Pubdate: Sun, 10 Feb 2013
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Margaret Newkirk, Bloomberg

Number of the Day

$452 MILLION

That's the value of retail products containing imported hemp that 
were sold in the United States in 2011. While a cousin of marijuana, 
the plant can't get you high. Instead, it can be used to make 
clothes, horse bedding, auto parts, soap and even concrete. But 
thanks to it being classified like all cannabis plants as a Schedule 
I substance - the same as heroin - the U.S. hemp crop is precisely 
zero. If you want to grow hemp and avoid a jail sentence, you need a 
permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Hemp, a botanical cousin of marijuana, can be used to make clothes, 
horse bedding, auto parts, soap, even concrete. But it can't get you high.

That's why Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Vermont are 
moving bills this year to allow commercial hemp production, so 
farmers can tap into an estimated $452 million domestic market for the plant.

The push is solidly mainstream: In Kentucky, the state Chamber of 
Commerce, the Republican agricultural commissioner and U.S. Senate 
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are all backers.

North Dakota, Montana, and six other states wish them luck. They've 
passed similar bills since 1996, resulting in a domestic hemp crop of 
exactly zero. What's standing in the way? The U.S. government, which 
defines all cannabis plants, of which hemp is one variety, as 
Schedule I substances. That's the same narcotic classification as heroin.

Farmers wanting to grow hemp need a permit from the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Administration. Otherwise they risk 20 years in prison 
and forfeiture of their farms. It's been that way since 1970.

David Bronner, chief executive officer of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, 
a California company that uses imported hemp, calls the rules absurd, 
especially now that states are legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

'Ridiculous'

"It's becoming increasingly ridiculous that the nondrug form of 
cannabis is still caught up in this prohibition," he says.

In recent times, two bills written by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San 
Francisco, have been vetoed - one by ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger 
and one in October 2011 by Gov. Jerry Brown - citing the federal ban.

North Dakota farmer David Monson tried for a hemp permit. The 
application process included a criminal background check, a site 
visit, and a questionnaire that asked: "Will you have a 12-foot-high 
chain-link fence with guards and razor wire?" "Where are you going to 
sell this drug?" and "How are you going to keep it from getting into 
the wrong hands?"

Monson submitted his paperwork to the DEA in 2007. He's still waiting 
for an answer. Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the agency, says she 
doesn't know when it last issued a hemp permit.

The Hemp Industries Association, in Summerland (Santa Barbara 
County), says it knows of only one permit the U.S. has ever granted. 
David West, a plant geneticist, got it in 1999 to conduct a research 
project in the 2.4-square-mile town of Wahiawa, Hawaii.

Like a museum

He says the DEA required him to keep his seeds in a locked safe and 
his plants protected by a barbed wire fence and infrared beams "as if 
I was a museum."

U.S. companies that use hemp import most of it from China and Canada. 
Police would like to keep it that way. They say commercial hemp 
growers could use their fields to hide illegal marijuana crops.

"It would be a nightmare," says Michael Webb, spokesman for the 
Kentucky State Police.

Scientist West disagrees. Because hemp pollen dilutes pot's potency, 
"most people who know how to grow marijuana don't want it anywhere 
near hemp," he says. Besides, it's not hard to tell them apart: Pot 
plants are bushy; hemp stalks have just a few leaves.

Failed efforts

Congress has tried to pass bills allowing industrial hemp farming 
since 2005, to no avail. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, and Sen. Ron 
Wyden, D-Oregon, are expected to introduce similar proposals this month.

Michael Bowman is one farmer who says he won't wait around for 
Washington to act. Come spring, he'll plant 100 acres of hemp on his 
Colorado land without asking for the DEA's permission. The agency 
will look foolish if it tries to prosecute him for his hemp crop, Bowman says.

"We like to say you'd need a joint the size of a telephone pole to get high."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom