UK: Government intends to liberalize recreational cannabis use!

Hemp, Hemp, Hooray, No Way says DEA
DURHAM -- Durham's Gale Glenn could rightly be called the hemp lady.

Source Herald-Sun, Nov. 29, 2003
No, not that kind of hemp, she says; it's the kind that can be harvested to make clothes, paper and other textile products, the kind that produces the longest and strongest natural fibers in the world. But because it's in the cannabis family, along with marijuana, it's illegal.

As a former Kentucky tobacco farmer, Glenn sees industrial hemp as the perfect money-making alternative crop. From her Durham home, she has been lobbying Congress, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House for years.

"It's an illegal crop, even though it's grown in 35 Western countries .. because the DEA is convinced it is a stalking horse for illegal marijuana. We've been working in a concerted effort for about eight years to legalize it as an alternative crop," said Glenn, who is vice chairwoman of the North American Industrial Hemp Council.

"I feel like I'm watching a goose dancing around on hot coals looking for a place to lay the golden egg," she said. "I really think there's going to be some hemp millionaires in the future."

The issue has acquired renewed vigor because several state legislatures have passed resolutions to push for the crop's legalization. Recently, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers from Hawaii sent President George W. Bush a letter urging that a legal distinction be made between a crop grown as an illegal drug and an industrial crop grown for textile manufacturing.

'A kind crop for farmers'

With the decline in tobacco production, empty warehouses and the continuous search for alternative crops, hemp makes sense, Glenn and others say.

She points out that the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at N.C. State University sponsored the International Hemp Forum in November 2001, and several NCSU professors recently sent a grant proposal to the Golden LEAF Foundation, which spends tobacco settlement economic development money.

The proposal was rejected.

Hemp is "biodegradable; it's a very kind crop for farmers. As a matter of fact, it's a farmer's dream crop -- you just drill in the seed and some fertilizer. It can grow any place you can grow corn, so it's a universal type of crop," she said. "It's an ideal rotation crop. You just need a little bit of fertilizer, no chemicals, and very low labor. Four months later, you can go back into the field and cut it and bale it. It's very useful for manufacturing.

"It seems to me that because it's so useful in so many industries to make so many products ... it'd be ideal for North Carolina, because we have all of these empty warehouses," she said.

Hemp as an industrial product has its high-profile supporters, including longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who said the crop had seen a resurgence around the world.

"In recent years, industrial hemp has experienced a renaissance. Farmers throughout the world are growing hemp in countries, such as France, that have never banned its cultivation, and in countries, such as Canada, that strictly regulate hemp production to guard against even the most remote possibility of illicit marijuana production," Nader wrote. "The United States, on the other hand, lags far behind. Due to bureaucratic red tape and overzealousness on the part of the Drug Enforcement Agency, industrial hemp cannot be commercially grown in the United States."

The DEA also is waging a battle against any form of imported hemp in the marketplace, including seeds, oil and other food products.

In 2001, the agency ordered a ban on hemp-derived foods, saying they ran afoul of the federal Controlled Substances Act. A lower-level federal court stayed the directive, and the battle continues in higher-level courts. Supporters, such as Glenn, say food products and other uses should be exempt from federal substance control laws, just as poppy seeds found on bagels are exempt.

Poppy plants are the basis for heroin production.

DEA spokesman Ed Childress said that because the fight over hemp's food uses is still in the courts, he could not comment. But he said the DEA's position is that because hemp is illegal, it cannot be grown in the United States.

"There's really no differentiation between hemp and marijuana. It is a controlled substance at this time, and until such time as the law changes, it will be enforced," he said. "The FDA, Health and Human Services and the DEA do studies and they get back together and they decide on a policy. It's all based on science. It's not based on opinions or politics, unless you're talking about the other side.

"The DEA is so demonized, and all we're doing is enforcing the law," he said.

HempFarm.com comments to the above; The DEA is playing games and they know it, countries such as England, Canada and now Australia are growing hemp. There has never been a case of 'hiding' marijuana because these then would cross pollinate with the surrounding hemp. It is a myth used by the DEA to stall the discussion. The CSA has explicitly exempted the stalks of the plant to be legal and at the time when the law was changed in 1937 it was said; "Farmers can go on growing hemp as they always have." In fact what happened was that Mr. Anslinger committed perjury during the congressional debate and falsely claimed that marijuana was a 'killer drug.' It is because of this lying supported by industries who fear competition from hemp and falsification of facts, that hemp is still illegal. DEA says all it does is enforcing the law but it is also misrepresenting the truth on purpose and that is quite another thing on top of that it is and has been influencing state elections around the country on issues involving hemp or marijuana, a practice that is illegal under US law. Now is that "all we're doing is 'enforcing' the law?" On a separate note I've read that DEA has been extremely active in Little Rock. And John Walters US 'drug czar' is not what he seems to be.

*Industrial-Hemp has no psychoactive properties following definition of the European Economic Community (EEC); THC content is less than 0.3%. In general, low THC-seed varieties without psychoactive properties are those that have a THC content of less than 1%. (See also No-THC Hemp-seed.) THC= Delta-9 TetraHydroCannabinol.