Growing support
Tobacco farmers, others call hemp beneficial, but DEA calls it marijuana

By Thomas G. Watts / The Dallas Morning News

WINCHESTER, Ky. Andy Graves looks at the tobacco plants his family has
grown for six generations and hopes for an alternative.

In her tobacco fields a few miles away, Gale Glenn would like another
rotation crop to help maintain the richness of her soil in the heart of
Kentucky's Blue Grass country.

At a time when many tobacco farmers are increasingly concerned about the
future of their crop amid the growing antismoking sentiment, these two
farmers think they may have part of the answer.

They might need an act of Congress to grow it, however.

Mr. Graves and Ms. Glenn are advocates of industrial hemp, a form of
Cannabis sativa, or marijuana, that has been outlawed in the United
States since 1937.

"I'm not interested in giving up the tobacco unless I have to," said Ms.
Glenn. "What we are interested in is another cash crop.

"And there's a great sense of urgency among the hemp people to provide
another cash crop. It's like we're on a roll now."

An increasing number of people, including actor Woody Harrelson, and
organizations have been pushing industrial hemp in recent years. Hemp
councils and trade groups market their products, which are legal in the
United States. And several states have considered legislation to permit
farmers to grow it.

Hemp's fibers are transformed into everything from rope to paper to
highfashion clothing. Its oils are considered a superior lubricant.
Other byproducts could replace petroleum as the basis for plastics, its
supporters say.

One industrial group says hemp product sales in the United States have
grown from about $5 million in the early 1990s to about $200 million
this year. Anticipated sales for the turn of the century are $600
million.

A recent cover of hemp times magazine featured Merle Haggard plucking at
his guitar and wearing a hemp shirt. "People shouldn't be afraid of
something as mildmannered as hemp," he says.

The primary thing that hemp isn't good for is smoking.

Hemp supporters say the industrial variety contains less than 1 percent
of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), compared with 5 to
20 percent contained in the plants that are grown to provide the illicit
high.

Smoke a stick of hemp, supporters say, and the most you'll get is a
headache.

DEA roadblock

Nonetheless, the most serious roadblock to the legalization of hemp is
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which has so far proved
implacable. DEA officials said marijuana by any other name is still
marijuana. It is illegal to grow the plant or possess parts that provide
THC.

Gwen Phillips, a spokeswoman for the agency, confirmed last week that
the DEA does not differentiate between strains of the plant that produce
different levels of the highcausing THC.

"Correct," she said. "No difference."

Ms. Phillips noted that a provision in federal law allows people to grow
hemp for industrial purposes but only after they obtain a license from
the DEA and show that its production "would be in the public interest."

The agency's policy statement on hemp read, however, that the "DEA has
not in the past granted any registrations for the cultivation of
marijuana for industrial purposes."

"The cultivation of the marijuana plant exclusively for commercial,
industrial purposes has many associated risks relating to diversion into
the illicit drug traffic," the statement continued.

Opposing views

During legislative hearings in the states where hemp legalization has
been sought, the DEA and other law enforcement officials frequently have
testified that it would be difficult for officers to tell the difference
between industrial hemp and drugrich marijuana. They also have accused
hemp advocates of being naive or sympathetic to drug interests, and of
chipping away at drug laws so that marijuana would eventually be
legalized.

Hemp adherents disagree.

Plants grown for industrial hemp, they said, are planted within inches
of one another and grow more than 10 feet tall with a small clump of
leaves at the top. The valuable part of the plant is the stalk, with its
long fibers, inner cellulose and other materials. Drugladen plants are
much shorter and clumped with leaves that contain most of the THC.

Erwin "Bud" Sholts, director of agricultural development and
diversification for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, said
authorities need "to get past the paranoia and emotionalism of the drug"
and learn more about the differences between the Cannabis strains.

Mr. Sholts, chairman of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, said
that besides the heights and leaf structures, other differences exist.
"You even harvest it [industrial hemp] before the THC develops, before
it flowers," he said.

Ms. Glenn, the wife of a physician, said she was insulted that anyone
would suggest that she would support the illicit drug industry even
inadvertently.

"I'm a grandmother," she said. "I don't want that stuff around the
kids."

Unwanted support

She and others in the hemp movement said they have tried to ignore the
"gold earring crowd" that is working for the legalization of THCladen
marijuana, but they acknowledge that group often joins them at hearings
and other hempsupport gatherings.

"There's not much that we can do about them," Ms. Glenn said. "We don't
associate with them."

She and Mr. Graves, the sixthgeneration tobacco farmer, are more
interested in support from the influential American Farm Bureau and
agricultural researchers, who have supported industrial hemp for its
multiple uses.

And, they said, environmentalists like hemp because it requires
virtually no pesticides or herbicides unlike tobacco, corn and many
other crops.

"No one has calculated the environmental costs that it would save," said
Mr. Graves, whose father grew hemp in the years before it was outlawed
and again during World War II, when it was needed for the war effort.

"The value of the crop exceeds the problems," he said.

Hemp's real value has yet to be determined. But the market is growing as
new uses are developed.

Candy Penn, a spokeswoman for the Hemp Industries Council in California,
said there were 94 business members of the council in 1994 and 188 now.

"The more that people understand this," she said of hemp, "the more they
are signing on to use it."

Not a panacea

Even if the use of industrial hemp is ultimately permitted in this
country as it has been under controlled conditions in Britain, Canada
and other nations its supporters don't see it as a panacea for
American agriculture.

Tobacco farmers such as Mr. Graves see it as a good rotational crop
because hemp's root system helps aerate the soil and provides natural
nutrients that tobacco sucks away.

But he and Mr. Sholts don't expect tobacco farmers to voluntarily
abandon their primary crop unless they are forced to by the government
or the marketplace. Mr. Graves said he grosses about $4,000 an acre from
tobacco, a crop that carries extensive costs in labor, pesticides and
herbicides.

At 3,000 acres, Mr. Graves' operation is at the large end of the tobacco
farm scale. Smaller farmers throughout the South favor tobacco because
they can see a high return often by using family labor to replace the
crews that farmers such as Mr. Graves hires.

By contrast, crops such as corn return about 10 percent of tobacco's
value. It is unclear what hemp would bring.

"Those of us who are versed in the subject have never said it would
rival tobacco," Mr. Graves said. "But the point of it is that it doesn't
take any labor."

He and Mr. Sholts believe that the market for hemp will continue to
expand and drive up the prices.

"It's been 60 years since anyone looked at it technologically," Mr.
Graves said. "There's no telling what it could be used for now.

"Who the hell knows what prices it will bring eventually?"