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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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US IL: Editorial: The Dope On Hemp
ccguide Sunday 05 Mar 2000 Pubdate: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL) Copyright: 2000 The Sun-Times Co. Contact: Website: http://www.suntimes.com/index/ THE DOPE ON HEMP The General Assembly is weighing a sensible proposal to study whether industrial hemp could be a profitable alternative crop for the state's struggling farmers. Now that prices have plummeted for corn and soybeans, lawmakers should go ahead with this study despite opposition from federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey. "The federal government is concerned that hemp cultivation may be a stalking horse for the legalization of marijuana," McCaffrey wrote to House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago). That is typical overreaction from McCaffrey, commander in chief of the nation's costly but largely ineffective war on drugs. McCaffrey fired off his letter of opposition after a 49-9 vote in the Senate to authorize Southern Illinois University and the University of Illinois to begin research on hemp. The schools' agriculture departments would obtain seeds and do tests to determine if it can be profitably mass-produced here. Hawaii, where pineapple and sugar cane crops are depressed, already has been authorized to study hemp as an alternative crop. The plant is in the same family as marijuana, but years of studies show it lacks enough of the psychoactive component THC that gets marijuana smokers high. Typically, a marijuana leaf has 4 percent to 20 percent of THC, while hemp has less than 1 percent. Hemp seeds have even less than that. As one pundit put it, one would have to smoke a hemp joint the size of a telephone pole to get high. Even so, opposition from the federal government persists, with the Drug Enforcement Administration saying that hemp looks so much like marijuana that allowing farmers to grow them would complicate drug-fighting efforts. The fear is that illegal growers could use hemp to conceal illegal marijuana plants. Those objections are far outweighed by farmers and environmentalists in the North American Industrial Hemp Council, which says hemp could become a billion-dollar-a-year crop. For hundreds of years, hemp grew like weeds all over the United States. It was widely used to make clothing, paper and cosmetics. The plant was banned in 1972 under the Controlled Substances Act, but it still is profitably grown in Europe and Australia, and new uses are being discovered. State Rep. Judy Erwin (D-Chicago), a sponsor of the bill, says it will take years of experimentation with test plots growing various varieties to determine which plants are best to grow in Illinois. McCaffrey's unfounded fears aside, now is the time to start the research. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk
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