Pubdate: Sun, 14 Nov 1999
Source: Fairfield County Weekly (CT)
Copyright: 1999 New Mass. Media, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/
Author:    Terri Lagerstadt

HEMP HELD HOSTAGE
Defying Federal Law, Industrial Hemp Is Proving Itself To Be, Both
Literally And Figuratively, One Durable Little Plant

(MAP editor's note: This is the cover story. The cover consists of what
seems to be a white dove with its tongue hanging out because there is a
huge sword going
through from the top of its neck through its body with blood all over the
bird and sword. On the sword is the word GOVERNMENT and on the bird is
written INDUSTRIAL HEMP. There is an arrow entering it from the back and
there is some marijuana on the ground below it. Underneath is the caption,
"Sacrificial Hemp. With the Reefer Madness mentality still alive and well in
the United States, it's little wonder that hemp has been unfairly maligned
and its benefits sabotaged by literal-minded bureaucrats. Terri Lagerstedt
p.16)
~~~~~~~

Ontario-based Kenex has been exporting birdseed to the United States
since the mid 1990s. But on Aug. 9, the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) seized a truckload of Kenex's birdseed on its way
through U.S. customs. Birdseed?  Why on earth would the DEA take such
a strong action against a product as innocuous as birdseed? The answer
lies in the fact that Kenex is Canada's leading producer, processor
and distributor of hemp products and the birdseed being exported to
the United States contained sterilized hemp seed. That day it didn't
seem to matter that Kenex has been exporting this same product to the
United States for years without incident. Nor did it seem to matter
that, according to the DEA's own definition, hemp seed is a perfectly
legal item to import.

It wasn't until nearly two months later, on Oct. 6, that the DEA
finally issued a press release stating that "recently, DEA and other
federal agencies have become aware that sterilized cannabis seed has
been imported into the United States for use in food products for
human consumption. Furthermore, some of that seed, and products made
from that seed, may be contaminated with THC."

Tetrahydrocannabinol-THC-is the psychoactive ingredient found in the
cannabis plant. Ah, cannabis...in other words: marijuana, pot, weed,
doobie...and star of the '30s cult classic Reefer Madness. That might
be the first connection you make when you hear the word cannabis. You
might not even be aware that there's more to marijuana than getting
high. 

As in most families, it's the notorious members that get all the
attention; with the Reefer Madness mentality still alive and well in
the United States, it's little wonder that another member of the
cannabis family has been unfairly maligned and its benefits sabotaged
by literal-minded bureaucrats. Even so, the seeds of the cannabis
plant contain no THC-although when bits of plant matter inadvertently
brush against the seeds and stick there, traces can be found in hemp
seed products. However, the lab reports accompanying the fated Kenex
shipment clearly indicated that the hemp seed in that shipment
contained virtually no THC-and certainly not enough to get anyone
high. Futhermore, that shipment of birdseed wasn't intended for human
consumption, it was for the birds.

So before you go jumping to conclusions about Farmer Joe's pet chicken
hopped up on hemp seed with a case of the munchies, there are a few
things you should know. The first thing to take into account is the
difference between marijuana and its misunderstood cousin. Simply put,
industrial hemp is not marijuana. According to hemp activist and
former HempWorld publisher Mari Kane, the confusion stems from the
fact that marijuana and industrial hemp are different strains of the
same species of plant. Where marijuana has been bred for its
psychoactive qualities, hemp has been bred for its fiber and its seed
content. And in breeding for these attributes, the level of THC is
reduced, rendering industrial hemp useless both medicinally and
recreationally. "The main difference," she explained, "is determined
by the THC levels in the plant." And there simply isn't enough
THC-less than 1 percent-found in industrial hemp to get you high.

It might not get you high, but industrial hemp is a very useful
natural resource. Hemp fiber is employed in making everything from
canvas and rope to clothing and textiles. If you're up on your hemp
history, you're already aware that drafts of our own Declaration of
Independence were written on hemp paper, that Henry Ford built a car
that was made from hemp fiber and ran on hemp-based fuel, and that
during the World Wars, farmers were required to grow hemp used for
supplies to aid the war effort.

In fact, industrial hemp has been touted as the plant with 25,000
uses. That much utility makes it a hard natural resource to ignore. In
recent years, the fashion industry has been leaping onto the
proverbial bandwagon. Designers Calvin Klein and Gianni Versaci use
hemp fabric in some of their clothing.  Adidas manufactures hemp
sneakers. Aside from the myriad historical examples of hemp fiber
being used to make paper, rope and sails and its visibility in modern
fashion, there are some more interesting, less publicized items
manufactured using hemp fiber. For instance, the 1999 model year car
you're driving may be equipped with parts utilizing hemp fiber. In
addition to the multiple uses for the fiber, the oil pressed from the
hemp seed can be used as a base for paints and varnishes.

While hemp's versatility is impressive, its most noteworthy qualities
are its strength and durability. Hemp paper, for instance, can last
for hundreds of years without deteriorating.  Clothing made from hemp
is far more durable than apparel made from cotton. Not only is
material made with hemp fiber strong and durable, it's also more
environmentally desirable because it's biodegradable. Hemp can be
cultivated in virtually any growing climate and is naturally more
resistant to pests, therefore requiring less use of toxic pesticides.
According to the Cannabis Action Network, cotton is not as pest
resistant as hemp and is responsible for more than 50 percent of the
pesticides used in the United States today. And in terms of paper
production, an acre of hemp can yield two to four times more pulp than
an acre of trees. Not to mention, hemp is a far more renewable
resource. While it takes years to replenish that acre of trees, hemp
is ready to be harvested in a mere 90 to 120 days.

Why then is it now considered a crime to grow and explore this dynamo
of a natural resource? Theories abound. There are those who
expostulate that after Prohibition, out-of-work law enforcement
guns-for-hire needed something to do in the post-Prohibition era and
enforcing new drug laws was their most appealing option. So to
convince the American public that these jobs were necessary, they
collectively resorted to scare tactics, playing on the public's racist
tendencies and aligning drug use with minorities and convincing
parents of the dangers of drugs

Another popular and more commonly held theory is laden with
accusations of corporate greed. As the usefulness of hemp was becoming
widely known-a 1937 issue of Popular Mechanics hailed hemp as the "New
Billion Dollar Crop"-it seems this useful little plant was posing a
threat to big business. Specifically, the land interests of newspaper
mogul William Randolph Hearst and companies like Dupont Chemical
Company. In an alleged conspiracy-or at the very least, a smear
campaign that has all the earmarks of a cloak and dagger movie
classic-suddenly the hideous drug marijuana and its
guilty-by-association relative were under attack from the media. The
American public was led to believe that their new billion-dollar crop
was somehow responsible for leading their children astray. 

And in 1937, Federal Bureau of Narcotics director Harry Aslinger testified
before Congress, stating, among other things, that marijuana was
responsible for causing "white women to seek out sexual relations with
Negroes." Playing on the public's tendencies toward paranoia and
racism, the federal government placed a prohibitive tax on marijuana
the following year. Although provisions were made to allow farmers to
continue growing hemp, the industry was now highly regulated, making
the billion-dollar crop less and less cost effective. Farmers began to
abandon industrial hemp in search of more profitable crops.

Federal law still does not technically prohibit growing industrial
hemp-all you need is a license issued by the DEA. According to Kane,
however, "The political policies of this country have made it
prohibitive. The laws that are on the books should allow for
industrial hemp to be grown." After the World War II, she continued,
"the DEA just sort of stopped giving licenses to farmers, and if you
don't have a license to do something, well, it sort of makes it illegal."

Regardless, the fact re-mains that today we are ignoring a valuable
natural resource. Whether or not the stories are true, the hemp
movement is now beginning to abandon the legends behind the rise and
subsequent fall of industrial hemp. Who, then, is hemp's new arch
enemy? According to Mari Kane, "the biggest industry that is against
any kind of decriminalizing hemp is the drug-testing industry. They're
the ones who have been fighting us over the infinitely miniscule
amounts of THC that might be pressed into the [hemp seed] oil causing
people to test falsely positive in drug tests."

So what is the correlation between false-positive drug tests and the
drug-testing industry's campaign against legalizing industrial hemp?
Attorney at law and president of Ohio Hempery Inc.  Don Wirtshafter
ex-plained that connection. "Well, it means that someone's going to
lose their job or go back to jail or be court-martialed from the Army
based on a wrong answer." And that means potential lawsuits.

"This started because one company five years ago produced a hemp oil
using Chinese materials with a high level of THC," Wirshafter
continued. "They didn't clean the seeds well and they ended up
producing an oil with 13 parts per million [THC], which is .13
percent. This lab proved that if you consumedenough of this oil over a
period of several days, you could raise your level to a point where
you could fail a urine test." 

Wirtshafter went on to say that although this was a singular incident and
there are no hemp products on the market now with enough THC to cause a
false positive in a urine test, the red flags went up and the drug-testing
industry became concerned that hemp products-specifically those designed
for human
consumption-could become a threat to them.

Drug-testing is a growing industry as entrepreneurs endeavor to
capture their share of the market by offering fast-and-easy testing.
"Fast and easy is a formula for problems as far as we're concerned,"
said George Howe of Shelton-based Gregory and Howe. "The drug-testing
program that [we] work with mirrors what the Department of Health and
Human Services put in place in 1988 as mandated by the Department of
Transportation." The standards that Gregory and Howe maintain include
both a series of checks and balances in the laboratory and a rigorous
certification process.

With these standards in place, Howe isn't concerned with the
possibility of false positive test results. "All positive tests," he
said, "are reviewed by a medical review officer before being reported
to the company. In many cases the medical review officer will overturn
a laboratory result because of a dietary [reason] or prescription drug."

What the possible THC contamination of sterilized birdseed has to do
with anything, no one seems to be sure. Kane theorizes that domestic
birds that eat the possibly THC-contaminated birdseed are at risk for
increasing their levels of THC and when they are subsequently ingested
by humans, there is the slight possibility of a false-positive drug
test. Wirtshafter doubts it, but he does say that the DEA's press
release stating that it just discovered hemp was being imported for
use in food products is untrue. "We've got statements back from 1985
showing that [the DEA] knew it was being used for food," Wirtshafter
noted. 

At any rate, Wirshafter maintains that there are no hemp food
products currently on the market that could possibly cause a urine
test to show a positive result. The amount of THC present to make a
person test positive is 15 nanograms per liter or .000000015 percent.
Mari Kane wasn't kidding when she said the amount in question was
miniscule. In a similar circumstance, there's the poppy seed issue.
Yes, it's true that if you eat a poppy seed bagel prior to a drug
test, it's going to show up. According to Wirtshafter, "When this came
down, they understood that poppy seeds could cause a positive
[result], and they raised the threshold levels. So maybe an occasional
heroin user could get away with it and pass a test, but at least they
weren't persecuting poppy seed bagel lovers."

Why is a false positive from hemp an issue when a false positive from
poppy seeds isn't? "There's a test," Wirtshafter explained, "that
isn't used very often, but they can tell the difference between poppy
seed consumption and heroin." At this point in time there is no such
test to tell the difference between a false positive caused by hemp
food products as opposed to a positive result caused by marijuana use.

Furthermore, in a press release dated March 12, 1998, the DEA sets
forth the following definition for contraband cannabis: The term
"marihuana means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether
growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part
of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative,
mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin." The
definition goes on to say that, "such term does not include the mature
stalks of such plant, fiber produced from such stalks, oil or cake
made from the seeds of such plant, another compound, manufacture,
salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of such mature stalks (except
for the resin extracted there from), fiber, oil or cake, or the
sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination." 

This definition speaks to a couple of things. The first being that the DEA
makes no distinction between industrial hemp, which is bred for its
fiber and seeds and has a low THC content, and marijuana, which is
bred for its psychoactive properties. The only distinction recognized
by the DEA is that specific parts of the cannabis plant contain no THC
and are therefore not illegal.  And yet, the DEA is to date still in
possession of a shipment of birdseed that by their own definition is
perfectly legal. What, you might wonder, does all of this have to do
with the drug-testing industry? Well, says Wirt-shafter, "leaders of
the drug-testing industry came out of the Drug Enforcement
Ad-ministration, so they're protecting their own."

The DEA's public affairs officer, Rogene Waite, re-ferred all
questions regarding the agency's official position on the industrial
hemp issue to the agency's web site (www.usdoj.gov/dea). In that March
12, 1998, press release, the DEA maintains its position that "Hemp,
Indian Hemp, marijuana, and cannabis are other names for the Schedule
I substance marijuana." 

Don Wirtshafter takes exception to the DEA's classification of the THC
found in industrial hemp as a Schedule I substance, explaining that
"organic [from a living plant] THC is not in itself in Schedule I, only
chemically derived products of equal or similar chemistry." 

Regardless, the DEA still makes no distinction and
holds industrial hemp to the standards set forth by the Controlled
Substances Act, which "requires that a determination be made that any
such production would be in the public interest. A prime consideration
of the public interest rests with the threat of diversion associated
with cultivation. The cultivation of the marijuana plant exclusively
for commercial/industrial purposes has many associated risks relating
to diversion into the illicit drug traffic."

Regardless of the drug-testing industry's and the DEA's narrow
definition of the cannabis plant, hemp does seem to be making some
headway. This year, 14 states introduced hemp-related legislation.
Only six of those states-Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico,
North Dakota and Virginia-managed some success. 

North Dakota's House Bill 1428, for instance, states that "Any person in
this state may plant, grow, harvest, possess, process, sell and buy
industrial hemp."
And while the passage of such a bill creates some headway, the fact
remains that federal law supersedes state law. So despite House Bill
1428, North Dakota won't be planting, growing or harvesting any
industrial hemp; rather, activists hope that this bill and others like
it will provide enough leverage to change federal law.And as the U.S.
demand for hemp products continues to grow, the powers that be are
going to be forced to take a closer look as continuing to import hemp
fiber and products will make less sense than growing and manufacturing
our own. In light of this growing industry one thing is becoming
increasingly clear: industrial hempving itself to be, both literally
and figuratively is pro, one durable little plant.

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MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto