HOT, HOT HEMP

It's customer appreciation day at Hemptown Clothing Inc. and a half dozen
people are perusing the latest in hemp products, from golf shirts and
energy bars to something called "personal lube."

An older couple in spotless Tevas and matching Mountain Equipment Co-op
sleeveless fleeces-coloured purple, presumably to ward off bears-hesitantly
approaches a table of complimentary hemp coffee and pancakes.

"This coffee is making me euphoric," jokes the woman, after taking a few
cautious sips.

"I hope these pancakes aren't a gateway to more fattening breakfast foods,"
deadpans her husband.

Just down the street from the store's modest digs at Clark and Venables, a
billboard ad for ethical funds features a man who looks eerily like the one
now ignoring his wife's mocking pleas to "Just say No" to pancakes. "I
don't wear hemp or burn incense... I just want a better world," the ad says.

The billboard isn't a favourite of the Hemptown staff, but boss Jason
Finnis is unconcerned as he mans the griddle and touts the benefits of
industrial hemp like a Ginsu knife salesman at a trade show. The
32-year-old entrepreneur and founder of Hemptown has bigger pancakes to
fry, after all.

What began in 1995 as a one-man business out of Finnis's basement
suite-while he studied to become a music teacher-has grown into the largest
producer of hemp T-shirts in North America.

If all goes well, Hemptown will be listed on the stock market by the end of
the year.

Ironically, most of the company's customers aren't card-carrying members of
the Sierra Club, residents of nearby Commercial Drive, or even
born-again-naturalists. They come from the corporate world-companies like
Hyundai, Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers that recognize the environmental
cachet of a promotional T-shirt made from hemp.

It's a growing trend Finnis has been able to capitalize on-not only because
of declining prices in hemp production, but more importantly, because of
the public's changing perception of the demonized and misunderstood weed.

In fact, evidence of hemp's growing popularity is springing up everywhere.

At this year's Vancouver International Film Festival, audiences watched Ron
Mann's documentary Go Further. The film follows actor/activist Woody
Harrelson's as he travels the Pacific Coast, la Ken Kesey, in a
hemp-fuelled bus dubbed "the Mothership," raising environmental awareness
with his group of yoga-loving "merry hempsters."

Recently, hemp soap, cooking oil and lip balm found their way into
celebrity gift bags given to presenters at the American Music Awards, as
well as at a fundraiser co-hosted by Elton John and the Osbourne family.
Even Italian designer Giorgio Armani is reported to have invested in a
hemp-growing operation.

>From the yoga dens of Hollywood to the boardrooms of corporate America,
for the first time in over 60 years, hemp is hot again.

Wearing prescription glasses, a white button-down Oxford shirt, Docker
pants and what could best be described as sensible shoes, Jason Finnis
looks more like an accountant enjoying "casual Friday" than someone who's
spent the past 10 years neck deep in hemp. In fact, with his neatly trimmed
goatee and hair that's positively dreadlock-free, the only evidence of
Finnis's hemp-fuelled exploits is his shirt, made of 55 per cent hemp, 45
per cent cotton, and bearing a small tag on the pocket that reads "Hemptown."

In 1995, Finnis was a music student at the University of Victoria who
played the sousaphone-a type of tuba-in a tuxedo-wearing oldtime jazz band
called the Belvedere Broadcasters. But after reading a magazine article
about hemp paper, Finnis saw an opportunity.

"I had a fire in my belly to start a business," he says. "I was an
entrepreneur at heart, and for a long time, I had no idea what to do with it."

After doing a little research and getting himself acquainted with the
then-small network of hemp producers and craftspeople dotting the continent
and parts of Asia, Finnis began traveling to folk festivals and flea
markets with his wares-only to realize there was no money in paper. So he
shifted his focus to T-shirts and other apparel.

Though his business was growing steadily, response from the public could
still be hostile-critics accused him of using hemp to push for the
legalization of pot, though as he's quick to point out, equating industrial
hemp and marijuana is like "comparing a poppy-seed bagel to opium."

Cannabis, like wheat, is a plant species composed of several different
varieties. The drug variety, known as marijuana, contains up to 25 per cent
THC-the psychoactive ingredient. The industrial variety, known as hemp,
contains less than one per cent THC in its flowers and leaves. If you smoke
it, it might give you a headache, but it won't get you stoned.

In Canada and Europe, only varieties containing less than 0.3 per cent in
their flower portions are permitted as commercial crops.

Finnis admits his initial attraction to the business of hemp wasn't even
from an environmental standpoint.

"I wasn't a member of Greenpeace and I wasn't sitting there making sure
every piece of paper I bought was recycled. I saw an opportunity and have
become more of an environmentalist over time. Nothing radical. I'm not
chaining myself to trees or anything. [Hemp] just makes sense, and we can
make money doing it."

There are several reasons why Finnis and others like him are so high on
hemp. For one, hemp is a hearty plant, so it can be grown with little or no
chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. Unlike cotton, hemp can
grow in most parts of Canada, and its fibre is up to four times stronger
than cotton's. Hemp is also highly versatile and its by-products can be
used to make everything from cosmetics to breakfast cereal.

Timing was also on Finnis's side. Just as Hemptown was getting off the
ground, the Canadian government was beginning to re-evaluate its policies
concerning hemp farming.

Used for thousands of years around the world and farmed throughout North
America, hemp farming was banned by the U.S. government in 1937 under the
Marijuana Tax Act, while Canada followed suit in 1938, enacting the Opium
and Narcotics Control Act. Both countries lifted the ban in 1943, and under
the Hemp for Victory program, began urging farmers to grow hemp for rope
for the armed forces. However, the bans were reinstated in 1955. By the mid
1990s, after increased lobbying by pro-hemp organizations and growing
awareness that hemp was in no way a narcotic, countries like Australia and
England eased restrictions on hemp farming. In 1998, the Canadian
government quietly legalized the commercial growth of industrial hemp.

While that was a step in the right direction, Finnis says Canada lost
ground by shutting down hemp production for so many years-unlike China,
which has been producing hemp continuously for centuries. To obtain
material, as well as finished clothing products to sell, Finnis had to be
resourceful, working with a patchwork of suppliers around the world, and
turning his cramped basement into both a warehouse and factory.

Soon, Finnis found that Hemptown was becoming a victim of its own success.
After quitting school and moving operations to Vancouver, Finnis was having
difficulty keeping up with demand.

At the time, most of Hemptown's business was in retail-small boutiques and
hemp shops across Canada and the U.S.

"We had more orders than we could afford to produce," says Finnis. "You'd
have a hundred thousand dollars worth of burnt orange T-shirts sitting
there and orders for blue and I can't produce it because I have all this
other crap. It was a nightmare."

So in 2000, Hemptown underwent a major restructuring. No longer would it
diversify its products or pander to the latest in fashions or fall colours.
It would only produce plain T-shirts. One size (extra large), one colour
(natural). And it would target the one industry that uses more T-shirts
than anyone else. The promotional wear industry.

"It sells 1.4 billion of them a year in North America," says Finnis. "So we
thought, 'You know what? This is the way to go.' So we started with 300
bucks and extra large, natural T-shirts and that's it. You want anything
else? Too bad."

(Hemptown still stocks its Vancouver store with other hemp products,
operating it much like a trade show booth, and using its income to pay the
rent for the entire building, which also includes a warehouse in the back.)

Hemptown's T-shirt hunch paid off. Two years ago, Hemptown's annual
revenues stood at around $180,000. Last year, they were at $800,000. This
year, it's expecting $3 million in revenue and projecting $10 million for
the following year.

To achieve such lofty goals, Hemptown needs its application to be listed on
the NASDAQ exchange approved. Becoming a publicly traded company, says
Finnis, would not only bring an influx of investors-it would allow Hemptown
to grow at an uninhibited rate. The process, however, has been particularly
lengthy because of increased scrutiny in the wake of scandals such as
Enron, as well as the arduous task of getting Hemptown's accounting
information from its basement years in order.

Producing between 40,000 and 70,000 garments a month, Hemptown now has an
office and factory in Shanghai, two warehouses in the U.S. and corporate
clients around the globe.

"We're pretty much dirt to shirt," says Finnis. "We look after everything
from growing the fibre to spinning it, to knitting it, to sewing, to
shipping it."

Though Hemptown's corporate customers are an eclectic bunch, they all share
one thing in common-the desire to be noticed.

"A hemp shirt given to someone from Hyundai is probably one of the first
hemp items that person has ever been given. And so they're out showing it
to their friends saying 'Look what I got from Hyundai.' So in terms of a
promotional product, it promotes."

Charles Weinberg, a professor of marketing at the UBC Sauder School of
Business, agrees, though he's uncertain if sales of hemp will outlast the
fibre's current trendiness. "There's a lot of competing marketers out
there, always looking for something to make their company stand out." And,
at the moment, a hemp T-shirt does this better than most. It can also help
a corporation cultivate a more environmentally friendly image, an
increasingly important goal in today's heavily-protested global economy.

"It's not just eco-friendly," says Weinberg. "They're trying to portray
themselves as being good corporate citizens."

And it's subtle, adds Finnis. "They don't need to have hemp leaves all over
[the T shirt] or shop at Blunt Brothers. That would kind of freak them out.
It's just a subtle way to say, 'We understand.' And it's cheap. It's the
cost of a T-shirt."

Though Finnis doesn't expect hemp to eclipse cotton production anytime
soon, he likens hemp's recent inroads to that of organic food. "Five years
ago, you'd go to Safeway and you might find four or five organic tomatoes
in their own little section. Now you go in and it's the fastest growing
shelf space in supermarkets. It's still not replacing conventional farming,
but it's certainly making a big name for itself. And that's the way I see
hemp."

Another company that's hopped a ride on the hemp bandwagon-even driving it,
one could argue-is Nature's Path.

Currently, the Richmond-based health food company produces two products
that contain hulled hemp seed-Hemp Plus Granola and Hemp Plus Frozen
Toaster Waffles.

David Neuman, vice president of sales and marketing for Nature's Path, says
when the company decided to branch out into hemp products three years ago,
it was still a fairly novel idea. "There were very few companies that were
really making hemp foods. It was more in the hemp oils and hemp clothes.
But probably in the last year or two, things have really picked up in
Canada and the United States."

Neuman attributes hemp's current hip status to a number of factors. "It's a
catchy product. It's still kind of trendy. But it's also very
nutritious...And of course, as a manufacturer of those kinds of foods, we
want to capitalize on that popularity."

Nature's Path is pushing for increased government support for the farming
of hemp, but Neuman says it continues to meet resistance, especially in the
U.S., where the Drug Enforcement Administration has been trying-so far
unsuccessfully-to prohibit foods with trace amounts of THC. Neuman isn't
worried, however.

"We're not getting out of the hemp business unless we're forced out of it.
And even then we'll go down fighting."

In the yuppie enclave of Kitsilano, a Frisbee throw away from a Fabutan
tanning salon, the Kitsilano Hemp Co. doesn't go out of its way to avoid
hemp's hippie image or its association with its bong-friendly cousin. Among
the racks of clothing and shelves containing hemp salsa and hair balm is
your standard assortment of pot paraphernalia and reggae CDs. But the store
has managed to stay in business for over nine years, which can't be said
for a lot of shops on the finicky strip of West Fourth.

Its owner is a bearded, toque-wearing 33-year-old musician who prefers to
be called "B-Rad" and who throws around phrases like "holistic approach"
and "the environmentalism of retail" like packages of mung sprouts. He
attributes hemp's growing popularity to the versatility of the plant itself.

"You can eat it, you can write on it, you can wear it, you can make boats
out of it, you can paint on it, you can help feed the world," says B-Rad,
as a clip of U2 performing "Sunday Bloody Sunday" at the 1985 Live Aid
concert plays on his computer. "I never get bored of hemp. There's no lack
of stuff you can do with it. As an entrepreneur, it just blows my mind."

B-Rad, who once made Woody Harrelson a hemp smoothie when the actor spent
an afternoon at his store, points to 1997's Commercial and Industrial Hemp
Symposium and Trade Fair held at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre
as a major turning point for the hemp movement.

"The biggest thing about it was that you had a bank behind it. The Bank of
Montreal co-sponsored it and it was a sign that OK, the establishment sees
this isn't just a bunch of potheads, that it is a viable business that
could be a huge benefit to Canada and could generate lots of jobs and income."

Though his business has weathered Y2K, 9/11 and a minor financial disaster
involving the purchase of a photocopier for hemp paper, B-Rad says hemp
will always remain on the fringes. "There's always going to be a stigma
attached to it because it does come from the marijuana plant. But people
have to be a little better educated to understand the differences in it."

Jason Finnis is a little more optimistic. "I see [hemp] becoming a very
mainstream segment," he says as phones continuously ring in the background.
"It's been tried to be stopped by officials at every turn. But it just
keeps growing."