GOVERNOR NIXES HEMP FARMING

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a hemp farming
bill for the second time.

The Republican governor announced Thursday that he had turned down a
measure by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that would have
authorized a five-year program under which farmers in four counties -
Imperial, Kings, Mendocino and Yolo - could grow hemp in plots of up
to five acres.

Hemp is a distant cousin of marijuana but contains only traces of
THC, the drug that gives marijuana its intoxicating effect.