RSS 2.0 FeedFarmers Fighting To Force Government To Legalize Hemp
by Doug MataconisA group of Midwestern farmers is taking the Drug Enforcement Administration to Court to try to force it change its drug classification system to allow them to grow hemp:
Wayne Hauge grows grains, chickpeas and some lentils on 2,000 acres in northern North Dakota. Business is up and down, as the farming trade tends to be, and he is always on the lookout for a new crop. He tried sunflowers and safflowers and black beans. Now he has set his sights on hemp.
Hemp, a strait-laced cousin of marijuana, is an ingredient in products from fabric and food to carpet backing and car door panels. Farmers in 30 countries grow it. But it is illegal to cultivate the plant in the United States without federal approval, to the frustration of Hauge and many boosters of North Dakota agriculture.
On Wednesday, Hauge and David C. Monson, a fellow aspiring hemp farmer, will ask a federal judge in Bismarck to force the Drug Enforcement Administration to yield to a state law that would license them to become hemp growers.
“I’m looking forward to the court battle,” said Hauge, a 49-year-old father of three. “I don’t know why the DEA is so afraid of this.”
Because, in the War On (Some) Drugs, hemp is treated the same as marijuana even though the two are distinct plant variety:
The law is the law and it treats all varieties of Cannabis sativa L. the same, Bush administration lawyers argue in asking U.S. District Judge Daniel L. Hovland to throw out the case. The DEA says a review of the farmers’ applications is underway.
To clear up the popular confusion about the properties of what is sometimes called industrial hemp, the crop’s prospective purveyors explain that hemp and smokable marijuana share a genus and a species but are about as similar as rope and dope.
The active ingredient in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol, better known as THC. While hemp typically contains 0.3 percent THC, the leaves and flowers coveted by pot smokers have 5 percent or more, sometimes up to 30 percent.
“You could smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole,” Hague said of hemp, “and it’s not going to provide you with a high.”
Nonetheless, the government treats both plants the same, and treats farmers who would try to make a living selling a product with many uses as if they were Colombian drug lords.
No drug warrior am I, but the retort to “you can’t get high from hemp” is “you can’t tell the two apart” — which makes interdiction difficult if not practically impossible.
If you’re a fan of interdiction, that is.
Comment by KipEsquire — November 13, 2007 @ 8:11 pmWith such a notable difference, why are the two plants classified under the same species? Could the scientific community settle this dispute with a reclassification?
Kip, I’m not a big fan of having laws that serve no purpose other than to make law enforcement easier. Law enforcement is hard work; such is life. Having said that, there’s a lot of middle ground. You could at least legalize hemp under tight regulatory controls.
Comment by Jeff Molby — November 13, 2007 @ 10:54 pmGoogle “William Randolph Hearst”… Cui bono…
Comment by js290 — November 13, 2007 @ 11:10 pmJeff, that’s exactly what Canada does.
Comment by KipEsquire — November 14, 2007 @ 4:06 am[...] here for full story Filed under: cannabis [...]
Pingback by 26connections » Blog Archive » Farmers Fighting To Force Government To Legalize Hemp — November 14, 2007 @ 4:43 am>No drug warrior am I, but the retort to “you can’t get high from hemp” is “you can’t tell the two apart” — which makes interdiction difficult if not practically impossible.
Interdiction aside, wouldn’t allowing hemp to grow in the wild cross polinate illicit crops causing them to go to seed, and hence decreasing their value significantly?
Comment by J — November 14, 2007 @ 6:12 amKip, there is a very noticeable difference between the two after studying only a few pictures.
http://naihc.org/hemp_information/content/hempCharacter.html
Not the best reference for pictures, but a decent explanation.
Comment by Asa — November 14, 2007 @ 7:21 amHere it’s this simple. In the 30′s Hemp crops threatened the cotton industry as well as paper’s and textiles. So they lobbied and bribed there way for hemp to be illegal.
From http://www.jackherer.com
How to Save the World with Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana!
This is my work in progress. I’m entering it into the Virgin Earth Challenge to stop global warming.
Plant hemp on 600 million acres of secondary farm land in the United States.
Plant hemp on 600 million to 1 billion acres of secondary farm land in Canada.
Plant hemp on 1 to 2 billion acres of secondary farm land in Russia and Siberia.
Plant hemp on 1 to 2 billion acres of secondary farm land in Africa.
Plant hemp on 500 million acres of secondary farm land in South America.
Plant hemp on ? acres in Australia.Plant hemp on ? acres in Asia.
Plant hemp on ? acres in Europe. All fuel will be made of methanol or a derivative of hemp.
All fossil fuel, oil, coal, and natural gas will no longer be used. It will stay in the ground for emergency only. For example, when we had the earthquake Krakatoa, there was about two years that the sun was blocked in that area.
All paper will be made from hemp. No trees will be cut for paper. That’s the way it was 130 years ago. That will save half the trees on the planet that would otherwise be cut down in the next 30 years. All the trees will be healthier and bigger.
Most building material will be made from hemp composite.
20 to 50 percent of all proteins for food will be made from hemp seeds. In China, from ,000 years ago to about 150 years ago, approximately 50 percent of all food was made from hemp seeds. And 20 percent of all food in Europe. On the Chinese border from Laos to Nepal to Tibet to Afghanistan all the way up to the northern border of Upper Mongolia, 50 percent of all proteins for food is still made out of hemp, and 90 percent of all butter. This starts on either side of the border to about 100 miles away from the border.
No more cotton for clothing, unless it is raised organically. Clothing will mostly be made from hemp, bamboo, soy and flax.
Dr. Raphael Mechoulam in Israel believes that 30 percent of all medicines will be made out of cannabis or combinations of cannabis and other drugs.
The arid land from the Sahara all the way across the world will be planted with hemp.People from 18 to 30 years of age, throughout the world, will join a different kind of military, the Hemp Corps, for planting and harvesting and packaging hemp. In return for four years of duty, they will receive four years of college paid by the government.
People will live about two year’s longer using cannabis.
Everything will be a lot more fun. There will be new jobs for everybody. The auto industry will build cars mostly from hemp. Computer companies will build computers of hemp. Furniture will be made of hemp cloth and hemp composite wood.
Hemp grows everywhere, from the Equator to the Arctic Circle, from the valleys to about 6,000 feet up in the mountains. It’s the healthiest of the 3 million plants that grow on Earth. It has the deepest roots. It’s the only plant you can grow over and over each year, nd the soil will only get better. People will be able to pay their taxes with hemp.
I wrote my book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”, 25 years ago. I have been teaching people how to save the world with cannabis/hemp/marijuana since 1979.
Comment by dan — November 14, 2007 @ 10:45 amWe hereby extend our $100,000 challenge to prove us wrong!
If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction, were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the greenhouse effect and stop deforestation; then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world’s paper and textiles; meet all of the world’s transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, ebuilding the soil and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time… and that substance is the same one that has done it before . . . CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA!
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the only known plant that can be grown from the Equator to the Arctic Circle and to the Antarctic Circle; from the mountains to the valleys, from the oceans to the plains, including arid lands and everywhere in between. CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the healthiest plant for the ground out of the 300,000 known species, and the millions and millions of subspecies, of plants on Earth, because it has a root system that grows 10 to 12 inches in 30 days compared to one inch for rye, barley grass, etc. The roots penetrate up to 6 feet deep, pulverizing the soil and making it arable. After harvest it leaves a root system that is mulched into the ground, evitalizing the land and making it live once again. It is the KING KONG of the King Kongs of all plant life.
All of my information about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA has been taken from Federal and State Department of Agriculture reports, articles from Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Pulp & Paper Magazine, Scientific American, entries from encyclopedias and pharmacopoeias, and studies from all over the world during the last 200 years. This is all public information. The United States government is hiding the fact that 125 years ago, and even as far back as 4000 BC, 80% of our economy was based on the use of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA for paper, fiber and fuel. Ten to 20% of our drug economy was based on CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA medicines, 125 years ago.CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was part of our everyday life. Virtually every farm and every plot of land in the cities and towns across the United States and the world, from 100-125 years ago and before, had a CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA patch growing. The U.S. government’s cover-up of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA outrages me and it should outrage you, too. I have been studying CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA for over 30 years, and I can’t believe how the U.S. government, in 90 seconds in Congress, could outlaw “MARIJUANA” in 1937, without the people realizing they were outlawing CANNABIS/HEMP, the most perfect plant for the planet! They even got other countries to outlaw it, too, after the Second World War and beyond. From 1740 to 1940, 80% of all the world’s CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was grown (mostly by Cossacks, who were ndentured servants), and then imported from, Russia.
I will again reiterate a few of the facts about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA, which you already know from reading my book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.”
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was the NUMBER ONE annually renewable natural resource for 80% of all paper, fiber, textiles and fuel, from 6,000 years ago until about 125 years ago. Furthermore, it was used for 5 to 50% of the food, light, land and soil reclamation, and even 20% or more of all medicine. Everyone, from the educated to the uneducated, the farmer to the townsperson, the doctors and the scientists used
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA products and depended on them.75 to 90% of all paper used from at least 100 AD to 1883 was made of CANNABIS/HEMP. Books, (including ibles), money and newspapers all over the world have been mainly printed on CANNABIS/HEMP for as long as these things have existed in human history.
One hundred and 25 years ago, 70 to 90% of all rope, twine, cordage, ship sails, canvas, fiber, cloth, etc., was made out of CANNABIS/HEMP fiber! It was replaced by DuPont’s newly discovered petrochemical fiber (nylon) beginning in 1937. By comparison, CANNABIS/HEMP is 4 times softer than cotton, 4 times warmer, 4 times more water absorbent, has 3 times the strength of cotton, is many times more durable, is flame retardant, and doesn’t use pesticides. Fifty percent of all pesticides are used on cotton, yet cotton uses only 1% of the farmland in the U.S! CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the most health giving plant on Earth and it doesn’t require pesticides or herbicides! It is he healthiest plant for human consumption, and for the Earth itself.
Eighty percent of our economy depended on CANNABIS/HEMP for paper, fiber and fuel, 125 years ago. At that time, it took 300 man-hours to harvest an acre of CANNABIS/HEMP, but with the invention of the brand new HEMP decorticator in the 1930s, it only took 1-1/2 to 2 hours. This is equivalent to reducing the labor burden from $6,000 down to $40 per acre, in today’s money. Keep in mind that the cotton gin, in 1793, reduced the man-hours from 300 hours down to 2 hours to harvest and clean an acre of cotton. CANNABIS/HEMP would have taken over the cotton market, as it is far superior to cotton, and pesticide free. The role of CANNABIS/HEMP should be determined by market supply and demand and not by undue influence of prohibition laws, federal subsidiesand huge tariffs that keep the natural from replacing the synthetic. I repeat, CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the KING KONG of the King Kongs of all plants!
Of all the 300,000 species of plants on Earth, no other plant source can compare with the nutritional value of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA seeds. It is the only plant on Earth that provides us with the NUMBER ONE source, and the perfect balance of essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, globulin edestin protein, and essential oils all combined in one plant, and in a form which is most naturally digestible to our bodies.
Prior to the 1800s, CANNABIS/HEMPSEED oil was the NUMBER ONE source for lighting oil throughout the world. Until 1937-38, even paints and varnishes were 80% CANNABIS/HEMPSEED oil. CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is non-toxic and has beenused to make high-grade diesel fuel, oil, aircraft and precision oil and even the NUMBER ONE vegetable oil. The U.S. Army/Navy standards purchasing specifications list HEMP OIL as the NUMBER ONE preferred lubricant for their machinery. CANNABIS/HEMP is the best sustainable source of plant pulp for biomass fuel to make charcoal, gas, methanol, gasoline and electricity in a natural way.
In 1850, 80% of all paper, fiber, fuel, and oil was made out of CANNABIS/HEMP in America and the rest of the world. This was before the discovery of coal and petroleum for energy in the late 1850s…before the start of the worst permanent pollution ever experienced on Earth… fossil fuel pollution (coal and petroleum)!!
As a medicine, the worldwide use of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA goes back at least6,000 years. Remember, 10 to 20%t of our medicines used to be CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA based medicines. It has been found to be healthy and effective in the treatment of chronic pain, cancer, strokes, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, AIDS wasting and many other illnesses, including simple nausea, appetite stimulant, anxiety and muscle pains, etc.
On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man,” and asked the Drug Enforcement Administration to reschedule it. The DEA refused, keeping it as a Schedule I drug, which they say “has no known medical use”! Thousands of studies have been done all over the orld, documenting the medical use of MARIJUANA (England, Spain, Hungary, Holland, and the U.S., just to name a few). No one has ever died from MARIJUANA in over 6,000 years of recorded history… unless they were shot by a COP!
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was also used for land reclamation until 1915. CANNABIS/HEMP was planted or left to grow feral as ground cover and on riverbanks, and not intended for harvest. It is the NUMBER ONE plant in history used to prevent mudslides and loss of watershed, and river and soil erosion on Earth. It has been illegal to grow this NUMBER ONE plant in the United States since 1937.What disgusts me the most is how the U.S. government, as well as the people, knew about
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA and praised its value and then look what happened! In iterally 90 seconds, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 passed in Congress. By using the unknown name “MARIJUANA” instead of the familiar name “CANNABIS HEMP”, Congress was able to accomplish this because no one knew what plant they were talking about. CANNABIS/HEMP became illegal and was replaced by petrochemical products, coal and natural gas. They made it such a banned and forbidden plant that the words “HEMP” and “CANNABIS/HEMP” were not even taught in schools from the 1940s, 50s and thereafter.
The role of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was erased from America’s history (as well as most of the rest of the world’s) after 1945. To prove it, think… what did you learn about CANNABIS/HEMP in grade school? High school? College? From your parents and randparents? Nothing! (Unless it was from the underground press within the last 15 to 20 years.) The continuing suppression of this information by the U.S. government places us all in mortal jeopardy. I believe that, in order to save our planet, we must use non-fossil fuel energy.
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA, in conjunction with wind, solar, tidal and hydroelectric power, could save the planet by providing all of our energy, fuel, paper, fiber, and 10 to 20% of our medical needs, naturally. It would also reduce acid rain and chemical pollution, rebuild the soil, and reverse the greenhouse effect (no other plant can do this!).
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was used to make over 25,000 products before it was outlawed in 1937.Why does the U.S. government want to eradicate this seed, out of all the seeds on Earth? They want to kill the most perfect plant on the planet. We must stop this insanity and demand that the laws against CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA be 100% repealed!!
Federal Attorney General John Ashcroft, Drug Enforcement Administration head, Asa Hutchison, and White House Drug Czar, John Walters, have been given all of these proven facts and yet are still set against the legalization of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA and recognition of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIUANA knowledge. For whatever personal reasons, they refuse to believe the facts and are willing to sacrifice the future of our planet and the health of our people by keeping it illegal.
The ban of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is so extreme and its intention is to hide thetruth. The truth is that out of the 300,000 species, and the millions and millions of subspecies, of plants on Earth, CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the NUMBER ONE plant for our survival and quality of life here on Earth. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government and Attorney General John Ashcroft have been calling MARIJUANA users “terrorists” and yet the government of the United States has been “terrorizing” MARIJUANA users for the last 65 years! There have been over 14 million arrests for CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA in the last 65 years, in the U.S. alone! 13 million were within the last 30 years!
No one has taken the $100,000 challenge to prove me wrong. Why? Because I am right. The U.S. government has been lying to us since the early 1900s. Do economic interests and the olice have more to say than the people about the future of our planet? How angry are you for being lied to by the U.S. government about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA? Are you willing to make a stand right now? No one can dispute this information and knowledge. YOU have to join me in this fight. Either you are on the U.S. government’s side or you are on my side.
Please help me spread this everywhere. Thank you!
Jack Herer
Comment by dan — November 14, 2007 @ 10:46 amhttp://www.jackherer.com
2/14/07
[...] A group of midwestern farmers are trying to get hemp legalized again. I really like the quote from Wayne Hauge, a farmer in North Dakota: “I’m looking forward to the court battle… I don’t know why the DEA is so afraid of this.” As the article points out, hemp is grown in 30 countries across the world. I guess they’re afraid people will remember what a valuable crop it is. [...]
Pingback by r3tr0.net — November 14, 2007 @ 4:54 pmAll those industries would lose money just like the pharmacuticals would to MJ. So as long as they keep paying the judges to keep it illegal I think that is going to be it.
Comment by BecauseBushsaysso — November 14, 2007 @ 7:55 pm