REEFER'S COUSIN

Though advocates extol its virtues, hemp has little chance of winning over
the U.S. drug czar

WOLF CREEK, Ore. -- In the woods of southern Oregon, where deputies in
camouflage fatigues beat the brush each fall for hidden marijuana
plantations, Kevyn Woven strings his loom with the straight cousin of the
pot plant: industrial hemp.

Using hemp fiber and yarn imported from Poland, Romania and China, where
cultivation and sale of industrial hemp is legal, Woven creates rich, nubby
fabrics in woodland colors that wind up as boutique clothing and upholstery
on custom-made furniture in luxury homes.

''It is my passion,'' said Woven, who is as eager to extol the many virtues
of hemp as he is to sell his fabrics.

Goods made from industrial hemp, once sold primarily at hippie fairs and
through ads in the back pages of magazines with an environmental bent, are
moving into the mainstream. Adidas uses it in a shoe, the Body Shop
features a line of hemp cosmetics and BMW uses it in some car interiors.
There are even several beers made with hemp.

''I feel the industrial hemp crop could very easily be the soybean crop of
the new millennium,'' said Jeffrey W. Gain, a former farm lobbyist who now
is the chairman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Alternative
Agricultural Research and Commercialization Corp.

Like soybeans, hemp produces an oil from its seeds that can be turned into
cooking oil, cosmetics and plastics. Hemp fiber can be used to make paper,
cloth and even structural panels stronger than plywood. The seed can be
ground for flour and livestock feed.

Growing hemp in rotation with cotton and other crops increases their yields
and reduces the need for pesticides.

''It's really an amazing crop,'' Gain said.

Industrial hemp is the same species as marijuana, cannabis sativa, but it
is a different variety which, due to genetics and growing practices, has
only a very small amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the stuff that
makes pot smokers high.

But even that small amount, less than 1 percent, is enough to make it an
outlaw in the eyes of Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. drug czar who heads
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He contends that
efforts to legalize hemp are a smokescreen to legalize marijuana.

''A serious law-enforcement concern is that a potential byproduct of
legalizing hemp production would be de facto legalization of marijuana
cultivation,'' McCaffrey's office said in a statement. ''The seedlings are
the same and in many instances the mature plants look the same.''

Hogwash, say hemp advocates. The 29 countries that allow farmers to grow
hemp, including Canada, France, Germany and England, are able to work
around the differences. And the thought of cross-pollination with low-THC
hemp makes pot growers cringe.

Indeed, hemp was a strategic crop until the turn of the century, when steam
power took over for sail on ships, said John Roulac, the author of Hemp
Horizons and founder of HEMPTECH, a hemp information network.

''Old Ironsides,'' the U.S.S. Constitution, went into battle with sails,
rigging and caulking made from it. Founding Fathers George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson grew it. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on
paper made from it. Farmers could pay their taxes with it.

The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 spawned the rise of cotton as the
world's dominant fiber, though it was shorter, weaker and rotted more
easily than hemp.

The coup de grace came from the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Although it
allowed farmers to continue growing hemp, the government wouldn't issue
permits for them to ship their crops to processing plants because a few
leaves that might contain THC were left on the stalks, Roulac said. By the
end of 1938, every hemp factory in the Midwest was shut down, except one
with a contract to supply rope to the Navy.

There was a brief resurgence during World War II, when the federal
government launched a ''Hemp for Victory'' campaign for rope and parachute
cord, but after the war, hemp was an outlaw again.

Med Byrd, the director of applied research at North Carolina State
University, sees hemp as part of the mix of plants -- including wheat and
rice straw and kenaf -- that will fill the growing global demand for fiber.

''There are signs the world could be facing a significant fiber shortage
early in the 21st century,'' Byrd said. ''One way of looking at this is
that there are about a billion people in China. Each person in the United
States uses about 700 pounds of paper per year. In a developing country
like China, the figure is closer to seven pounds.

''Let's say the proper number for a well-educated society is 300 pounds of
paper per person per year. Take the difference between the Chinese figure
of seven pounds and the proper figure of 300 pounds -- 293 pounds -- and
multiply by a billion. We don't know where that fiber is going to come from.''

As a source of paper, hemp is tough to work with, because its fibers are
longer than the wood fibers that the country's pulp plants are set up for.
But one big advantage is that hemp grows much faster than trees, which is
an important factor when you are playing catch-up, Byrd said.

Although the DEA argues that hemp is much more expensive than other fibers,
hemp advocates point out that difference would drop immediately if hemp
didn't have to be imported from Europe and China. Canada decided to let
farmers begin planting 5,000 acres this year.

''As long as McCaffrey is there it's probably not going to happen'' in the
United States, said Gain, who is also on the board of the North American
Industrial Hemp Association. He said that all it would take to begin
producing hemp in this country is for the DEA and the president to sign off
on it.

But the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative, the Hemp Company of America and
six would-be hemp farmers aren't waiting. They sued the DEA and the U.S.
Justice Department last May. They contend that Congress never intended to
make industrial hemp illegal when it outlawed marijuana.

Faced with growing uncertainty for the future of tobacco farmers because of
federal efforts to wipe out smoking, the University of Kentucky's Center
for Business and Economic Research looked into the prospects of growing
hemp, once one of the state's biggest crops.

The study found that hemp could earn farmers $220 an acre when grown from
straw and grain, and up to $600 an acre when grown for certified seed. That
would make it the second most profitable cash crop in the state after
tobacco, which brings in $1,000 to $1,500 an acre.

''It is moving from the fringe, but it is still very boutique,'' Byrd said.
''Anybody who's got enough money can buy hemp products. You can buy hemp
oil, hemp lip balm, hemp beer, hemp this, hemp that. If enough fringe
people buy those products, and enough people work on processes to get the
price down and enough farmers are allowed to grow it, all that can change.''

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski