Pubdate: Wed, 27 Feb 2002
Source: Florida Today (FL)
Copyright: 2002 Florida Today
Contact: http://www.floridatoday.com/forms/services/letters.htm
Website: http://www.flatoday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/532
Author: Billy Cox
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hemp.htm (Hemp)

DRUG-WAR ZEAL IMPERILS NATURE

When you've run out of logic, ideas, vision, common sense, brains, wit and 
innovation, when you've got nothing else to stand on but lazy, exhausted 
dogma, chances are you'll do what the U.S. Supreme Court did with Dred 
Scott in 1857. You'll dig in your heels, cross your arms and proclaim 
something brilliant like, "Well, it's the law!"

That's what's going to happen on or about March 18, when the great American 
land whale known as the Drug Enforcement Administration can officially 
begin to prosecute businesses that sell edibles made from cannabis sativa, 
or hemp.

Now, hemp isn't the marijuana you mix into brownies for watching reruns of 
Cheech & Chong's "Up In Smoke." Those guys rolled cannabis indica, which 
contains up to 20 percent THC, the psychoactive agent responsible for red 
eyes, indolence, munchies and -- in certain illnesses -- pain relief. 
Although hemp leaves are indistinguishable from indica, they contain less 
than 1 percent THC, meaning you'd scorch your lungs raw sooner than you'd 
get a buzz from smoking it. In fact, if you eat hemp, according to a recent 
Time magazine article, its THC content is so low it won't even show up on a 
urine test.

Why would anyone want to eat bland, chewy, no-buzz hemp? Maybe for novelty 
or camp value; maybe for the same reason increasing numbers of American 
tourists are visiting Cuba, because the government says you can't. 
Health-food advocates tout hemp oil for its "good" fatty acids, and the 
consequence is a fledgling $5 million U.S. industry that makes pretzels, 
granola bars and pie crust from imported hemp.

But food isn't the primary commercial allure of hemp. Farmers -- especially 
those in the fragile tobacco industry -- have pressured legislators in 20 
states to study the feasibility of growing legal cannabis sativa at home, 
and no wonder. Studies indicate its woody hemp fibers are stronger than 
rope, its dense root systems choke weeds with little need for herbicide, it 
provides a tenacious buffer against topsoil erosion, and it grows 20 times 
faster than trees, meaning hemp crops can produce the same amount of pulp 
in less than a quarter of the space.

American farmers, looking with envy at their hemp-growing Canadian 
counterparts, want a piece of the global market, which is beginning to 
fabricate hemp into everything from car interiors to diapers. That's why 
they'll be looking at how avidly the DEA goes after the sativa food industry.

Marijuana cultivation was banned in 1937, nearly three decades before 
science identified the THC strain that distinguishes indica from sativa. 
(Never mind that the War Department begged farmers to restart their hemp 
crops during WWII to offset the loss of imported timber.) Our archaic laws 
ban so much as a subatomic quark of THC coming from the American loam 
because a) we don't want to look soft on drugs, and b) having to 
differentiate legal buds from illegal buds is really a hassle.

Well, hey, even the DEA is human, and mistakes happen. Every now and then, 
a missionary plane with innocent children onboard will get blown out of the 
sky by drug-fighting jets, or tenured bureaucrats will bribe medieval 
lunatics like the Taliban with tens of millions of dollars to please, oh, 
please stop growing flora that can expedite their goal of destroying the 
West. When you're operating a budget that spends $5 billion more a year 
than NASA does to explore the universe, you certainly can't expect diligent 
stewardship over every lousy nickel and dime.

But curiously, in their zeal to prosecute the war on THC, congressional 
pinheads refuse to contemplate what may be their most effective weapon -- 
cannabis sativa.

Currently, the drug-war flavor of the month is a bio-herbicide called 
Fusarium, a fungus its advocates hope will eradicate marijuana. Critics 
worry the oxysporium -- engineered specifically to destroy pot -- will 
mutate and destroy other crops and plants in a mindless swath of collateral 
damage. What no one is talking about are studies that indicate when 
cannabis sativa and cannabis indica share the same fields, 
cross-pollination from hemp plants will significantly degrade the THC 
levels of indica marijuana. No, wait, there's at least one guy talking 
about it. His name is James Woolsey, and he used to be director of the 
Central Intelligence Agency. Today, he's a lobbyist for the North American 
Industrial Hemp Council. Woolsey says farmers trying to hide pot in a 
sativa field would be "stark raving mad." Guess he can actually speak his 
mind now that he's off the dole.

But midnight tokers needn't fear tight markets anytime soon. American 
policymakers are too stupid and too beholden to bigger vice lobbies. They'd 
rather risk destroying the environment than acknowledge reality in an 
election year
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MAP posted-by: Alex