Growing Pains

E: The Environmental Magazine, Sept, 1999 by Mari Kane

The Movement to Legalize Industrial Hemp Is Advancing, but The Pot Connection Still Lingers

After 60 years as a pariah plant, sprayed into oblivion by federal agents wherever it appeared, the versatile fiber known as industrial hemp appears to be making a dramatic comeback, with legalization movements in 14 states, and, in North Dakota, an outright victory. Will hemp, the fiber that helped win World War II, finally emerge from the dark shadow of its close relative, marijuana?

Growing hemp was by no means always illegal in the United States. In the 18th century, hemp was such a valued commodity, in shipping and other industries, that Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador to France, smuggled illegally obtained Chinese hemp seeds to the colonies. Those same seeds were eventually hybridized to create the famous Kentucky Hemp strain. George Washington even said, in a letter to his farm manager, "make the most you can of the Indian hemp seed. Sow it everywhere."

It's true that hemp and marijuana come from the same plant--cannabis sativa L. It's not true that the plants are the same. The biological difference between them is demonstrated by their respective levels of THC, the plant's psychoactive ingredient. For industrial hemp, the generally accepted THC level is one percent or less; for recreational marijuana, the THC level is at least three percent. The physical differences between the two plants are readily apparent. Hemp grows lean and tall with flowers on the canopy; marijuana branches widely with resinous buds on all sides.

Until the early 1900s, cannabis hemp was treated like any other farm crop and its cultivation required no special regulations or licenses. Hundreds of thousands of acres of hemp grew in Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.

Then, in 1931, the nation's first drug czar, Harry Anslinger, was appointed to head the newly reorganized Federal Bureau of Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs by his future uncle-in-law and Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon. At the time, the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh was the chief financial backer for DuPont, the munitions and plastics maker, a company which viewed recent technological advances in hemp processing as a threat.

Anslinger took his job very seriously and molded himself after J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. He hired ex-G-men, newly unemployed after Prohibition ended in 1929, and created an army of officers to fight the nation's first drug war. In only a few years, public vice number one went from alcohol to cannabis. The drug's role as "Assassin of Youth" was reflected in period films like the camp classic Reefer Madness.

In 1937, Popular Mechanics declared hemp to be the "New Billion Dollar Crop" because of developments in fiber technology. Also in 1937, the ever-fervent Harry Anslinger introduced the Marijuana Prohibitive Tax Act, proposing an excise levy on dealers and a transfer tax on sales. After hearing Anslinger testify under oath that "marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind," and against the protests of the American Medical Association, the National Oilseed Institute and the birdseed industry, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed by congress. Anslinger assured the legislators that farmers "could go on growing hemp much as they always have."

Hemp farmers lined up for licenses and received $1 Special Tax Stamps. Now hemp was regulated by the Treasury Department and, in some states, the farmers were harassed by federal agents. Eventually, and in spite of the brief World War II "Hemp for Victory" campaign, hemp fell out of vogue in the domestic market, and 1957 saw the last American hemp harvest. Stands of wild hemp that still grow across the plains states serve as gentle reminders of America's once-vital hemp culture.

Although hemp cultivation is not technically illegal, farmers need a license to grow it. But if the agency in charge of licensing refuses to issue a permit, farmers could be prosecuted for growing hemp. When the federal government began issuing the tax stamps in 1938, jurisdiction over both hemp and marijuana fell into the hands of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, now the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which lumped both into Schedule One of the federal list of controlled substances. By the agency's rules, hemp has "a high potential for abuse."

An Arduous Climb

Despite its outlaw status, hemp is slowly climbing back into favor as a base for a huge variety of consumer products, from clothing to ice cream. Thousands of hemp businesses have risen (and sometimes fallen) since 1993. Estimates of national and international sales of hemp goods in 1997 range from $50 million to $100 million. After a decade of public re-education, most people know the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana.

Currently, 99.9 percent of industrial hemp used in the United States is imported from Eastern Europe, China and Canada. Goods made from imported raw materials are expensive, and most experts acknowledge that for the American hemp industry to succeed financially, there must be a domestic, bioregional source of hemp seed and fiber. Sixty years after the Marijuana Tax Act, though, the domestic, hemp industry's growth is still stymied by drug war politics. Bill Clinton, the self-acknowledged potsmoking president, has actually increased the federal drug budget to an unprecedented $18 billion per year, primarily to fight marijuana production.