Pubdate: Tue, 06 Aug 2013
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Jack Healy

GROUNDWORK LAID, GROWERS TURN TO HEMP IN COLORADO

SPRINGFIELD, Colo. - Along the plains of eastern Colorado, on a patch 
of soil where his father once raised alfalfa, Ryan Loflin is growing 
a leafy green challenge to the nation's drug laws.

As part of regulation, Colorado will be able to randomly test hemp 
crops to ensure that they have only trace amounts of THC, a chemical 
in marijuana.

Ryan Loflin and other hemp farmers walk a precarious line, as the 
state said it would not authorize planting until next year.

His fields are sown with hemp, a tame cousin of marijuana that was 
once grown openly in the United States but is now outlawed as a 
controlled substance. Last year, as Colorado voters legalized 
marijuana for recreational use, they also approved a measure laying a 
path for farmers like Mr. Loflin, 40, to once again grow and harvest 
hemp, a potentially lucrative crop that can be processed into goods 
as diverse as cooking oil, clothing and building material. This 
spring, he became the first farmer in Colorado to publicly sow his 
fields with hemp seed.

"I'm not going to hide anymore," he said one recent morning after 
striding through a sea of hip-high plants growing fast under the sun.

Mr. Loflin's 60-acre experiment is one of an estimated two dozen 
small hemp plantings sprouting in Colorado. Hemp cultivation presents 
a vexing problem for the federal government, which draws no 
distinction between hemp and marijuana, as it decides how to respond 
to a new era of legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington State.

State agencies have worked quickly to create new rules, licenses and 
taxes for hemp and recreational marijuana. Many towns have voted to 
ban the new retailers; others have decided to regulate them. Denver, 
for example, is proposing a 5 percent tax on recreational marijuana sales.

Colorado has set up an industrial hemp commission to write rules to 
register hemp farmers and charge them a fee to grow the crop commercially.

"It's something that can be copied and used nationally," said Michael 
Bowman, a farmer in northeastern Colorado who sits on the state hemp 
commission. "We're trying to build a legitimate industry."

The state will also be able to randomly test crops to ensure that 
they contain no more than 0.3 percent THC, the psychoactive chemical 
in marijuana, far below the level found in marijuana.

Opponents say that hemp and marijuana are essentially the same plant 
and that both contain the same psychoactive substance. But supporters 
say that comparing hemp with potent strains of marijuana is like 
comparing a nonalcoholic beer with a bottle of vodka.

Still, farmers and marijuana advocates worry: will drug agents stand 
on the sidelines and allow Colorado and Washington to pursue their 
own experiments with legalization? Or will the federal government 
crack down to assert its authority over drug policies?

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency in Denver said hemp 
farmers were "not on our radar," but R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of 
the Obama administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy, 
has offered stern words against both marijuana and hemp, saying that 
no matter what states did, the plants were still illegal in the 
federal government's view.

"Hemp and marijuana are part of the same species of cannabis plant," 
Mr. Kerlikowske wrote in response to a 2011 petition that sought to 
legalize hemp cultivation. "While most of the THC in cannabis plants 
is concentrated in the marijuana, all parts of the plant, including 
hemp, can contain THC, a Schedule I controlled substance."

Lately, hemp has been tiptoeing toward the agricultural mainstream, 
gaining support from farmers' trade groups and a wide array of 
politicians in statehouses and in Washington. In the 
Republican-controlled House, a provision tucked into the farm bill 
would let universities in hemp-friendly states grow small plots for research.

A handful of states, from liberal Vermont to conservative North 
Dakota and Kentucky, have voted to allow commercial hemp. In Vermont, 
any farmers who want to register as hemp growers under a new state 
program have to sign a form acknowledging that they risk losing their 
agricultural subsidies, farm equipment and livelihoods if federal 
agents decide to swoop in.

Every year, the federal authorities seize and destroy millions of 
marijuana plants - a crackdown that has rattled the medical marijuana 
industry in California - but the pace of seizures has dropped sharply 
in recent years. In 2012, federal officials reported that 3.9 million 
cannabis plants had been destroyed under D.E.A. eradication efforts. 
A year earlier, officials said they had eradicated 6.7 million plants.

Beyond the risk of federal raids and seizures, Kevin Sabet, a former 
drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, said the market for 
hemp goods is still vanishingly small and questioned whether it could 
really be a panacea for farmers.

"Hemp is the redheaded stepchild of marijuana policy, and probably 
for good reason," said Mr. Sabet, who is now the director of the Drug 
Policy Institute. "In a world with finite capacity to handle drug 
problems, my advice would be for people to think less about an 
insignificant issue like hemp and more about the very real issues of 
drug addiction, marijuana commercialization and glamorization, and 
how to make our policies work better."

Even without the threat of federal raids, transforming hemp into a 
cash crop will be like asking a clear sky for rain. Viable seeds are 
illegal and scarce. Few working farmers or experts in the United 
States have any expertise in growing hemp. And there is basically no 
infrastructure to process the plants into legal components like oil, 
fibers and proteins.

In Colorado, Jason Lauve, the executive director of Hemp Cleans, an 
advocacy group, said he has spoken with about two dozen small farmers 
and landowners who are cautiously growing their first hemp crops.

"We're really walking gently," Mr. Lauve said. "We don't want to put 
people at risk. We want to see how much states' rights really protect 
us, versus the jurisdiction of the federal government."

Even here, farmers like Mr. Loflin are walking a precarious line. 
Although Colorado voters opened the door to hemp farming last year, 
the state warned would-be hemp farmers in May that they would not be 
authorized to plant until early in 2014.

But this spring, Mr. Loflin decided it was time. For years, he had 
read about how hemp could replenish undernourished soil and be woven 
and squeezed into a wide array of products. He drinks a shot of hemp 
oil for his health every day - "It tastes kind of like grass" - and 
believes the plant could one day lift the fortunes of struggling small farmers.

He spent the winter assembling a seed collection from suppliers in 
Britain, Canada, China and Germany, where hemp is legal. They entered 
the country via U.P.S., labeled "bird seed" or "toasted hemp seed." 
One bag was seized by customs officials, he said. Some 1,500 pounds 
of seeds were not.

At the end of June, with more than $15,000 invested in the venture, 
he planted his crop. He said he alerted his neighbors and has not 
gotten any complaints from people around Springfield, or from federal 
officials.

When Mr. Loflin visits the farm from his home in western Colorado, he 
half-expects to see D.E.A. cars racing down Highway 160 to burn down 
his crop before harvest. But he believes he can stake a living in 
hemp's oily seeds and versatile fibers. He has gotten tired of his 
day job building ski homes in the mountains. To him, hemp's outlaw 
status is just another hazard of starting a business.

"It's well worth the risk," he said. "It's hemp. Come on, it just 
needs to be done."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom