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UK: Hemp crop is a bit of a blow for Essex boys
Jeevan Vasagar The Guardian
Tuesday 04 Sep 2001 Every Friday and Saturday night, Essex boys get in their vans and head for the fields to take in the harvest. You can smell the destination before you see it. The sweetish aroma billows from fields of man-sized plants in the shadow of the M25 at Upminster. Word has got round faster than a spliff in a student bedroom; fields of government-licenced cannabis plants stretch for miles just waiting for someone to come and lift them. Rumour has it that these plants are being reared for medical tests, and the lack of fencing is an invitation to thieves. Steve, 27, from Upminster, walked out of the fields yesterday lunchtime with a handful of cannabis flowers. The tattoo on his forearm signalled his intent: "Let's get stoned." "I've come by here before and seen lots of people just jumping in," Steve offered in his defence. "The government should have it fenced off if they don't want people picking it." Tyre tracks show that others had been even less circumspect and simply driven their vans on to the farmland to pick the crop. Two Essex police officers rolled past in a panda car, stopping to talk to Steve and his friends as they stood at the roadside. They shrugged and smiled when an officer suggested to them the fields might be someone else's property and strolled back in when the patrol car left. The Conservative MP for Upminster, Angela Watkinson, a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, expressed concern about the cultivation of the plants close to a main road. "When licenses for the cultivation of this type of plant are granted then it should be on condition that the premises being used are secure and that access by the public, and in particular, to those wishing to sell this type of drug to others, is not possible," she told the local paper. "One of the first areas that my committee will be considering when the House of Commons resumes is the likely effect of decriminalising cannabis. "This seems a classic example of what can happen." However, in this case, the joke could be on Steve and his fellow enthusiasts. According to the Home Office, the plant being grown is not marijuana but its less glamorous cousin - industrial hemp. Some countries ban the cultivation of hemp for fear that it will be used to camouflage an illicit crop of marijuana, but the plant itself is not intoxicating. The hemp variety of cannabis sativa contains no more than 0.3% of the psycho-active ingredient THC. At least 3% is required for the drug to have its effect. But since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 it has been illegal to grow hemp in Britain without a Home Office licence. The granting of this licence is thought to have given rise to the rumour that the fields are for a government-sponsored medical trial. "This is being grown for industrial hemp production," a Home Office spokesman said. "If someone were trying to get high they'd be foolish to use these plants." GW Pharmaceuticals, the only company licenced to grow cannabis for medical purposes, cultivates its crop in greenhouses described as "a cross between a spaceship and an operating theatre".
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