It was Willie Nelson who first suggested to me that hemp is "not just for breakfast anymore." And Willie is a fellow who knows quite a bit about the plant species called cannabis, marijuana, pot, reefer or whatever you choose to call it. But Willie's point was not to tout the smokable cannabis, rather to push a strain of the plant that farmers worldwide have been raising for 6,000 years to produce a cornucopia of products including beautiful fabrics, fine paper, inexpensive fuel, safe pain relievers and plastic substitutes.
Did you know that our Declaration of Independence was drafted on paper made of 100%, pure dee hemp, that "Old Ironsides" was powered by hemp cloth sails, and that both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson cultivated the stuff? Jefferson even wrote that "hemp is of first necessity . . . to the wealth and protection of the country." And he wasn't just blowing smoke.
Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I, Jim Hightower, hereby confess that— unlike Bill Clinton—I inhaled. And I enjoyed. But this isn't about "Puff The Magic Dragon," it's about an easy to grow commercial crop that can produce a natural high for our economy. As for it's hallucinogenic properties, industrial hemp is to marijuana what near beer is to beer—it has practically zero tetrahydrocannibinol (THC), which is the elemental oomph in marijuana that makes you get high. You could smoke a pure hemp rope all day long and you wouldn't get high, you'd get sick. As an agricultural economist put it: "You'd croak from smoke before you'd get high on hemp."
Yet Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, his predecessors, various boneheads in congress, and assorted corporate interests have conspired since 1937 to make it illegal for the farming heirs of Washington and Jefferson to raise this most useful and profitable crop.
In a mind numbing example of ignorance and arrogance in action, hemp is presently classified as a "Schedule One Substance" by the obtuse Drug Enforcement Administration, meaning it's a no no, right up there with heroin, cocaine and other life wreckers. Attempt to grow it . . . and Gen. McCaffrey's drug troopers will arrive in the dead of night, storm onto your property, bulldoze your crop, and haul you off to the federal pokey.
GOOD POLITICS, TOO
Suppose there was a political issue that could pull together liberals and libertarians, that could bring the American Farm Bureau Federation and International Paper Company into political alliance with Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson, that could unite environmentalists with small business, that could catch the general public's imagination (especially young people) as a tangible plus for the people and the American way, and that could draw from Democrats, Republicans, Greens, New Party members, Jesse Venturians, Libertarians, Reform Partyites, Noneoftheaboves and Whatnots? Wouldn't that be worth pursuing? The legalization of hemp for America is one such common sense, grassroots issue.
Okay, it's not "The Galvanizing Issue" that can drive a whole movement, pulling masses into the streets, which I know is what a lot of progressives yearn for. ... [ read more ]
What the hell's happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money? Even my state's teetering on the brink of broke! Who did this to us? Fair questions, but we're not getting honest answers. 
