REP. THIELEN ARGUES IN D.C. FOR LEGAL HEMP

WASHINGTON -- Hawaii Rep. Cynthia Thielen brought her campaign to make
industrial hemp a cash crop in Hawaii here today, joining a national effort
to persuade the Drug Enforcement Administration to drop hemp from its list
of controlled substances.

"In Hawaii this is economic development," said Thielen, arguing that hemp
would be an ideal replacement for such declining crops as sugar and
pineapple. "And the stumbling block to this economic development is the
lobbying effort by the DEA."

Although it has been grown for thousands of years and used for a wide range
of products from shirts to particle board, industrial hemp has fallen out
of favor in recent decades because of its link to marijuana.

Both plants are from the same "cannabis" species, although experts say
hemp, unlike its cousin, has so little of the hallucinogenic substance THC
that it cannot be used to get high.

Hemp advocates like Thielen say that rather than condemned as a dangerous
drug, hemp should be prized as a versatile, environmentally friendly crop.

Today they unveiled a plan to formally petition the DEA to stop classifying
industrial hemp as an illegal drug, and to ask the U.S. Department of
Agriculture to create a licensing system to permit the cultivation of hemp.

"The U.S. needs a new fiber crop. It needs new crops, period," said Jeff W.
Gain, a director of the North American Industrial Hemp Council.

But the effort faces strong opposition. Both the DEA and President
Clinton's drug control policy director, Barry McCaffrey, contend that
legalizing hemp would damage the government's anti-drug campaign.