-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Minnesota and Hawaii have already passed legislation decriminalizing the agricultural crop cannabis sativa L. (Hemp) South Dakota, Georgia, and Kentucky have strong support for doing so in the very near future. The original prohibition of Hemp as a crop was cleverly and deceptively orchestrated with the prohibition, for entirely different reasons- of Marijuana, the psychoactive cousin of Hemp. The prohibition of Marijuana serves the interests of drug-pushers and smugglers, in that the criminalization of a relatively mild, non-toxic, and easy to grow causes it to become very expensive instead of nearly free (as in home-grown) -- both of which cause it to come under control of the drug-pushers and smugglers, and also makes it less competitive against the more highly addicting Cocaine and Heroin - the favored cash crops of the smugglers. Prohibition of Hemp serves another less-covert branch of the elite capital economy - the energy (big Oil) and fiber industries ( Logging, plastics, & other synthetic fiber). The success in breaking this prohibition at the local and state level is gathering momentum, and as it does so - spells the coming end of the insane concept of a "War on Drugs" - which has cost our nation so much in terms of the burgeoning prison/industrial complex, the Billions$$ spent each year on programs which have so far INCREASED drug use for the past umpteen years of "drugwar" - and the use of political rhetoric & mainstream media of false portrayals of "drugwar" in order to cover up the Hundreds of Billion $$ in profit taken by the CIA connected "covert-ops" responsible for the majority of U.S. illegal drug importation/smuggling. http://www.asheville-computer.com/issues/Elkhorn_Manifesto.html http://www.drugwar.com/ http://www.wackybaccy.com/untoldstory/untoldstory.html http://www.dcia.com http://copvcia.com Dave Hartley http://www.Asheville-Computer.com/dave http://www.asheville-computer.com/issues/ ======================================== ARTICLE: Hemp Advocates Assail U.S. Report--Availability Would Expand Market, Supporters Claim AUTHOR: Joe Ward, The Louisville Courier-Journal, KY DATE: Friday, 28 January 2000, at 3:25 p.m. "We’ve developed a good market for the fiber in a range of products," said Geof Kime, president of Hempline Ltd., a Delaware, Ontario, hemp processor. He said uses include composite products for the automotive industry, such as pressed door panels. Pubdate: January 26, 2000 Kentucky advocates of industrial hemp, and their supporters elsewhere, charged yesterday that a government report that sees little economic future for marijuana‚s non psychoactive cousin misses the point. The report, released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday, said there would only be a "small, thin market” for hemp products in the United States if growing the crop were legalized, and that all of the hemp fiber, yarn and fabric that the nation imports could be grown on less than 2,000 acres. But Joe Hickey, executive director of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association in Lexington, said a market for hemp products would grow in Kentucky if the versatile fiber and seeds from hemp were readily and reliably available. In any case, Hickey said, the report mentions only textile uses of hemp - which amount to only about 5 percent of hemp products produced in Canada, where markets are developing. "Textiles is just the tip of the iceberg," Hickey said. Hemp, once Kentucky‚s leading cash crop, was outlawed in the 1930s because it is genetically identical to the plant that produces marijuana. Unlike marijuana, though, industrial hemp is grown for long stalks and not for the leafy characteristics that produce the psychoactive ingredient THC sought by -pot smokers. Drug enforcement officials concede that hemp doesn't have enough of that ingredient to make it a problem, but they continue to oppose it on grounds that its cultivation would make the job of controlling marijuana difficult if not impossible. However, farmers across the country, struggling in a sagging farm economy, have become more interested in looking at the possibilities offered by hemp, and 21 states have looked at legislation to permit its growth on an experimental basis or at resolutions supporting such cultivation. Canadian farmers fought and won the battle against a negative law-enforcement attitude several years ago and have been growing hemp commercially for two years. "We've developed a good market for the fiber in a range of products," said Geof Kime, president of Hempline Ltd., a Delaware, Ontario, hemp processor. He said uses include composite products for the automotive industry, such as pressed door panels. "In fact," said Jean Laprise, a Chatham, Ontario, farmer who also is involved in a processing company, "we've developed some markets in the U.S." He said Americans might look in Ford automotive products for hemp panels. And sterilized hemp seed from Canada is sold in U.S. bird-seed mixes. Laprise said his company, Kenex Ltd., has supplied hemp meal for aquaculture experiments at Kentucky State University and bedding for horses in the Lexington area. "There is a market," Kime said. "It just has to be developed." Carl Webster, principal investigator and associate research investigator for Aquaculture at KSU, said farmers trying make money raising freshwater fish and shrimp depend heavily on fish meal to feed their livestock. But the so-called ocean "trash" fish that make up most of fish meal are becoming scarce, he said, and the price of that protein source is rising. He said experiments with hemp meal obtained from Canada through Hickey"s co-op have demonstrated it can be an ingredient of food on which crop fish thrive. "If it were competitively priced, it would be a very good source of protein," he said. Curtis P. Koster, a consultant to the paper industry, said paper companies know that hemp makes "excellent paper" - good enough to have been used in the original Gutenberg Bible, for example, and the Declaration of Independence. And Koster, whose interest in hemp has made him a board member of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, said paper companies are keeping a careful eye on the possibility that hemp and similar fibers will once again be viable as raw materials for paper. They were supplanted by wood in the 19th century, when technology to make paper from wood was developed. "It doesn't pay to make paper from hemp unless you want the very special qualities hemp offers," Koster said. One of those is toughness, and much paper currency is made of hemp paper, though Koster couldn't say whether U.S. currency is. Andy Graves, president of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Co-op, said horse farms in the Lexington area have found hemp bedding superior to straw and other materials for horse stalls in reducing the smell of ammonia, which affects the animals‚ breathing. He said the co-op and a company he has set up called Madison Hemp and Flax have imported about 10,000 pounds of bedding. "People are demanding the product, even at a high price," he said. "It would be cheaper if grown locally." Federal offices in Washington were closed yesterday due to heavy snow, and no one could be reached at the Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service, which produced the study. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says there would only be a "small, thin market" for hemp in the U.S. 1942 COURIER-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO Caption: U.S. hemp production was outlawed in 1937, but during World War II some Kentucky farmers were allowed to grow it under federal license. COURIER JOURNAL FILE PHOTO Caption: Actor Woody Harrelson, left, and Kentucky Hemp Growers Co-op President Andy Graves were in Louisville for a 1998 forum on hemp production.(END) Copyright 2000 The Courier-Journal ======================================== ARTICLE: Hemp Experimentation Could Discover Benefits AUTHOR: Capital Press Agriculture Weekly, Editorial Opinions DATE: Friday, 28 January 2000, at 3:32 p.m. Word had it that many a country boy, testing reports that it was really marijuana, tried smoking hemp behind the barn, only to learn why it doesn't pose the threat that drug officials think it does. Pubdate: 1/28/00 The poor, little, defenseless hemp plant provides an easy gauge for measuring urban America's loss of touch with its agrarian roots. If the enforcers of our drug laws and their counterparts in prosecutors' offices knew just a little more about farming, they would understand better what the hemp controversy is about. And in that case, it wouldn't be a controversy at all. Hemp isn't about drugs. It's about rope. It's also about a potentially profitable crop that would be compatible with other farming operations throughout much of the country, including the Northwest Like farmers in other countries, American ranchers could grow hemp without having it mistaken for its marijuana cousin. In an age when the agricultural industry faces financial ruin, they would add a crop that has several uses, a ready market and the promise of profitability. To be sure, it might be overproduced like many other commodities, but at least farmers would have an option. They are in constant search of rotation or alternative crops. Hemp is a great fabric producer. It's used for cloth and paper, among other items, but its sturdy fibers are especially prized for rope. Farmers throughout the land met a heavy demand in World War II. When wartime production ceased, the hemp plant lived on in wild form. It was said that wild hemp was found in every county in the West. Word had it that many a country boy, testing reports that it was really marijuana, tried smoking hemp behind the barn, only to learn why it doesn't pose the threat that drug officials think it does. Hemp has only trace amounts of the intoxicant that gives marijuana users their high. Even though that has been enough for drug enforcers to ban it, it isn't enough to give smokers a buzz. Think of the products that would be gone from grocery and pharmacy shelves if the same attitude prevailed toward items with trace amounts of alcohol. That's hemp's problem. It has traces, but only traces, of its evil cousin's no-no. One thing that concerns drug-law enforcers is the possibility that legal hemp would give new meaning to the term cover crop. They're afraid hemp would shield the marijuana plant from identification. But hemp would be cut before marijuana had matured. If anything, an unharvested hemp stand might give away the secret of its cover. To be reasonable, a shield for marijuana isn't what the working farmer has in mind. Nor is it what the marketplace wants. A profitable crop with an industrial purpose is the real issue involving the introduction of hemp as an agricultural commodity. But let's at least test the product and the potential problem. Minnesota and Hawaii have cleared the legal way for experimentation. Georgia farmers are calling on their legislators to let them grow hemp. Other states, including those in the Northwest, ought to put their muscle behind appeals to their legislatures for legal authority to try the fiber producer. The national legislature ought to take up the issue of distinguishing between hemp and marijuana and consider how to authorize the former without promoting the latter. Hemp's potential purposes are great, and smoking it for intoxication isn't one of them. © Copyright 2000 Capital Press Agriculture Weekly. Capital Press is an independent weekly farm/ranch newspaper published every Friday by Press Publishing Co., 1400 Broadway St. NE, Salem, OR 97303, Telephone 800-882-6789, Fax 503-370-4383 ======================================== ARTICLE: The South Dakota Industrial Hemp Act of 2000 AUTHOR: South Dakota House of Representatives Bill #1267 DATE: Friday, 28 January 2000, at 3:39 p.m. HB 1267 proposes to allow South Dakotans to plant, grow and process industrial hemp (cannabis sativa L.) with a THC (the psychoactive element of marijuana) level of one percent or less. Pubdate: 1/28/00 The following is information on the upcoming hemp bill introduced in South Dakota. NAIHC needs someone who can testify on the hearing in South Dakota on Tuesday, February 1st. The lead sponsor is Robert Weber, a seventy-year-old Republican farmer. He can be reached during the week at (605) 773-3851 and at home (605) 676-2671. The South Dakota Industrial Hemp Act of 2000 Proponents and opponents of South Dakota House of Representatives Bill #1267 -- the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Act of 2000 -- will be heard Tuesday morning, January 25, in the House Agriculture Committee. HB 1267 proposes to allow South Dakotans to plant, grow and process industrial hemp (cannabis sativa L.) with a THC (the psychoactive element of marijuana) level of one percent or less. Proponents of the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Act maintain that industrial hemp is not a drug, and that ingesting it in any manner will not result in intoxication. If the House Agriculture Committee agrees that the bill should proceed, then it will be heard on the House floor sometime after Tuesday. For further information on the legislature's actions on HB 1267, go to http://www.state.sd.us/state/legis/lrc/lawstat/https/75/BillQuick.cfm, type "1267" in the box and click the button. ********** State of South Dakota, SEVENTY-FIFTH SESSION, LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY, 2000 273D0447 HOUSE BILL NO. 1267 Introduced by: Representatives Weber, Diedtrich (Elmer), Haley, Koehn, Koetzle, Lintz, Nachtigal, and Sutton (Duane) and Senators Kloucek, Lange, and Valandra FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to authorize the production of industrial hemp. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA: Section 1. Any person who has registered with the Department of Agriculture to do so may plant, harvest, possess, process, sell, or buy industrial hemp, cannabis sativa L., with a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of one percent or less. Any person who harvests, possesses, or sells industrial hemp with a THC content of more than one percent is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor. However, no violation of this section that involves a THC content of less than three percent may be prosecuted. ======================================== <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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