https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/415/whiteplume.shtml

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation resident Alex White Plume and his family were in federal appeals court Tuesday in a bid to force a lower court to consider whether hemp is in fact an illegal crop. In 2000 and 2001, White Plume and his family sowed hemp crops, only to have them destroyed by federal raiders. The following year, the federal government sought and won an injunction to bar White Plume from planting again.

The judges of the US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis heard White Plume attorney Bruce Ellison argue that both tribal ordinance and the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868 gave the family the legal right to grow the industrial crop. "Our contention is we're not growing a drug, and since we're not growing a drug, we don't need to apply to the government for permission," said Ellison.

The Congress distinguished between hemp and marijuana in 1937, Ellison argued. "As a non-drug crop, it's the same thing as squash or potatoes," he said. "We don't need to get permission from anyone because we're not growing a drug."

US Attorney Mark Salter unsurprisingly disagreed. "Until and unless someone changes the definition of marijuana, it's marijuana," he said. Nor does White Plume or the tribe have any treaty right to determine what they grow. "Nowhere in there does it say signatory tribes have the right to grow whatever they want on that land," Salter said.

While the appeals court judges wondered why the White Plumes had not applied for a permit to grow, Frankl explained that the DEA simply failed to ever issue commercial industrial hemp permits. "While there is a process technically, in this case, it's to no avail," he said.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals did not set a date for their ruling, which could come down in weeks or months.

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