A coalition of business and agriculture organizations convened on Washington last week to kick off a campaign to encourage legislators to lift the government’s 60+ year ban on hemp cultivation.
“It simply makes no sense to outlaw a plant that has played a vital role in the history of our country,” said environmental and consumer activist Ralph Nader. “Growing hemp will be a boon for our farmers; it’s an easy-to-grow cash crop that is good for field rotations that can help sustain the soil and reduce harmful insects.”
The Resource Conservation Alliance — a non-profit environmental project affiliated with Nader — the North American Industrial Hemp Council, Hawaii state Rep. Cynthia Thielen, and others recently unveiled a plan to petition the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to legalize hemp as an agricultural crop. Reformers also demanded that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) establish a system of certifying hemp seeds and licensing farmers to grow the plant.
“In Hawaii, this is economic development,” said Thielen, who unsuccessfully introduced legislation permitting farmers to grow the plant for research purposes in 1997 and 1998. “And the stumbling block to this economic development is the lobbying effort of the DEA.”
Attorney Don Wirtshafter, President of the Ohio Hempery, said that petitioners may also consider filing a federal lawsuit if the agency refuses to respond to their request. “When an agency stands in the way of progress, the first step is to ask them to step aside,” he said. “Only when they fail to do so is it time for court action.”
Jeffrey Gain, former chief of the National Corn Growers Association, said that domestic farmers are being shut out of a growing global economic market. “While the rest of the world is jumping on the hemp bandwagon, American agriculture is being held hostage to obsolete thinking,” he said. It’s a legitimate crop with enormous economic and environmental potential.”
Officials from the White House and the DEA, however, said they remained unmoved by the proponent’s arguments. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) current white paper on hemp, domestic cultivation of the crop would send mixed messages to youth and “may mean the de facto legalization of marijuana.”
NORML Executive Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. called the government’s position “absurd,” noting that dozens of industrialized nations — including Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Canada — cultivate hemp, and that it has not caused any difficulty for law enforcement.
For more information, please call either NORML board member Don Wirtshafter @ (740) 662-4367 or Keith Stroup of NORML @ (202) 483-5500.
