legalizing it you were from Mars, from outer space."

Not any more. This year, Canada legalized hemp farming for the first time
in 60 years. The experience was considered a qualified success by most, but
it was one fraught with delays caused by government red tape.

The reason? Bureaucrats set up complex rules intended to keep hemp farmers
honest. They were intensely concerned that hemp farming would be corrupted
by drug dealers who might turn farmers' fields into marijuana groves and
that voters might believe politicians were engaged in a back-door plot to
legalize marijuana.

The bureaucrats' deepest fears never came true. No hemp farmers were busted
on drug charges, and the general public didn't seem at all worried that its
politicians were from outer space.

"I think they were over-concerned," says Mr. Whelan.

Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act by Ottawa researcher
Ken Rubin show just how worried the government was in the three years of
negotiations and backroom lobbying that led to the legalization of hemp
farming this past March.

The government was still jittery just two weeks before the law came into
effect, as a Feb. 28, 1998, internal memo to Agriculture Minister Lyle
Vanclief indicates: "Enforcement agencies are concerned that this may open
the door to increased illicit drug market activities if rigorous
enforcement mechanisms are not built into the regulatory framework."

A January 1997 internal memo points out that while hemp farming may be
legal in parts of Europe, Canada's wide open spaces might prove alluring to
criminals. "Here in Canada, we have vast areas to cover, some of which
could be in relatively isolated areas ... we need to adjust our methods to
suit the Canadian experience."

The hemp revival began in earnest in Canada in 1994 when Health Canada
granted the first licence to cultivate the crop -- strictly for research
purposes -- to a southern Ontario company.

But it would take four more years of hand-wringing to overcome the "reefer
madness" attitude that led to the ban on hemp when it was outlawed with
marijuana in 1938.

Hemp contains minuscule amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the
chemical that gives marijuana its potency. "You'd have to smoke a tonne of
it (hemp) to get a headache," says Mr. Whelan.

In recent years, a growing movement of hemp supporters -- very often the
same drug culture types who want to legalize marijuana -- has shown the
potential economic benefits of the crop.

It can be used for a variety of products from clothing to car parts to
medicinal oils to the best and strongest rope money can buy. Hemp, which is
farmed legally throughout Europe and Asia, is resilient to most bugs;
therefore the crop doesn't rely on pesticides, which makes it
environmentally friendly.

More conservative types such as 73-year-old Whelan, who believes smoking
marijuana is morally wrong, have also come forward with their support of
hemp farming.

As Mr. Whelan points out, the parachute that saved former U.S. president
George Bush when he bailed out of his fighter plane in the Second World War
was made out of hemp.

"It's an all around good crop when we talk about saving our trees, our
forests," says Mr. Whelan.

"It's a renewable crop, one you can grow every year. At the turn of the
century, about 90 per cent of our paper was made from hemp."

Government regulators have acknowledged the economic potential of hemp but
its connection to marijuana still makes them nervous.

"The challenge for regulators is to develop a framework which permits legal
production of hemp and minimizes any opportunity to produce marijuana,"
says a June 1997 Agriculture Canada discussion paper.

The documents show bureaucrats were concerned the public wouldn't
understand the simple distinction between marijuana and hemp.

A January 1998 draft of an Agriculture Canada public relations strategy
says the department "should focus on the fact that industrial hemp is an
agricultural crop, used for food and fibre purposes, and that it does not
contain enough THC to make it attractive as either a medicine or a narcotic."

The same document identifies Mr. Whelan and Senator Lorna Milne as hemp
supporters.

"No vocal hemp opponents have come forward to date, however opposition from
those who fear this is the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing
marijuana, is expected," warns the communications strategy.

As it turned out, there was no such groundswell of public opposition, said
Niels Hansen-Trip, the hemp program manager for Health Canada's Bureau of
Drug Surveillance.

And how many of the 250 farmers licensed to grow hemp across Canada became
involved in criminal activity involving marijuana? "None to my knowledge,"
said Mr. Hansen-Trip. "Most people were serious about growing industrial
hemp and want it to be a reliable source of income."

As it turned out, the most controversial aspect was caused by the
government regulations themselves. They covered every aspect of hemp
growing and selling, the importation of seeds and the export of products --
the intention being to prevent someone from slipping a batch of potent
marijuana past government regulators.

Indeed, hemp is the only agricultural crop to be regulated by Health
Canada's Bureau of Drug Surveillance.

In May 1996, New Democrat MP Svend Robinson tabled an unsuccessful motion
in the House of Commons calling for the transfer of regulatory authority to
Agriculture Canada.

In her report to the Senate on the hemp season, Mr. Milne noted that Health
Canada was "extremely late" granting licences. Separate licenses are
required to purchase the seed and to grow the crop.

Though many farmers were pleased with their results, the late start in
planting reduced yields by 20 to 50 per cent, the senator noted in her Dec.
8 speech to the upper chamber.

Part of the new regulations call for close inspection of the crop to make
sure the THC levels remain acceptably low.

As Ms. Milne told her senate colleagues: "Testing is required three times
throughout the growing season. Costs incurred by the farmers was enormous.

"Indeed, several growers were unaware of the requirement for these tests
until they received their approved licence."

Ms. Milne noted that Kenex Ltd. of Chatham, Ont., handled the
administrative duties for its 52 farmers because they were "overwhelmed by
the paperwork."

Kenex president Jean Laprise said both government and industry had a steep
learning curve this past year. Still, he called the myriad regulations
"cumbersome" and hoped that over time -- as hemp farmers proved they could
be trusted -- the regulations might be relaxed.

"That fact that it's in the cannabis sativa family somewhat dictated the
need to keep some control, on seed in particular, and the location of the
plots," he said.

Mr. Laprise said it took a lot of lobbying for business to legalize hemp
farming.

"The initial work began in 1994 and the regulations came into place in
1998," he said. "It took a few years, so it was fairly difficult."

Mr. Whelan says the bureaucratic preoccupations with marijuana display a
naivete.

"You and I both know there's marijuana available to anybody pretty near any
time they want it," he says.

Drug dealers, he says, are too smart to grow marijuana in a hemp field in
this age of satellite photography. "It's pretty difficult to grow it
outside any more and not be found out."

Long ago, Mr. Whelan says matter of factly, he realized hemp was nothing to
worry about.

"The village where my wife comes from in Yugoslavia, she remembers this as
a little kid, her mother worked in a hemp mill. They had ponds where they
soaked the stocks and they had women who had to go in and turn this thing
so they could shred it," he recalls.

"We spent seven weeks, three years ago, in the Ukraine and they grow hemp
all over the place."

Checked-by: Richard Lake