Actor Harrelson Plays Lead As Forum Airs Hemp Issue
by Joe Ward

August 13, 1998 - The Courier-Journal

Andy Graves, a Lexington KY farmer, thinks he could make a little money from growing industrial hemp and he brought his argument for legalizing the crop to the Louisville Forum yesterday.

But as he had feared , it was hard to keep focus on the pros and cons of industrial hemp as a viable crop for Kentucky farmers and off his friend and fellow hemp advocate- actor Woody Harrelson.

Harrelson, who became famous portraying Woody the bartender on the "Cheers" television series, is a good draw for the hemp cause and is willing to show up at events like the forum's debate.

But he's controversial because of past statements that when he was younger he regularly smoked hemp's cousin -marijuana- and in part because he has portrayed a pornographer and depraved killers in movies. Law-enforcement agencies have argued that the push to legalize hemp is a cover for people who want to legalize marijuana.

So reporters given access to Harrelson before the Forum presentation began had their questions ready. Does Harrelson favor legalization of marijuana? "I deal with that issue separately", he said. "You can guess where I stand on it." He never answered the question and tried to steer the conversation back to the farm issue.

"Do you think Andy Graves and his father, Jake Graves, want to get marijuana legal?" Harrelson asked. The Graveses are from a respected farming and banking family with roots many generations deep in Virginia and the Bluegrass area of Kentucky. The Graves family grew a lot of hemp before it was made illegal through the anti-drug legislation in 1937. Andy Graves, president of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association, said six previous generations of his family grew hemp-employing 1,000 workers during a temporary World War II legal reprieve.

Despite the controversy surrounding Harrelson, Graves said, "It's a pleasure to know somebody with real commitment and passion who is willing to spend time on things they believe in."

"I guess I'm an easy target," Harrelson said. "People point at me because I openly admit certain things."

Harrelson was scheduled to participate in the Louisville Forum's panel discussion of the hemp issue, but he offered to give his seat to Indiana University hemp expert- Paul Mahlberg-who was in the audience- "so the debate's not tainted with emotionality."

Forum officials said that would not be necessary and arranged for both to participate. Panel members also included David Haight, a retired Kentucky agent of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency, which has opposed legalization of hemp on grounds it would complicate eradication of marijuana.

Graves said Kentucky farmers need hemp for additional cash income. "Rural Kentucky is on a daily basis drying up," he said.

Harrelson said there are as many as 25,000 uses for hemp, which can be grown for fiber to be used in paper, cloth or woodlike products, or for seed which can produce oil.

Kentucky was once a center for production of hemp seed, which was sold to fiber producers in states further north. Graves urged "the doers and the shakers" in his forum audience to get behind legalization so Kentucky farmers can begin developing seed to regain that position.

Haight repeated a law-enforcement contention that hemp and marijuana are indistinguishable. They are the same plant, differing only in that marijuana growers use strains bred to produce a psychoactive drug called THC, and hemp growers plant lower THC strains that grow straight and tall and produce a lot of fiber.

"That's a law enforcement problem," Haight said. Enforcement officials would have to find some way to wipe out marijuana without destroying legitimate hemp. "How would you do it?" He asked. Test every plant for THC? "That's not a viable way to do business."

He also said legalization would immediately increase pressure for legalization of marijuana-because they are genetically the same- and in general send the country "mixed signals about what is good and bad."

Hemp advocates note that hemp plants, grown for fiber, are closely spaced, so they'll grow tall and produce few leaves. Marijuana plants are spaced out to be short and bushy. Forum panelist Jean Laprise, a Canadian who grows hemp under a new program in his country, said the identification question was quickly put to rest when a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer first visited his hemp field. "Jeez, this is not anything like marijuana," Laprise said the Mountie said.

Harrelson suggested that the marijuana eradication program has become a lucrative one for law-enforcement officials, providing money they are reluctant to give up. He drew a parallel with government spending on wolf bounties, which he said began desperate pleas from farmers and ranchers as the country was settled but continued for decades after wolves were scarce because of the bureaucracy it supported.

He suggested the marijuana program doesn't make sense. The program spends $9 million a year (*note: this number is in fact $500 million), he said, and less than 1 percent of the plants it destroys actually are cultivated marijuana. "The rest are ditch-weed," ferel hemp with little drug content. A report from the office of the Vermont state auditor supported his figures.

Harrelson said the country shouldn't "let the government propaganda machine make us so paranoid" that it gives us a potential "miracle crop" because "it bears a physical resemblance to a plant that makes you euphoric."

"I think it's time for all this hysteria to end. Let's go on to what makes sense," he said. Harrelson appeared in a shirt, pants, and shoes all made from hemp. After apologizing for being controversial, he introduced Forum attendees to his mother- Diane Harrelson - who sat at a table near the front.

And he introduced Donna Cockrel, a former Simpsonville, Ky., teacher who was fired last year after she sparked a storm of protest by inviting Harrelson to appear before her elementary school class, twice, to talk about hemp. Cockrel said afterwards that she now heads up a Frankfort foundation that is looking for grants to study international educational issues, hemp production among them.

Harrelson helped her set it up and has supported it financially, she said.

At the end of yesterday's debate, Forum president Sally Wax presented Harrelson with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, which he accepted. But he said, "I hope this isn't made from old growth."

Harrelson is an environmentalist who has battled destruction of old growth forests and who sees hemp as a renewable source of fiber that could save trees.

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