HEMP: A GROWING NEED?

Advocates Say It's Time U.S. Legalized Crop

BRADENTON - Hemp. It's a fantastic product, says Elizabeth Western, a
local clothing retailer who sells hemp purses, shirts and jeans at
Chameleon Natural Boutique on Manatee Avenue.

She'd like to see laws change to make it legal to produce hemp for
clothing. The United States is the only developed nation in the world
that doesn't produce hemp as an economic crop, according to NORML,
the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Several states have passed laws allowing hemp to be grown for
research and commercial purposes. But farmers in those states can't
grow the outlaw crop without a federal OK.

Hemp and marijuana are varieties of the same plant, cannabis sativa.
Industrial hemp is bred with low levels of THC, or
tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient.

You can't get high from smoking industrial hemp, according to the
Parkland Industrial Hemp Growers Association, a research foundation
in Manitoba, Canada. All you can get is a headache.

Tina Kimball and other activists believe hemp is illegal because it
looks like marijuana. Kimball is president of the student chapter of
NORML at the University of Central Florida.

It's a mindset that irritates Western.

"When you're growing hemp, you're not growing a field of pot," she says.

But that's exactly what could happen if it were legal to grow hemp,
according to Tom Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug
Control Policy in Washington D.C.

"The problem is that the plants all derive from the cannabis genus,"
Riley said. "It would allow marijuana and hemp to be grown side by
side. It would impose an unreasonable burden on local law enforcement."

Hemp's strength and earth-friendly qualities appeal to Western. It
doesn't require pesticides, unlike cotton, the most popular crop for
clothing, and also the most sprayed.

Western researches the companies she buys from and looks for
businesses that subscribe to fair trade practices, provide employment
to destitute women and try to minimize impact to the environment. At
Chameleon, Western sells organic cotton teething bears, T-shirts dyed
with clay, and other home and clothing products.

But hemp is her favorite frustration. It's grown legally in Canada,
she says. "Why not here?"

Hemp has myriad applications. Its fiber, seed and oil are used for
food, paper, building materials and personal products, like hand
cream. Grown with little or no fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides,
it's no wonder the plant is called weed.

The seed of the hemp plant has all 10 amino acids humans need to
survive, says one of its admirers, Anthony Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a
member of the Florida Cannabis Action Network in Sarasota, an
organization that supports the tax and regulation of all forms of cannabis.

"It's almost as if this plant's evolutionary tactic to survive was to
be useful to humans," Lorenzo said.

Activists for the legalization of industrial hemp predict that the
United States is entering a period of greater tolerance to
alternative resources.

With today's high gas prices and biofuels becoming more viable, cost
benefit analyses for hemp production are also becoming more viable,
said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML in Washington D.C.

"It's not just the durability of the fabric that makes it appealing,"
he said. "They're reflecting the desire of the marketplace. The
problem is, the product is too expensive. It would be cheaper for an
American company to grow it."

In 2005, Ron Paul, R-Texas, and a handful of senators introduced
legislation to repeal the federal ban on the cultivation of
industrial hemp as a commercial crop. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act
would have allowed states to license and regulate hemp cultivation.

The bill was dead on arrival in Congress, said St. Pierre.

"In every state where individuals have a chance to vote for marijuana
reform, voters vote for it," he said. "Politicians then pass
resolutions 180 degrees in the opposite direction. This Congress
doesn't seem capable of divorcing itself from prohibition tendencies."

The chief objection to legalizing industrial hemp appears to be that
law enforcement would be unable to tell the difference between it and
marijuana.

Hemp and marijuana are close relatives that are either
different-looking or impossible to tell apart, depending on who you ask.

"The plants in the field look very similar," says Keith Watson, a
hemp specialist with the Manitoba Agricultural Foods and Rural
Initiative, Canada's equivalent of the Department of Agriculture.

Canada produced 20,000 acres of hemp last year, and 74 percent of it
went to the United States.

"The U.S. is certainly behind as far as licensing and growing
industrial hemp," Watson said.

In Canada, industrial hemp has 0.3 percent of THC as opposed to
marijuana, which has 2 percent or higher. In the field, the two crops
cross-pollinate. But when they do, it tends to dilute THC levels in marijuana.

If a field of hemp registers above the accepted level for THC, it is
immediately ploughed under, according to Parkland Industrial Hemp
Growers Co-op, a research foundation in Manitoba.

St. Pierre looks to the past for hope. Hanging in his office is a
poster dating back to World War II, proclaiming "Hemp For Victory."

Although marijuana became illegal in the United States in 1937, the
law was reversed from 1940 to 1945 when a dire shortage of canvas
rope, caulking oil and cordage prompted the Department of War to
circulate the poster. The word canvas is derived from cannabis,
according to Webster's dictionary.

The federal government subsidized Scouts and Boys & Girls Clubs,
teaching children how to make hemp rope and twine during World War
II, St. Pierre said.

How much hemp does the United States import? The Hemp Industries
Association in Occidental, Calif., doesn't have the numbers but is
working on a market study.

Steve Logothetis imports hemp from Romania for Hemp Basics, his
Warren, N.J.-based company. Most fiber products come from Asia and
eastern Europe, he says. Canadian hemp imports are mostly dedicated
to seed products.

But despite its earth-friendly qualities, hemp is more expensive to
produce than cotton, mostly because the technology hasn't caught up,
Logothetis says.

For hemp fiber to be produced in the United States it will take not
only a change in mind-set but considerable capital investment in
production and processing.

"The industry would have to be built from the bottom up," he said.
"It doesn't exist here."

Changing the mind-set would require politicians to stop equating hemp
with marijuana, he said. "It's like outlawing corn because it could
be made into moonshine."

People who wear hemp, like Amy Arnell, love it for its softness and
durability. But Arnell said she wears hemp for other reasons.

"I feel good about wearing hemp, knowing that I'm supporting the
people that take the time to manufacture it," she said. "People are
not just smoking it. We are using it. It is resourceful."