Weeding out the opposition Chris Boucher, a co-owner of Hempstead clothing
company, is leading a grass-roots campaign to legalize industrial use of
hemp.

COSTA MESA -- Before he can make a simple pair of jeans, Chris Boucher has
to buy raw hemp fabric from China and ship it halfway around the world to a
West Side warehouse.

But if the co-owner of Hempstead -- a small company quickly emerging as a
giant in the hemp clothing business -- can legalize the harvesting of
industrial-grade hemp in California, the $80 price tag on those
light-colored pants would be cut in half.

"If we could grow hemp here, these would be $40 jeans," Boucher said.

Boucher, 34, is a leader in a grass-roots campaign aimed at placing a
statewide initiative on the November ballot to legalize the growing and
harvesting of hemp for industrial uses.

Hemp, a close cousin of the marijuana plant, has been used for centuries to
make clothing, food and textiles. The paper that held the first drafts of
the Declaration of Independence and the sails that propelled Christopher
Columbus to the New World reportedly were made of hemp fibers, officials
said.

Californians for Industrial Renewal, a political action group based in
Garden Grove, is hoping to collect by May the 700,000 signatures and money
required to put the issue on the ballot and get it passed by voters next
fall. If successful, California would be the first state in the nation to
approve full-scale growing and harvesting of industrial hemp.

Packing, shipping and selling hemp products is already legal in California,
but small businessmen like Boucher have to pay top dollar to import hemp
seeds, oils and other raw materials from one of 30 countries where growing
hemp is legal.

Harvesting hemp has been officially outlawed in the United States since
1937, except for five years of limited government-approved growing to make
ropes and other materials during World War II, officials said.

For Boucher, whose 7-year-old business rang up more than $1 million in
sales last year, the controversial issue boils down to simple economics.

In the last six months, Boucher estimated he has bought 40,000 pounds of
hemp seeds and close to 20,000 yards of hemp fabric on the foreign market.

"Unfortunately, all the money we pay now goes into the Chinese banks and
the Chinese economy," Boucher said. "We could have put that money into the
local community." With state government approval, large paper and textile
companies that now shy away from using hemp could jump on board, Boucher
said.

"The initiative would open it up and bring in big industry," he said. "We'd
see millions of investment dollars brought into the community." But Boucher
and others in the pro-hemp movement admit they have to overcome many public
misconceptions about hemp if their bid to legalize the plant is to be
successful.

First, there's the idea that hemp and marijuana are one in the same, an old
connection Boucher concedes is tough to break.

The initiative defines industrial hemp as all varieties of the plant genus
cannabis containing up to 1% of tetrahydrocannabinol the active ingredient
in marijuana.

The law also would require growers to register annually with the state
Department of Food and Agriculture and give law enforcement authorities the
power for random checks of crops for tetrahydrocannabinol content.

Sam Clauder, executive director of the initiative campaign, said he is
hopeful his group can cash in on the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, which
legalized the medical use of marijuana.

"If voters had the compassion to allow AIDS and cancer patients to use
medical marijuana, we certainly feel like they'll differentiate between
marijuana and industrial hemp," Clauder said.