HEMP PETITION MAKES THE ROUNDS

15 Years After Pot Arrests, Demonstrators Switch Tactics

WIMBERLEY -- When, as an act of civil disobedience, chimney sweep Daniel
Scales walked into a San Marcos sheriff's office with a marijuana bud in
March 1991, he was working on a "spiritual science fiction novel." His
arrest, along with those of six others, garnered brief national attention
and a nifty nickname -- the San Marcos Seven.

Fourteen years later, Scales is still working on the novel, titled "Jokers
Or Better to Open". And with what he calls the "vicarious support" of his
comrades, he has shifted the scope of his protest only slightly.

Teaming up with the owner of a Wimberley cigar shop who looks uncannily
like Captain Kangaroo, Scales has prepared a petition designed to encourage
industrial hemp as "the only feasible alternative to Middle East
petroleum." (It stops short of calling for the legalization of marijuana,
though Scales said he does support legalizing its medical use.)

The two started circulating the petition at the South by Southwest festivall.

The petition's hemp policy, declared after a pair of "whereases," envisions
a world trade dominated not by oil futures but by a controversial bit of
flora: hemp and marijuana come from the cannabis plant.

After a year, or 50 million signatures -- whichever comes first -- its
sponsors will place the petition on the steps of Washington's Capitol.

They may get no further. Though hemp supporters say the plant's American
roots run deep -- the Constitution may have been written on hemp, George
Washington grew the stuff, and FDR supposedly subsidized hemp production
during World War II -- its cultivation has been consistently nipped in the
bud by most national and state lawmakers.

But leave it to this village -- composed of a curious amalgamation of
conservative retirees , middle-age suburbanite exiles from Houston, young
hippies and a handful of hermetic rock stars -- to think practically, if a
little fancifully, about cheaper fuel.

The petition charge is led by Richard Rogers, the cigar shop owner, and
Scales, who ran for Wimberley City Council last year after unsuccessfully
campaigning for mayor, justice of the peace and council in San Marcos as a
proletarian candidate.

The campaign that gained him the most notoriety, however, might be the one
that landed him in jail.

In 1991, seven people walked into the Hays County Law Enforcement Center,
one at a time, smoking or bearing marijuana. They were a collection of
house painters, home builders, graduate students, cooks and, of course,
chimney sweeps. Each was arrested, spent the night in jail and was released
the next morning on a personal recognizance bond.

The sheriff said, with some congeniality, that his office could process as
many people who wanted to be arrested at any given time, adding: "You'll
just have to toke a number and wait."

Some eventually did time, others were placed on probation. Scales, who is
in pre-production on a film called "SM7," spent that one night in jail and
did community service work.

The seven have scattered. One, described as a "grad-student sandal-maker
wanderer," moved to New York City. Another is living with his grandmother
in Odessa.

Jody Dodd, who had just completed a social work degree at Southwest Texas
State at the time of the San Marcos action, now works for the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom in Philadelphia.

"We didn't want to be dismissed as a bunch of potheads," she said. "I
didn't smoke it, I don't smoke it. I brought in a pinch of pot, put it on
the counter (of the sheriff's office), and said this should be legal."

Zeal Stefanoff, the group's leader, went on to run for Hays County sheriff
in 1996 on a pro-pot platform. He received about a quarter of the vote in
the Democratic primary. He has since moved to California, where he obtained
a medical marijuana card and "is doing what he does best -- growing really,
really good weed," according to Vicki Hartin, his longtime companion.

Only one member remains, for sure, in San Marcos. He's in the Hays County
jail for possession of marijuana -- and facing a $100,000 bond.

Now, a little older, they have forgone the incarceration antics of the past
to support a more conventional petition drive.

Industrial hemp, supporters say, is bred to produce chemically inert stalks
and seeds rather than buzzy buds and leaves. One Web site likens industrial
hemp to "nonalcoholic beer."

Biodiesel could be derived from hemp, said Wendy Dafoe, an information
analyst at the Department of Energy's Renewable Energy Laboratory in
Colorado. Hemp seed could be crushed for oil, and the oil could be
processed for biodiesel.

Because of government restrictions on its production, hemp accounts for
none of the 30 million gallons of biodiesel fuel produced nationally in
fiscal year 2004, according to the National Biodiesel Board, a nonprofit
industry trade group. (The chief biodiesel crop, soybean, is responsible
for 90 percent of the production.)

The practicality of hemp oil has been seized by activists and progressive
politicians. Gatewood Galbraith, a 1990 candidate for governor of Kentucky,
criss-crossed the state in his hemp-powered 1980 red Mercedes, and actor
Woody Harrelson has toured on his Mothership, an old Chicago transit bus
that relied on hemp oil.

Petition-takers are asked to send signatures to Morning Star Productions in
Driftwood. Morning Star, explains Rogers, the cigar man, was the name of a
commune he once lived in. Plus, he added, "We need a new day in fuel."