Hemp Issue Divides Farmers, The Law

Salem, OR -- Oregon State University researcher Daryl Ehrensing neatly summed up the debate over industrial hemp, a plant whose fibers can be used for cloth, paper and rope but which has the disadvantage of being close kin to marijuana.

"You end up with one group telling you hemp is the wonder crop that will save the world," Ehrensing told the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee Thursday, "and to the other group it's the demon weed."

It wasn't quite that black-and-white at Thursday's hearing, which was held to consider a bill that would allow Oregon farmers to grow hemp. But supporters and opponents of the measure, House Bill 2933, had so little in common it sometimes seemed as though they were talking about two different plants.

In fact, hemp and marijuana are varieties of the same plant, known botanically as Cannabis sativa L. Hemp, grown primarily for the long, strong fibers inside its woody stem, is a tall, spindly plant; it typically contains 1 percent or less of THC, the main psychoactive ingredient of marijuana. Marijuana grown for drug use is short and bushy and contains as much as 15 percent THC.

Hemp has been grown in the United States since colonial times; its heyday was the mid-19th century when it was used to make sailcloth and rigging for ships. After cheaper imported fibers cut into the nautical market, and cotton largely displaced hemp for cloth making, the industry went into decline.

A federal law in 1937 restricted hemp production, though controls were relaxed during World War II to produce rope for the war effort. A 1970 federal law effectively banned all U.S. hemp production, though it is still legal in more than two dozen countries, including Canada, France and Spain.

In the past decade or so, interest in reinstating hemp as a legitimate crop has spread beyond the original core of marijuana-legalization activists to include mainstream farmers and agribusiness interests. Last week, North Dakota became the first state to legalize industrial hemp, though federal restrictions remain in place.

Rep. Floyd Prozanski, the Eugene Democrat who is sponsoring HB 2933, predicted that industrial hemp would become legal and widespread within five years. He told a Senate panel that Oregon could become a center for high-quality hemp seed, much as it is now for grass seed.

But Larry Welty, assistant commander of the Oregon State Police's drug enforcement section, said legalizing hemp would greatly complicate law enforcement efforts against marijuana. The plants are difficult to distinguish in aerial surveys, Welty said, and marijuana growers could use hemp fields to camouflage their pot crops.

Joseph Hickey, executive director of the Kentucky Hemp Growers' Cooperative Association, replied that since hemp and marijuana can cross-pollinate, marijuana farmers who planted the two together likely would reduce the potency of their illicit crop. And Prozanski, a former Lane County prosecutor, noted that under his bill, hemp growers would be licensed by the state Department of Agriculture and would have to open their fields to inspection and testing.

Given that, he said, "I think it would be pretty unwise for any farmer in this state to risk asset forfeiture of his land (under anti-drug laws) by trying to grow marijuana covertly between rows of hemp."

Copyright 1999 The Register-Guard

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