HEMP, HEMP, Hooey!!

DRUGWATCH/FloridaAn Affiliate Of Drug Watch International P.O. Box 54893, Jacksonville, FL 32245904-992-4465 or 904-210-7615 April 2005

HEMP COMMITTEE CHAIR OPPOSES LEGALIZING "INDUSTRIAL HEMP/MARIJUANA"

Drug Watch Florida opposes efforts to legalize Cannabis sativa L. hemp/marijuana as an "industrial crop."

Industrial hemp/marijuana gives new meaning to the term "cover crop." According to the "Mein Kampf of the drug culture" - High Times magazine, "the way to legalize marijuana is to sell marijuana legally" - hence the marketing of a variety of trendy "hemp" products, especially to youth and young adults, seeking to normalize and legitimize marijuana.

"Industrial hemp/marijuana" is being promoted by the drug culture - check pro-drug NORML website http://www.norml.org under "Pending State Legislation."

Drug prevention specialist and Drug Watch International Hemp Committee Chair, Jeanette McDougal believes the public needs to know that drug-hemp/marijuana and fiber-hemp/marijuana are the same plant, Cannabis sativa L. The potency of Cannabis sativa L varies from plant to plant. High-THC Cannabis plants preferred by pot smokers are indistinguishable from low-THC plants that legalization proponents would like us to believe would be used for industrial purposes. The marijuana smoked at Woodstock contained today's "industrial hemp" levels of the drug THC (1.0% THC or less).

Today's low-THC variety of hemp/marijuana is neither innocuous nor harmless as legalization proponents imply. It can intoxicate smokers. High-THC intoxicates more. Both need to remain illegal and inaccessible. (No minimum THC thresholds have been established for impairment.)

Legalization would complicate law enforcement and eradication efforts since high-THC plants can be intermingled within fields, storage facilities and processing facilities with low-THC yield plants. In fact, the EU has trimmed subsidies to curb illegal industrial hemp growing.

Industrial hemp/marijuana is NOT an economically viable crop. Every country that grows it is "looking for a market" (Canada), subsidizing it (EU), or has such low labor costs (China) that subsidizing it is unnecessary. In the U.S., informed farmers repudiate "industrial" hemp/marijuana, raised successfully in the U.S. only when subsidized by the government (during WWII), and back when slaves were "legal" and available to do the labor-intensive work required to raise it.

Jeanette McDougal, MM, CCDP Email: dems8692@aol.com

Jeanette McDougal grew up on a farm, is a voting member of Florida Farm Bureau, was a voting member of Minnesota Farm Bureau and was former officer on the Board of Ramsey/Washington County Farm Bureau, Minnesota, has studied the industrial hemp issue and movement since 1993, is Chair of the Hemp Committee of Drug Watch, International, Chair, DRUG WATCH/Florida, was a drug-abuse prevention teacher, (ret).