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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Canada: Hemp's High Wearing Off
Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Tuesday 28 Nov 2000 Website: http://www.canoe.ca/OttawaSun Author: Tom Van Dusen HEMP'S HIGH WEARING OFF Miracle crop slow to catch on KEMPTVILLE -- It was the dream crop of the 1990s, a near-mythical reputation fanned by the media with this writer being no less guilty of generating some of the hype. When it came to hemp, how could we help ourselves? On paper -- one of the products you can make out of it -- not only did hemp have all the ingredients of a good crop, more importantly, it had all the ingredients of a good story. There was, for example, the pioneer indestructibility thing with hemp being the crop of choice of our forefathers because it could be grown anywhere and had a multitude of uses. Those uses past, present and future, both for fibre and seeds, were mind-boggling: Clothing, household items, construction, food additives, wellness potions, paints and assorted other products. And the hardiness! Hemp didn't need pesticides, hardly any fertilizer and it could be planted where wimpier crops like corn and soybeans feared to tread. But perhaps the sexiest part of the story was the bad rap and subsequent redemption experienced by hemp due to the transgressions of its cousin cannabis, more commonly known as pot. While the two plants look much the same -- so much so that potheads have been stealing plants out of Kemptville College's experimental hemp plot -- the tamer twin contains only minute amounts of the active ingredient THC which provides the "high." You can suck on hemp 'til the cows come home with the only buzz experienced coming from lack of oxygen. Yet that didn't stop bumbling bureaucrats early in the last century from banning hemp along with cannabis, relegating the once-proud crop to the agricultural scrapheap. Then, after much lobbying, hemp was legalized three years ago with a prerequisite for growing it being a permit from Health Canada. The media just loves a story about the downtrodden overcoming adversity and rising to the top; and it doesn't matter if the particular downtrodden happens to be a plant. Hemp's redemption started a stampede, at least verbally, with thousands of words written about hemp revolutionizing Ontario farm fields. While slower to catch on in the east end of the province, a few hemp patches turned up here and there. Throughout the piece, dissenting voices were crying feebly in the wilderness, warning that it's one thing to have a miracle crop but it's quite another to build a viable industry around it, including lining up reliable buyers with guaranteed markets. For the most part, those party-poopers threatening to ruin a good story were kept at the back of the bus. Three years later, they can no longer be ignored because their words have come to pass. Except for a tiny pocket in southwestern Ontario, there's still no real hemp industry in the province with hundreds of bales in storage and no major buyers. Does that mean the dream is dead or that it's simply taking longer to gel than the hemp hypesters had hoped? Agricultural researchers like Kemptville College's Wendy Asbill says that with harvesting techniques and equipment improving, and with markets slowly solidifying, hope remains to stake out a sizable niche for hemp. Meanwhile, I-told-you-so experts are blaming the media in part for creating a degree of hype that no new crop could ever live up to. Hey, I already said mea culpa!
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