HIGH HOPE UNREALISTIC, BUT HEMP'S WORTH A TRY

The fun thing for the Louisville Forum to have done yesterday would have
been to cut to the chase: Open it up by asking for a show of hands by
everyone who had ever used marijuana.

Smoke'em out early. Look around at the squirmers who had gathered to hear
the debate on industrial hemp.

Watch the 40- to 50-something men and women in business suits unconsciously
raise their hands a few millimeters, then jerk them down. See the media
representatives suddenly busy with their notebooks and cameras, maybe even
blank stares from a few of the law-enforcement types now leading the good
fight against cannibis sativa.

WHAT COULD have better represented our confused, complex, uninformed,
hypocritical and emotional attitudes about hemp and marijuana than a room
full of well-dressed, well-heeled Louisville leaders sitting in embarrassed
silence?

The advertised Louisville Forum debate was supposed to be on a more
intellectual level -- "Industrial Hemp: Boon or Bust for Kentucky Farmers?"
But in one way or another, consciously and subconsciously, it kept coming
back to marijuana.

We have spent billions of dollars in a largely unsuccessful war against
drugs. We have spent millions of hours in classrooms steering our children
from them. So even industrial hemp cuts deeply against the grain.

The hemp-draped standard bearer is actor Woody Harrelson. He calls for hemp
to replace raw materials now taken from the ground and trees. In many minds
he came tainted: He admits having smoked marijuana. But at least he is
willing to raise his hand.

Harrelson headlined a Louisville Forum lineup that included the strongest
and most articulate voices in the debate: the president of the Kentucky
Hemp Growers Cooperative Association; a Canadian farmer now legally growing
2,000 acres of hemp; professors from Indiana University and the University
of Kentucky who have studied the economic value and chemical properties of
hemp; and a retired agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration
in Kentucky.

The pro-hemp forces, with reason, have grown weary of the demonization of
their crop. Harrelson looking fit, tanned, and very Woodyish in boots,
pants, and shirt made of hemp products -- offered to "get out of the way"
if his very famous presence was a detriment to the debate.

He seemed sincere, but he answered a few questions anyway. And he'd better
not stray too far; you'd never get every television station, radio station
and newspaper in the area to attend a hemp debate involving two professors,
a DEA agent and a Canadian farmer.

When it was all said and done that farmer- Jean Laprise-who had the most
compelling arguments for at least planting trail hemp plots in Kentucky.
His product is limited by law to about 0.3 of 1 percent THC- the chemical
agent that produces the high. Dr. Paul Mahlberg an Indiana University
professor who studies such things, said good street marijuana must be at
least 30 percent THC.

"Anyone who tried to sell hemp as marijuana wouldn't last long," Mahlberg
said smiling. Laprise said he has never used marijuana and never will: he
is a closely regulated businessman trying to make money.

The DEA argument was the party line: Any THC level is illegal; allowing
hemp fields will lead to more marijuana fields. So it goes. An argument in
a time warp-with the media there mostly because Woody was here.

I can't see hemp as the savior of Kentucky's small farmers. If it's that
good, monster agribusiness companies will move in to grow and process it,
not small farmers. Hemp-which is very easy to grow-may not even be a part
of the agricultural answer.

But if Kentucky farms are disappearing- and if the government will grow
test plots seeking even lower THC levels-shouldn't we at lest find out?


Checked-by: Mike Gogulski