SOBER NORTH DAKOTANS HOPE TO LEGALIZE HEMP

OSNABROCK, N.D. - David C. Monson seems an improbable soul to find at
the leading edge of a national movement to legalize growing hemp, a
plant that shares a species name, a genus type and, in many circles,
a reputation, with marijuana.

As Mr. Monson rolls past his wheat, barley and shimmering yellow
fields of canola, he listens to Rush Limbaugh in his tractor. When he
is not farming, he is the high school principal in nearby Edinburg,
population 252. When he is not teaching, he is a Republican
representative in Bismarck, the state capital, where his party
dominates both houses of the legislature and the governor is a Republican.

"Look at me - do I look shady?" Mr. Monson, 56, asked, as he stood in
work boots and a ball cap in the rocky, black dirt that spans mile
after mile of North Dakota's nearly empty northern edge. "This is not
any subversive thing like trying to legalize marijuana or whatever.
This is just practical agriculture. We're desperate for something
that can make us some money."

The rocks, the dirt, the cool, wet climate and a devastating crop
fungus known as scab are part of what has landed North Dakota, of all
states, at the forefront of a political battle more likely to have
emerged somewhere "a little more rebellious," as one farmer here put
it, like California or Massachusetts.

Though federal authorities ban the growing of hemp, saying it
contains tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive substance better
known as THC in marijuana, six states this year considered
legislation to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp, and
Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, introduced a bill in
Washington that would let states allow such crops. In state
legislatures, the advocates of hemp note that it contains mere traces
of THC, and that hemp (grown in other countries) is already found
here in clothes, lotions, snack bars, car door panels, insulation and more.

But no place has challenged the government as fiercely as North
Dakota. Its legislature has passed a bill allowing farmers to grow
industrial hemp and created an official licensing process to
fingerprint such farmers and a global positioning system to track
their fields. This year, Mr. Monson and another North Dakota farmer,
with the support of the state's agriculture commissioner, applied to
the Drug Enforcement Administration for permission to plant fields of
hemp immediately.

"North Dakota is really pushing the envelope on this one," said Doug
Farquhar, the program director for agriculture and rural development
at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legislatures in
Maine, Montana, West Virginia and other states have passed bills
allowing farmers to grow industrial hemp, said Alexis Baden-Mayer,
the director of government relations for Vote Hemp, a group that
presses for legalization, but those laws have not been carried out
given federal drug law.

The Controlled Substances Act, federal authorities say, is
unambiguous. "Basically hemp is considered the same as marijuana,"
said Steve Robertson, a special agent for the D.E.A. at its
Washington headquarters. "We're an enforcement agency. We're sworn to
uphold the law."

In the wide-open spaces of this state, an independent streak often
runs through the politics, especially when it comes to federal
mandates. But the fight over hemp is not political or philosophical,
people here say. It lacks any counterculture wink, any hint of the
fear some hemp opponents express that those trying to legalize hemp
secretly hope to open the door to the plant's more potent cousin.

This battle is decidedly, and Midwesternly, pragmatic. In 1993, scab,
a fungus also known as Fusarium head blight, tore through this
region, wiping out thousands of acres of wheat, a prized crop in
North Dakota, where agriculture remains the largest element of the
economy. Hard rains left water pooling in fields, giving scab an
opening. The fungus has turned up in varying degrees ever since, even
as farmers searched for a cure. On a recent afternoon, as rain
pounded his 710 acres, Mr. Monson gloomily yanked the head off a
stalk of his wheat, revealing for a visitor whitish, shriveled seeds
- - the telltale signs of scab.

When Mr. Monson began his efforts in the late 1990s, some here
balked. He remembered John Dorso, a former Republican leader, rolling
his eyes and asking Mr. Monson if he knew what he was getting mixed up in.

But hemp, Mr. Monson argued, offered an alternative for North
Dakota's crop rotation. Its tall stalks survive similarly cool and
wet conditions in Canada, just 25 miles north of here, where it is
legal. And it suits the rocky soil left behind here by glaciers, soil
that threatens to tear up farm equipment for anyone who dares to
plant crops like beets or potatoes beneath ground.

Years and studies and hearings later, few here have much to say
against hemp - a reflection, it seems, of the state's urgent wish to
improve its economy. Recent hemp votes have passed the legislature
with ease, though some questions linger. How big a market would there
really be for hemp? What about the worries of drug enforcement
officials, who say someone might sneak into a farmer's field of
harmless hemp and plant a batch of (similar-looking) marijuana?

Such fears, Mr. Monson insisted, are silly in North Dakota, which is
the third least-populous state, with fewer than 640,000 people. This
is the only state where voter registration is not required. (Everyone
would know, the logic goes, if someone who did not belong tried to
vote.) "You can't go down to get the mail around here without someone
knowing," Mr. Monson said.

But Blair Thoreson, a Republican state representative who has voted
against hemp measures, is less sure. "Everyone here knows everyone,"
Mr. Thoreson said, "and yet we've had a huge problem here with
homegrown methamphetamine labs, too."

Roger Johnson, the state's agriculture commissioner, said hemp fields
would be the worst places to hide marijuana. Under state rules, Mr.
Johnson said, such fields must be accessible for unannounced
searches, day or night, and crops would be tested by the state. Also,
he said, a field of hemp and marijuana would cross-pollinate, leaving
the drug less potent.

"We're not wide-eyed liberals," Mr. Johnson said. "The D.E.A.,
they're the crazy ones on this. This sort of illogical, indefensible
position is not going to prevail forever."

After receiving the first state licenses to grow hemp this year, Mr.
Monson and Wayne Hauge, a farmer from Ray, on the opposite side of
the state, filed applications with the D.E.A. in February.

Since then, the drug agency has not said yes or no. Given North
Dakota's growing season, it is too late to plant anything new this
year. So in June, the two men-with financial help from Vote Hemp, the
advocacy group - filed a lawsuit against the agency.

Mr. Robertson said in July that the agency was still reviewing the
applications, but that he could not say much beyond that because of
the litigation.

Like Mr. Monson, Mr. Hauge, who is 49 and farms barley, chickpeas and
lentils on land his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1903, said his
efforts were about economics, not politics - or drugs.

"I don't advocate smoking anything," said Mr. Hauge, who, when he is
not farming, is a certified public accountant.

"I guess I'm not really known as much of a joker," he added.