Hemp

HEMP IS QUITE LITERALLY THE MOST VERSATILE, USEFUL PLANT KNOWN TO MAN. But in America it is "illegal" - why is this the case?

Jack Herer, author of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes," died this morning in Eugene, Oregon. He had been in ill health since suffering a heart attack at the Portland Hempstock Festival last Fall. Here's the report from the Salem News:

The Hemperor, Jack Herer has Died (SALEM, Ore.) - The sad news has been confirmed. Jack Herer, author of Emperor Wears No Clothes and renowned around the world for hemp activism, has died at 11:17 a.m. today, in Eugene, Oregon. Jack Herer suffered a heart attack last September just after speaking on stage at the Portland HempStalk festival. The last seven months have proven to be a huge challenge to the man, with several health issues making his recovery complicated. Jack Herer's health has been poor lately, this last week there have been reports of the severity, and an outpouring of prayers on his behalf. "It's shocking news, even after these last seven, trying months," said Paul Stanford, THCF Executive Director. "Jack Herer has been a good friend and associate of mine for over 30 years. I was there when he had the heart attack at our Hempstalk festival and I know he wouldn’t appreciate the quality of life he's endured these last months. Still he will be greatly missed. I honor his memory." "No other single person has done more to educate people all across the world about industrial hemp and marijuana as Jack Herer. His book is translated into a dozen different languages, it's a bestseller in Germany," added Stanford. "The Hempstalk stage will forever be the Jack Herer Memorial stage. And, a Memorial is planned to be built where he fell that day," Stanford said. "His legacy will continue to inspire and encourage for generations to come."

Fresh from the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) annual convention last weekend in Washington, DC, a pair of real life farmers who want to plant hemp farmers joined with hemp industry figures and spokesmen to travel across the Potomac River to DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, where, in an act of civil disobedience, they took shovels to the lawn and planted hemp seeds. Within a few minutes, they were arrested and charged with trespassing. Hoping to focus the attention of the Obama administration on halting DEA interference, North Dakota farmer Wayne Hauge, Vermont farmer Will Allen, HIA President Steve Levine; hemp-based soap producer and Vote Hemp director David Bronner, Vote Hemp communications director Adam Eidinger, and hemp clothing company owner Isaac Nichelson were arrested in the action as another dozen or so supporters and puzzled DEA employees looked on. "Who has a permit?" demanded a DEA security official. "A permit--that's what we want from the DEA," Bronner responded. After being held a few hours, the Hemp Six were released late Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, two pleaded guilty to trespassing and were fined $240. The others are expected to face similar treatment. Although products made with hemp—everything from foods to fabrics to paper to auto body panels—are legal in the US, under the DEA's strained interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act, hemp is considered indistinguishable from marijuana and cannot be planted in the US. According to the hemp industry, it is currently importing about $360 million worth of hemp products each year from countries where hemp production is legal, including Canada, China, and several European nations. The DEA refused to comment on the action or the issue, referring queries instead to the Department of Justice, which also refused to comment beside pointing reporters to its filings in the ongoing hemp lawsuit. Currently, eight states-- Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia--have programs allowing for industrial hemp research or production, but their implementation has been blocked by DEA bureaucratic intransigence. This spring, however, President Obama instructed federal agencies to respect state laws in a presidential directive on federal pre-emption: "Executive departments and agencies should be mindful that in our federal system, the citizens of the several States have distinctive circumstances and values, and that in many instances it is appropriate for them to apply to themselves rules and principles that reflect these circumstances and values," said Obama. "As Justice Brandeis explained more than 70 years ago, 'it is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.'" The hemp industry and hemp supporters see several paths forward. Farmer Hauge is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challengingly the DEA's interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act. That lawsuit is now before the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. US Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) are sponsoring a bill that would allow farmers to plant hemp in states where it is permitted, and the industry is urging President Obama and the Justice Department to follow their own example on medical marijuana and leave hemp farmers alone as long as they are legal under state law. But despite all their efforts, nothing is happening. Tuesday's civil disobedience was designed to begin breaking up the logjam. "We're getting frustrated," said Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, which has been used hemp oil in its soaps since 1999. "This is supposed to be change with Obama, and things aren't changing. We just had the DEA and local DA go nuts on the dispensaries in San Diego where I live. We spent money on a lobbying firm to get a statement from the Justice Department along the lines of Holder's statement on medical marijuana, but nothing is happening. This would be easy to do, but it's not happening. We understand that Obama has a lot going on, but we're getting increasingly disappointed and frustrated. We hope this will help catalyze something in this administration." "We're like the fired-up hempsters, we're keeping Jack Herer's ideas alive," said Eidinger still fired up a day after his arrest Tuesday. "We're beginning a new chapter of hemp activism, and there needs to be a lot more of this stuff. Civil disobedience has to be part of a comprehensive campaign in the courts, in Congress, and out on the streets, in front of DEA offices all over the country." "We've passed a law in Vermont that you can grow industrial hemp," said Allen, the white-haired, pony-tailed proprietor of Cedar Circle Farm. "The only barrier now is the DEA, so we're trying to convince them to back off on this like they backed off on enforcing the medical marijuana law in California. Here, we have a crop that isn't going to get anybody high. We grow organic sunflower and canola, and we'd like to have another oil crop in rotation at our location. It just makes economic sense, and it's a states' rights thing. The DEA shouldn’t be involved in this; this isn't a drug." "We want to get some attention for the cause and show the distinction between industrial hemp and marijuana," said North Dakota farmer Hauge, who is licensed by the state to grow hemp and who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the DEA now before the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals. "It's not a drug; it's just another crop that can be grown in rotation. If it wasn't for the DEA, I would be harvesting my crop right now." Getting himself arrested for hemp activism in Washington, DC, was a totally new experience for Hauge, who is usually hunkered down on a few hundred acres of North Dakota prairie just south of the Canadian border and just east of the Montana state line. "It was definitely a first for me," said Hauge. "I've never even been stopped for anything." "We need industrial hemp here in the US, we need to bring jobs to this country," said Nichelsen, founder, owner, and CEO of Livity Outernational, a California-based fashion and accessory company that mixes art and activism. "I'm sick of making all our stuff in China cause that’s the only place I can get the raw materials. We sent the message that there is a clear distinction between marijuana and industrial hemp," Nicholson said. "We need the support of our president and our law enforcement branches. They need to understand that the US is missing out on a giant opportunity. The myth that hemp causes any problems in society has been completely dispelled." Even DEA underlings—if not their higher ups—get it, said Nicholson, recounting his exchange with one agency employee on Monday. "One DEA official came out and said, 'What's the connection between weed and hemp?' and we said, 'Exactly.'" The action brought some much-needed media attention to the issue, said Eidinger. "We got a really good article in the Washington Post, the Washington Times wrote about it, too, CNN used our video, NPR talked about the action, the Associated Press picked it up, we had a number of TV stations do reports, so we definitely reached a national audience," he recounted. "And North Dakota media has covered this closely; I've been on the phone with all the media in Bismarck. It wasn't just civil disobedience in front of the cameras. After the HIA convention ended, hempsters headed for Capitol Hill, where dozens of people attended over 20 scheduled meetings with representatives of their staffs to lobby for the Frank-Paul hemp bill. Some unannounced, unscheduled meetings also took place, Eidinger said. If the hemp movement indeed adopts further civil disobedience actions, it will have added another prong to its multi-prong strategy of pressing for the end of the prohibition on industrial hemp planting in the US. It might be time for other segments of the drug reform movement to start thinking about civil disobedience, too.

The ban on domestic hemp cultivation is so profoundly stupid and crazy that the drug warriors won't even talk about it. Fortunately, some farmers found a novel way to draw attention to the issue:

ARLINGTON, Va. — A half dozen people including two farmers have been arrested for trying to plant hemp seeds at the Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Virginia.
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Hemp is related to marijuana and currently all hemp products sold in the U.S. must be imported.

The Hemp Industries Association is lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill to decriminalize hemp farming for products like clothing and rope.  [AP]

The best part is that AP's coverage of the story inadvertently makes the central point worth understanding in the debate over hemp:

Police say they had shovels in hand but did not appear to have any drugs and caused only minor damage to the lawn.

See, hemp isn’t drugs. Even the police admitted that it wasn't. So explain to us, please, why it is that American farmers can't grow hemp. Seriously, what's the problem here?

Aaron Houston at MPP is supposed to be this badass lobbyist (I heard he could recognize every single member of Congress and he even got to be on The Colbert Report), but the story tips he sends me are never anything important. It's always some crazy stuff like this:

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (CBS) Military marijuana? The U.S. Army planned to cover a chemical weapons site with grass and weed – but not the kind of grass and weed that's actually cropping up – the kind that's illegal.
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The military blames the supplier for the snafu, saying the mulch for ground cover was purchased from a place in Kansas where the low-grade weed is common.
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The Army made the first discovery of hemp on the property in June. So far they've picked about 100 plants that Scharmin says are low-grade. He says they plan to mow, burn or maybe even have bison eat the rest.

"Fish and Wildlife Service does not seem to have any concern about having bison out there," Scharmin says.

This sounds like a horrible place. The soil is contaminated from chemical weapons testing. They have bison (which are not cows. They will kick your ass). And there's free weed, but it sucks.

It's like the island from Lost. They should do a movie about this, where some hippies hear there's pot growing on a secret army base, so they sneak in there and then get terrorized by insane radioactive buffaloes that get you stoned when they burp.

Another problem with having laws against certain types of plants is that police don't know anything about plants. The subtleties of botany are inevitably lost on them and the results are amusing, yet tragic:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch police who mowed down what they thought were illicit marijuana plants were red-faced today when it emerged they’d ruined a research group’s giant, officially sanctioned field of harmless hemp.

Police proudly announced Wednesday that they’d found more than 47,000 cannabis plants, with an estimated street value of nearly €4.5 million ($6.45 million) concealed in a corn field in the Flevoland province east of Amsterdam.

They mowed down half the plants only to be informed they were the property of Wageningen University and Research Center, a respected agricultural school. [Boston Herald]

That sucks. Sadly, I suspect that the potential for fiascos like this goes a long way towards explaining why law enforcement continues to incoherently oppose hemp cultivation here in the U.S. Police just don't want to be bothered with distinguishing one from the other. If it looks like weed, they'd rather break out a machete than a field manual. It's understandable if you don’t care about, like, freedom and stuff.

Instead of banning hemp, therefore, I propose we just legalize all forms of cannabis and make things a lot easier for everyone.

Remind me why hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S.:

…if you drive a BMW or a Mercedes Benz, or wear Armani jeans or Patagonia shirts, you could be consuming hemp.

Its fiber turns up in car door panels, insulation and clothing. Its seeds make tasty granola and frozen desserts, its oil expensive cosmetics and ecologically friendly soap.

If you use these products, you won’t be jailed for possession. But would-be hemp farmers’ fear of arrest is what keeps the U.S. importing the stuff instead of growing its own. [Bloomberg]

I don't write about hemp often, mainly because it's not actually a drug, but it bears repeating that the only reason hemp cultivation is illegal is because a bunch of paranoid drug warriors are utterly terrified of it. As stupid as the arguments against legalizing marijuana are, the case against hemp is even more mindless and pathetic.

Just pause for a moment and think about the fact that the DEA banned a substance used to make door panels for luxury cars, simply because it's related to marijuana. That level of marijuana hysteria probably wouldn’t be possible in the current political climate, but we're stuck with it until Congress admits this is ridiculous.

And I guarantee you that if Congress attempts to legalize hemp cultivation in the U.S., there will actually be people who freak out about it and try to argue that hemp somehow endangers America's youth.