Pubdate: Sat, 21 Jul 2007
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: Front Page 
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2007/07/21/pageone/scan/index.html
Copyright: 2007 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Monica Davey
Cited: Vote Hemp http://www.votehemp.com
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/industrial+hemp

SOBER NORTH DAKOTANS HOPE TO LEGALIZE HEMP

OSNABROCK, N.D. - David C. Monson seems an improbable soul to find at 
the leading edge of a national movement to legalize growing hemp, a 
plant that shares a species name, a genus type and, in many circles, 
a reputation, with marijuana.

As Mr. Monson rolls past his wheat, barley and shimmering yellow 
fields of canola, he listens to Rush Limbaugh in his tractor. When he 
is not farming, he is the high school principal in nearby Edinburg, 
population 252. When he is not teaching, he is a Republican 
representative in Bismarck, the state capital, where his party 
dominates both houses of the legislature and the governor is a Republican.

"Look at me - do I look shady?" Mr. Monson, 56, asked, as he stood in 
work boots and a ball cap in the rocky, black dirt that spans mile 
after mile of North Dakota's nearly empty northern edge. "This is not 
any subversive thing like trying to legalize marijuana or whatever. 
This is just practical agriculture. We're desperate for something 
that can make us some money."

The rocks, the dirt, the cool, wet climate and a devastating crop 
fungus known as scab are part of what has landed North Dakota, of all 
states, at the forefront of a political battle more likely to have 
emerged somewhere "a little more rebellious," as one farmer here put 
it, like California or Massachusetts.

Though federal authorities ban the growing of hemp, saying it 
contains tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive substance better 
known as THC in marijuana, six states this year considered 
legislation to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp, and 
Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, introduced a bill in 
Washington that would let states allow such crops. In state 
legislatures, the advocates of hemp note that it contains mere traces 
of THC, and that hemp (grown in other countries) is already found 
here in clothes, lotions, snack bars, car door panels, insulation and more.

But no place has challenged the government as fiercely as North 
Dakota. Its legislature has passed a bill allowing farmers to grow 
industrial hemp and created an official licensing process to 
fingerprint such farmers and a global positioning system to track 
their fields. This year, Mr. Monson and another North Dakota farmer, 
with the support of the state's agriculture commissioner, applied to 
the Drug Enforcement Administration for permission to plant fields of 
hemp immediately.

"North Dakota is really pushing the envelope on this one," said Doug 
Farquhar, the program director for agriculture and rural development 
at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legislatures in 
Maine, Montana, West Virginia and other states have passed bills 
allowing farmers to grow industrial hemp, said Alexis Baden-Mayer, 
the director of government relations for Vote Hemp, a group that 
presses for legalization, but those laws have not been carried out 
given federal drug law.

The Controlled Substances Act, federal authorities say, is 
unambiguous. "Basically hemp is considered the same as marijuana," 
said Steve Robertson, a special agent for the D.E.A. at its 
Washington headquarters. "We're an enforcement agency. We're sworn to 
uphold the law."

In the wide-open spaces of this state, an independent streak often 
runs through the politics, especially when it comes to federal 
mandates. But the fight over hemp is not political or philosophical, 
people here say. It lacks any counterculture wink, any hint of the 
fear some hemp opponents express that those trying to legalize hemp 
secretly hope to open the door to the plant's more potent cousin.

This battle is decidedly, and Midwesternly, pragmatic. In 1993, scab, 
a fungus also known as Fusarium head blight, tore through this 
region, wiping out thousands of acres of wheat, a prized crop in 
North Dakota, where agriculture remains the largest element of the 
economy. Hard rains left water pooling in fields, giving scab an 
opening. The fungus has turned up in varying degrees ever since, even 
as farmers searched for a cure. On a recent afternoon, as rain 
pounded his 710 acres, Mr. Monson gloomily yanked the head off a 
stalk of his wheat, revealing for a visitor whitish, shriveled seeds 
- - the telltale signs of scab.

When Mr. Monson began his efforts in the late 1990s, some here 
balked. He remembered John Dorso, a former Republican leader, rolling 
his eyes and asking Mr. Monson if he knew what he was getting mixed up in.

But hemp, Mr. Monson argued, offered an alternative for North 
Dakota's crop rotation. Its tall stalks survive similarly cool and 
wet conditions in Canada, just 25 miles north of here, where it is 
legal. And it suits the rocky soil left behind here by glaciers, soil 
that threatens to tear up farm equipment for anyone who dares to 
plant crops like beets or potatoes beneath ground.

Years and studies and hearings later, few here have much to say 
against hemp - a reflection, it seems, of the state's urgent wish to 
improve its economy. Recent hemp votes have passed the legislature 
with ease, though some questions linger. How big a market would there 
really be for hemp? What about the worries of drug enforcement 
officials, who say someone might sneak into a farmer's field of 
harmless hemp and plant a batch of (similar-looking) marijuana?

Such fears, Mr. Monson insisted, are silly in North Dakota, which is 
the third least-populous state, with fewer than 640,000 people. This 
is the only state where voter registration is not required. (Everyone 
would know, the logic goes, if someone who did not belong tried to 
vote.) "You can't go down to get the mail around here without someone 
knowing," Mr. Monson said.

But Blair Thoreson, a Republican state representative who has voted 
against hemp measures, is less sure. "Everyone here knows everyone," 
Mr. Thoreson said, "and yet we've had a huge problem here with 
homegrown methamphetamine labs, too."

Roger Johnson, the state's agriculture commissioner, said hemp fields 
would be the worst places to hide marijuana. Under state rules, Mr. 
Johnson said, such fields must be accessible for unannounced 
searches, day or night, and crops would be tested by the state. Also, 
he said, a field of hemp and marijuana would cross-pollinate, leaving 
the drug less potent.

"We're not wide-eyed liberals," Mr. Johnson said. "The D.E.A., 
they're the crazy ones on this. This sort of illogical, indefensible 
position is not going to prevail forever."

After receiving the first state licenses to grow hemp this year, Mr. 
Monson and Wayne Hauge, a farmer from Ray, on the opposite side of 
the state, filed applications with the D.E.A. in February.

Since then, the drug agency has not said yes or no. Given North 
Dakota's growing season, it is too late to plant anything new this 
year. So in June, the two men-with financial help from Vote Hemp, the 
advocacy group - filed a lawsuit against the agency.

Mr. Robertson said in July that the agency was still reviewing the 
applications, but that he could not say much beyond that because of 
the litigation.

Like Mr. Monson, Mr. Hauge, who is 49 and farms barley, chickpeas and 
lentils on land his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1903, said his 
efforts were about economics, not politics - or drugs.

"I don't advocate smoking anything," said Mr. Hauge, who, when he is 
not farming, is a certified public accountant.

"I guess I'm not really known as much of a joker," he added.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake