RED TAPE SMOTHERING HEMP CROP

Health Canada's "bureaucratic constipation" turns farmers' hopes into pipe
dreams.

When people talk about hemp, they sound euphoric, even if the distant
relative of marijuana can't make anyone high. "This is unbelievable. The
response has been absolutely amazing." Says Les Patterson of Vancouver's
Bowen Island Brewing, describing the company's new ale brewed with hemp
rather than hops. Ruth Shamai says: "Hemp makes beautiful fabric: strong
like linen and it drapes like cotton and it resists ultraviolet rays." Her
Toronto company, The Natural Order, wants to make cosmetics and fabric from
Canadian hemp.

Ontario car-parts maker Kenex Ltd. is so impressed bu hemp's ability to
replace plastic that it wants to buy tonnes of Canadian hemp to make into
panels for the auto companies. Farmers planting the first commercial hemp
crop since the 1930's have a ready market for as much as they can grow. The
trouble is that, more than a month into the growing season, the seeds are
still not in the ground because of red tape in Ottawa. Health Canada
started taking applications in March, but is only now mail9ing out growing
permits to farmers across the country. "I think there is pressure on the
government from the United States" where hemp growing is not legal, aid
Brian Taylor, mayor of Grand Forks, B.C. Mr. Taylor, a leader in the
campaign to legalize hemp growing, says it remains controversial because
industrial hemp is a cousin of the marijuana plant. U.S. drug officials
have resisted hemp legalization because they are worried that people might
try to smoke it.

But the buzz-producing ingredient, tetrahydrocannabiol, has been bred out
of industrial hemp. Mr. Taylor said. The plants contain less than 0.3 per
cent THC, compared with 10 per cent or more in marijuana.

"You could say I'm a little frustrated," said farmer Kevin Miles, who hopes
to soon get the seeds to plant 300 acres in hemp. "I should have had the
seeds in long ago. The earlier you get it in, the bigger the tonnage per
acre."

Mr. Miles, 35, who represents the third generation to work his family farm
at tWaterford, near Brantford in Southern Ontario, said he wants to
diversify his crop of sweet corn and pumpkins.

But it hasn't been easy.

Ottawa's concern about the possible abuses of hemp growing led to
requirements that each farmer be checked for a criminal record.

The application also requires global positioning co-ordinates of the
acreage to be planted so that surveillance satellites can keep an eye on
it.

Samples of the crop will also have to be analyzed in a laboratory to make
sure it doesn't have too much THC.

"I don't disagree with getting a licence, but it is an extremely onerous
business," said The Natural Order's Ms. Shamai, who last year had a licence
to grow an experimental hemp crop on an Ontario farm.

She said phone calls to the government's Hemp Project offices in Ottawa go
unanswered. Callers are directed to an Internet site that is packed with
regulations and numerous complicated forms that must be submitted to get a
growing permit. "Farmers here have been frightened off." Mr. Taylor said.
"We expected mass planting in British Columbia, but it hasn't happened."

He attributed that to "bureaucratic constipation in Ottawa. I've been
fighting it for years." Mr. Taylor became enthusiastic about the commercial
advantages of hemp while he was a leader of an earlier campaign to legalize
marijuana.

He said officials can easily tell the difference between hemp and marijuana
growing in the field.

"Until we deal with the paranoia that hangs around marijuana, we're not
going to get into a major industry." Mr. Taylor added.

He expects that the public will become desensitized to the drug issue once
a successful crop is harvested this year.

Mr. Miles said he has contracts to sell his hemp crop at $275 a tonne,
which is about the same price as soybeans and much higher than the pumpkins
he had in the field last year.

But rather than harvesting four tonnes an acre, he says he will be lucky to
get three an acre if he gets the seeds in now.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)