PRESS RELEASE - 24th FEBRUARY, 2004

Edition 30.

Cannabis News Items From Around the World

Rusty in court again, and again......

Rusty Harris, primary producer of Barkers Vale, appeared before the Lismore Court last Thursday 12 February and the case arising from the first police sniffer dog operation in Byron Bay, 9 March 2001,was adjourned again . Rusty has challenged the legality of the police dog search and it was the 14th adjournment, though the first before the Lismore court.

Unbeknownst to Rusty, the date had been changed, but the protest was held, and it turned out to be the first day of helicopters at Nimbin.

Rusty Harris' long running challenge to sniffer dog policing in the Rainbow Region of New South Wales, Australia, was adjourned again when he appeared before the Lismore magistrate's court on 18 February 2004; the 15th such adjournment since cannabis possession charges were laid in March 2001.

After spending $4,000 on solicitor Ralph James, Rusty has ditched him and is mounting a common law defence under the advice of Malcolm McClure, founder of UPMART (United People's Movement Against Road Tolls) and nation wide presenter of UPMART Freedom Seminars and Common Law Courses.

Magistrate Mr Chris Bone, in setting the next appearance date as 23 June, has given Rusty plenty of time to prepare.

GOODBYE ECSTASY, HELLO 5-MEO-DMT: NEW DESIGNER DRUGS ARE JUST A CLICK AWAY

From: http://DrugPolicyCentral.com/bot/uk
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 07:14:00 -0800

Newshawk: http://DrugPolicyCentral.com/bot/uk
Pubdate: Mon, 16 Feb 2004
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact: letters@guardian.co.uk
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: David McCandless, The Guardian

GOODBYE ECSTASY, HELLO 5-MEO-DMT: NEW DESIGNER DRUGS ARE JUST A CLICK AWAY

Psychedelics Legal In US But Banned In UK Are Openly Available On The Internet

British recreational drug users are turning to a new generation of designer class A drugs from the United States as demand for ecstasy plummets, the Guardian has established.

The majority of these new drugs are powerful synthetic psychedelics from the same chemical families as LSD, magic mushrooms and mescaline. They are too new to have enticing street names; instead their lengthy chemical names are shortened to abbreviations such as 2C-I, 4-HO-DiPT, and 5-Meo-DMT.
Unlike ecstasy, methamphetamine or other synthetic recreational drugs, the new compounds are not made in illicit factories or backroom kitchen laboratories. Instead, "research chemicals", as they are euphemistically known, are synthesised by commercial labs, often based in the US, which
openly sell their products on the internet.

The rapid growth in the transatlantic online trade in such chemicals has been fuelled by international differences over legality. While Britain has outlawed all of these drugs - under an amendment to the Misuse Of Drugs Act in February 2002 - they remain legal in most other countries, including the majority of EU member states. Even in the US, despite some of the most
draconian anti-drug laws in the world, the bulk of research chemicals are legal to manufacture, sell, possess and consume.

With ecstasy dropping in price and popularity, users and dealers in this country are looking further afield to obtain new highs. A recent Home Office survey found that ecstasy use had dropped 21% in the last year. The street price had also dropped to an all time low of 2-3 PoundsUK a pill.

But while most research chemicals are too psychedelically powerful to make it as club drugs, one, 2C-I, is rapidly gaining popularity in this country as a dance drug, thanks to some similarities in effect to MDMA, the main ingredient of ecstasy. More than 125 pills of the drug were seized by
police last year, including 65 at the Glastonbury festival, and some London dealers are offering it for 10 Pounds a tablet.

British police acknowledge that the internet drugs trade is a growing problem. "It is one of our key priorities," a spokeswoman for the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, responsible for policing internet crime, told the Guardian. "Supply of class As is one of the areas we are examining."

Most research chemicals come as crystalline white powder. They can be swallowed, snorted, smoked or injected. Some users prefer to administer them via enema.

Psychedelic stimulants such as 2C-I and 2-CT-2 induce visual hallucinations, energy surges, and euphoria. The most powerful is 5-Meo-DMT, doses of which are smaller than a grain of salt. When smoked, its effects are nearly instantaneous, propelling the user into an alternate reality, described as like "being shot out of the nozzle of an atomic cannon". The experience lasts 10 minutes.

Competitive

Online drug trading is becoming an increasingly competitive and sophisticated industry. Last month, the Guardian revealed that at least five British websites were selling cannabis online.

The leading research chemical sites compete openly to offer the purest product, the best customer service, the fastest deliveries and the lowest prices. Sophisticated e-commerce technology, electronic payment systems and next day courier services guarantee swift, effortless "one-click"
transactions. Most sites offer between five and 15 different drugs, with prices ranging from $95 to $350 (about #50-#185) a gram excluding delivery. The maximum order is 5g. Customers must be over 21.

Credit cards and international money orders are accepted. Drugs like 2C-I can be shipped, via UPS or Fedex, worldwide. Next day delivery is often guaranteed. Most will ship to the UK and other EU states with one caveat: "All purchasers are responsible for compliance with any applicable city, county, state, federal or national regulations related to the purchase, possession and use of any and/or all product," reads the disclaimer on one site.

"It's very easy to get them if you know where to go and you're prepared to take the risk," said Charlie, 34, a photographer and graphic designer from south London. He calls himself a regular customer of a research chemicals company based in New York.

Every three months he buys a selection using his credit card. It usually takes three days to arrive via UPS Express. Most recently he made a repeat-order for 1g of 2,5-dimethyoxy-4-ethylthiophenethylamine (or 2-CT-2 for short), a class A psychedelic similar in effect to mescaline. It costs $175 excluding delivery.

"It's pure. You know exactly what you're getting," he said.

Research chemicals are advertised online as 99% lab pure, but experts warn that that does not mean they are safe. Compared with similar drugs like LSD and magic mushrooms, which have undergone decades of informal human experimentation with relatively few direct fatalities, research chemicals are unknowns. Few human or animal toxicity studies have been carried out.

Even their proponents are at pains to point out the unpredictability and danger involved in reckless experimentation. "It is not reasonable to assume that these chemicals are in any way 'safe' to use recreationally," states the FAQ at erowid.org, the internet's biggest underground drug resource. "When you take a research chemical, you are stepping out into the unknown, and you could be the unfortunate person to discover a new drug's lethal dose."

Safety is a big issue among avid users of research chemicals. Detailed "trip reports" and harm reduction tips are shared through an extensive network of websites and bulletin boards. First time users are expected to read up on their drug of choice and start with small amounts.

Nevertheless, with active doses running to hundredths or even thousandths of a gram, overdoses triggering unexpected reactions can be a very real threat, even with electronic scales sensitive to these weights.

In October 2000, Jake Duroy, 20, from Oklahoma, snorted 35mg of a research psychedelic called 2-CT-7 he had ordered from the web. He was an experienced user but this was a massive amount of the drug to take nasally, which can greatly amplify the effect. He quickly became agitated and violent and two hours later died of a heart attack.

In April the following year, a 17-year-old died after snorting a similar amount of the same drug. A year later in July 2002, 2-CT-7 was emergency-scheduled by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. In their statement, they cited information from trip reports on the internet. After these
tragedies, 2-CT-7 was removed from the online marketplace and has not reappeared.

Police warning

The EU recently recommended that member states ban 2C-I as a matter of urgency, although they turned up no evidence of large scale manufacture. The police, however, were quick to sound the alarm. "The chemicals to make this are available and it can be made pretty much anywhere," a source said.

Most research chemicals were invented by one man, Californian biochemist Dr Alexander Shulgin, 78. As an expert witness and adviser to the US Drug Enforcement Agency, he held a licence permitting him to study psychoactive drugs. Over decades, he created hundreds of new mind-altering compounds and then tested them on himself and a small coterie of fellow "psychonauts".
The recipes for more than 170 of his materials were published in two biochemical cookbooks in the 1990s and now form the backbone of the research chemicals industry.

Despite the risks, Charlie is prepared to order again, although he admits he gets nervous every time. "I track them via the delivery company's website and can watch when they pass through customs safely," he said. "Then I know I can relax."

Strange and outrageous chemicals

DMT Dimethyltryptamine

Found in minute quantities in certain Amazonian plants and in the human brain. Smoked, the effects are nearly instantaneous and very strange. "The closest you'll get to experiencing death bar actually dying" as one user put it.

Dose 2-60mg

Duration Less than 10 minutes

Legal status Class A

Price 100 UKpounds a gram on the street

5-Meo-DMT Methoxydimethyltryptamine

A more powerful sister compound of DMT, occurring naturally in the venom of
the Bufo alvarius toad but generally smoked in synthesised form. Not
uncommon for those who take large amounts to suffer psychological and
emotional difficulties for weeks afterwards.

Dose 1-20mg (smaller than a grain of salt)

Duration 5-20 minutes

Legal status Class A but available to buy on the internet

Price $175 (about 90 UKpounds) a gram

2C-I (2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenethylamine)

Most likely candidate for the coveted title "the next ecstasy".

Powerful psychedelic stimulant described as a cross between MDMA and LSD
but with much gentler side-effects. Already appearing in pill form on the
UK dance scene.

Dose 10-25mg

Duration 5-8 hours

Legal status Class A but available to buy on the internet

Price $299 a gram web price; 10 UKpound a pill on the street

2-CT-2 (2,5-dimethyoxy-4-ethylthiophenethylamine)

Respected psychedelic, from the same phenethylamine family as MDMA and
mescaline.

Noted for its warmth and "outrageous visuals".

Dose 10-25mg

Duration 5-8 hours

Legal status Class A but available to buy on the internet

Price $299 a gram web price; 10 UKpounds a pill on the street

FOR DUTCH PAIN SUFFERERS, MARIJUANA IS JUST ANOTHER PRESCRIPTION DRUG

Pubdate: Thu, 12 Feb 2004
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Keith B. Richburg, The Washington Post

FOR DUTCH PAIN SUFFERERS, MARIJUANA IS JUST ANOTHER PRESCRIPTION DRUG

GRONINGEN, Netherlands -- With a lever controlled by his left arm -- the only part of his body he still can move -- Peter Boonman maneuvers his motorized wheelchair across his spacious apartment to a table where he keeps a vaporizing pipe and small plastic pharmaceutical containers of pungent marijuana.

Getting high makes Mr. Boonman's life bearable. Since his multiple sclerosis was diagnosed at the end of the 1980s, his body has slowly deteriorated. At 52 years old, he is almost entirely paralyzed and is confined to his wheelchair or bed.

"The MS makes me tired," he said. "The marijuana gives me strength and energy."

Mr. Boonman smokes about three grams of marijuana each day. When he runs low, he picks up the phone and calls a pharmacy. A pharmacist delivers the pot in small plastic jars -- usually 20 bottles, enough to last him a month.

Eighty percent of the cost is covered by national health insurance.

Last March, the Netherlands passed a law allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana to patients suffering from a variety of ailments, including multiple sclerosis, AIDS and cancer. The Dutch government then contracted with two growers to produce the medicinal marijuana under strict guidelines to ensure quality and cleanliness. By September, the world's first large-scale government-contracted supplies of pot reached pharmacy shelves.

The Netherlands long has practiced what it considers a pragmatic approach to drugs, and distinguishes between hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, and so-called soft drugs, such as marijuana and hashish. The policy decriminalizes possession of soft drugs for personal use and allows them to be sold in designated "coffee shops."

Now, the Netherlands has gone even further, treating marijuana as a prescription drug. It is available at pharmacies in two potencies, and some patients prescribed pot can have a portion of it covered by their health insurance, like other medications.

Canada became the first country, in 2001, to legalize marijuana for medical use. But the Canadian law didn't provide a way for people who wanted marijuana to get it. Legalization advocates say the Dutch system, making marijuana available in pharmacies, is more practical.

Paul van Hoorn, 71, and his wife, Jo, 70, are among the 20,000 Dutch patients who use marijuana for medical reasons. They began in 2001, she for chronic rheumatism, he for glaucoma.

In their small Rotterdam home, they smoke marijuana each night at 8:30. Paul van Hoorn said he had bad skin rashes that cleared up when he began smoking marijuana. He said he reads the Bible after smoking, and he said that after he began using marijuana, he could read the fine print in the
Scriptures more clearly. Jo van Hoorn said she tried various medicines, including morphine, but nothing stopped the aching in her legs, until she tried marijuana.

For late starters such as the van Hoorns, Dutch doctors recommend that they not smoke marijuana in the traditional way -- rolling it into a cigarette, or joint, or by using a water pipe. Instead, doctors suggest that patients make marijuana tea or use the vaporizing method.

The medicinal marijuana law is being criticized by some for not going far enough. One well-known marijuana user, Ger de Zwaan, 51, chairman of the Patients for Medical Marijuana Foundation, based in Rotterdam, said the Dutch law is flawed because government controls keep the price of pot at pharmacies much higher than it is at coffee shops, and patients don't have access to the vast varieties available.

NT - Only the drug-free get work.......?

Members of the Network Against Prohibition (NAP) have been outraged by revelations that hundreds of Territorians missed out on work because of past illicit drug use. The claims, by the Murdoch Sunday Territorian come days after an announcement that 65 people had been purged from the Australian Defence Force for the same reason, many from Robertson Barracks south of Darwin.

ConocoPhillips, the company responsible for building the new Gas Plant at Wickham Point in Darwin harbour, told the Sunday Territorian that 40% of NT residents who applied for jobs on the project were rejected because of failed drug and alcohol tests.

NAP spokesperson Gary Meyerhoff said â?oAccording to reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare it seems that illicit drug users make up the majority of the population in the Northern Territory. It is extremely distressing to hear that over half of the local population is being overlooked because of the results of a dodgy urine test, especially when the Australian Drug Czar Brian Watters has accused illicit drug users of lining up in dole queues demanding social security benefits.â?

The NAP are vehemently opposed to drug testing in the workplace and see it as yet another attack on the civil liberties of innocent people. Meyerhoff said "The drug tests are unreliable and are no indication of whether a person is fit or unfit for work. A positive drug test may result because a person smoked a joint a week ago, injected a line of speed the day before, or received a dose of methadone from the local chemist that morning, none of these mean that a person is unfit for work.

In fact, the US Air Force regularly gives methamphetamines to its fighter pilots who were
involved in the bombing of Iraq " to enhance their concentration."

Drug testing in the workplace takes away the individuals right to privacy and means the
criminalisation of the Northern Territory lifestyle.

This is just another example of how our elected representatives are completely out of touch with the average Territorian.

What is really unhealthy? We all continue to use illicit drugs that really aren't as bad as the
government make them out to be? Or ConocoPhillips spew toxic waste into the environment and rape Darwin's unique mangroves?

The Network Against Prohibition will be holding their 16th Community Smoke-In for Human Rights on Saturday the 13th March and they are encouraging the locals who have been rejected by ConocoPhillips to come along and have their say.

For more information, call Gary on 0415 16 2525

To read this media release with a link to the Sunday Territorian Article see http://www.napnt.org/mediareleases.html

"New Scientist" magazine's take on pot.

Coffee makes sperm speed up
(25 March 2003)

DNA profiles link dope to its source
(09 July 2003)

Marijuana use in pregnancy damages kids' learning
(25 March 2003)

Marijuana's link to hard drug use not genetic
(21 January 2003)

More articles

Rising swell of support for marijuana
(21 December 2002)

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened
(21 November 2002)

Cannabis smoking 'more harmful' than tobacco
(11 November 2002)

Cannabis drugs pass testing 'milestone'
(05 November 2002)

Two conflicting reports on the effects of cannabis seem set to push the drugs policies of the US and Canada in opposite directions

(07 September 2002)

The body's own versions of the active ingredient in cannabis may help extinguish unwanted memories

(03 August 2002)

A little bit of what you fancy will not make you dull
(08 April 2002)

There is a legal limit for drink-driving. Should cannabis have one too?
(23 March 2002)

Controversy still rages over whether cannabis damages the brain
(09 March 2002)

Editorial
Cannabis nation: The British government's report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs really should be read by teenagers, parents and teachers across the world. More
(23 March 2002)

 

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened

The link between regular cannabis use and later depression and schizophrenia has been significantly strengthened by three new studies.

The studies provide "little support" for an alternative explanation - that people with mental illnesses self-medicate with marijuana - according to Joseph Rey and Christopher Tennant of the University of Sydney, who have written an editorial on the papers in the British Medical Journal.

One of the key conclusions of the research is that people who start smoking cannabis as adolescents are at the greatest risk of later developing mental health problems. Another team calculates that eliminating cannabis use in the UK population could reduce cases of schizophrenia by 13 per cent.

Until now, say Rey and Tennant, there was "a dearth of reliable evidence" to support the idea that cannabis use could cause schizophrenia or depression. That lack of good evidence "has handicapped the development of rational public health policies," according to one of the research groups, led by George Patton at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

The works also highlights potential risks associated with using cannabis as a medicine to ease the symptoms of muscular sclerosis, for example.

Pharmacological effect

Patton's team followed over 1600 Australian school pupils aged 14 to 15 for seven years. Daily cannabis use was associated with a five-fold increased risk of depression at the age of 20. Weekly use was linked to a two-fold increase. The regular users were no more likely to have suffered from depression or anxiety at the start of the study.

The reason for the link is unclear. Social consequences of frequent cannabis use include educational failure and unemployment, which could increase the risk of depression. "However, because the risk seems confined largely to daily users, the question about a direct pharmacological effect remains," says Patton.

In separate research, a team led by Stanley Zammit at the University of Cardiff, UK, evaluated data on over 50,000 men who had been Swedish military conscripts in 1969 and1970. This group represents 97 per cent of men aged 18 to 20 in the population at that time.

The new analysis revealed a dose-dependant relationship between the frequency of cannabis use and schizophrenia. This held true in men with no psychotic symptoms before they started using cannabis, suggesting they were not self-medicating.

Genetic factors

Finally, researchers led by Terrie Moffitt at King's College London, UK, analysed comprehensive data on over 1000 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972 and 1973.

They found that people who used cannabis by age 15 were four times as likely to have a diagnosis of schizophreniform disorder (a milder version of schizophrenia) at age 26 than non-users.

But when the number of psychotic symptoms at age 11 was controlled for, this increased risk dropped to become non-significant. This suggests that people already at greater risk of later developing mental health problems are also more likely to smoke cannabis.

The total number of high quality studies on cannabis use and mental health disorders remains small, stress Rey and Tennant. And it is still not clear whether cannabis can cause these conditions in people not predisposed by genetic factors, for example, to develop them.

"The overall weight of evidence is that occasional use of cannabis has few harmful effects overall," Zammit's team writes. "Nevertheless, our results indicate a potentially serious risk to the mental health of people who use cannabis. Such risks need to be considered in the current move to liberalise and possibly legalise the use of cannabis in the UK and other countries."

Journal references: British Medical Journal (vol 325, p1195, p1199, p1212, p1183)

Emma Young

From NewScientist.com's news service, 21 November 2002

A selection of recent books and surveys

Background from our 1998 special report on marijuana:

Decriminalisation, Yes. Totally safe, No

The report the WHO tried to hide

What is left after smoking 10 joints a day for 30 years?

Does marijuana press the same chemical buttons as heroin and cocaine?

Are athletes better off smoking marijuana or tobacco?

Which is most addictive: coffee, alcohol, marijuana or shopping?

Aerosols: the future of the spliff?

What happens to Dutch dope smokers at the age of 26?

Drop in with Dr Dave

Is there such a thing as a cannabis addict?

Transcript of New Scientist's forum with Lynn Zimmer, co-author of "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts"

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THE DEMONIZED SEED

Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jan 2004
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Webpage:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-hemp03jan18,1,1658290.story
Section: Sunday Magazine
Copyright: 2004 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Lee Green, Special to The Times
Note: Lee Green last wrote for the magazine about secular ethicist Michael
Josephson
Cited: Jack Herer http://www.jackherer.com/
Hemp Industries Association (HIA) http://www.thehia.org/
Vote Hemp http://www.votehemp.com/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hemp.htm (Hemp)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?330 (Hemp - Outside U.S.)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jack+Herer

THE DEMONIZED SEED

As a Recreational Drug, Industrial Hemp Packs the Same Wallop as Zucchini. So Why Does the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Continue to Deny America This Potent Resource? Call It Reefer Madness.

On an otherwise unremarkable day nearly 30 years ago, in a San Fernando Valley head shop, an ordinary man on LSD had an epiphany. The one thing that could save the world, it came to him, was hemp.

Thunderbolts come cheap on LSD, but this one looked good to Jack Herer even after his head cleared. The world needed relief from its addiction to oil and petrochemicals. From deforestation and malnutrition. From dirty fuels, sooty air, exhausted soils and pesticides. The extraordinary hemp plant could solve all those problems. Herer was sure of it. Thus began his journey as a heralding prophet.

For 12 years, Herer expanded his knowledge of hemp, burrowing deep into U.S. government archives and writing about his discoveries in alternative newspapers and magazines. He self-published "The Emperor Wears No Clothes," an impassioned rant for the utilitarian virtues of
cannabis sativa, the ancient species that gives us both hemp and marijuana, which are genetically distinct. Experts agree that in contrast to marijuana, cannabis hemp--or industrial hemp as it is often called--has no drug characteristics. (See sidebar on Page 14.)

Herer's book, quirky but substantive enough to be taken seriously, inspired thousands and became an underground classic. The author has issued 16 printings over the years, revising and updating his material 11 times. Today, Herer is widely credited with launching the modern hemp movement, a persistent campaign by an eclectic coalition of environmentalists, legislators, rights activists, farmers, scientists, entrepreneurs and others to end the maligned plant's banishment and tap its potential as a natural resource.

Despite the book's over-the-top exuberance and occasional leaps of syllogistic fancy--or more likely because of them--it has sold 665,000 copies in seven languages. Or is it 635,000 copies in eight languages? The prophet isn't sure as he pads across the abused gray carpet of his two-bedroom Van Nuys apartment, a flower-child domicile to which the benefits of even the most rudimentary housekeeping remain foreign. Beard unkempt, hair askew, Herer matches the decor. "How can they make the one thing that can save the world illegal?" he asks, no less astonished by this paradox now than he was three decades ago.

Herer's question is essentially the same one hemp advocates in the U.S. have been asking with mounting consternation for the past decade. They are asking it now with new urgency in response to the Drug Enforcement Agency's latest foray against hemp, an attempt since 2001 to ban all food products containing even a trace of hemp, even though the foods are not psychoactive. The California-based Hemp Industries Assn. and seven companies that make or sell hemp products won a reprieve for the industry in June, when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the DEA's efforts "procedurally invalid." But the matter remains in litigation, and the hemp issue continues to confound policymakers.

California's Legislature passed a bill on behalf of hemp not long ago that, in its final, watered-down form, could hardly have been less ambitious. Assembly Bill 388, approved in 2002 by wide margins in both chambers, merely requested that the University of California assess the economic opportunities associated with several alternative fiber crops. But because one of the crops was cannabis hemp, then-Gov. Gray Davis vetoed the measure, leaving California uncharacteristically
behind the curve on a progressive issue that many other states and nations have embraced in recent years.

If all or even most of the oft-cited claims for hemp are true, the substance may know no earthly equal among nontoxic renewable resources. If only half the claims are true, hemp's potential as a
commercial wellspring and a salve to creeping eco-damage is still immense. At worst it is more useful and diverse than most agricultural crops. Yet from the 1930s through the 1980s, many countries, influenced by U.S. policies and persuasion, banished cannabis from their farmlands. Not just marijuana, but all cannabis--the baby, the bath water, all of it.

Confronted with declining demand for their tobacco, farmers in Kentucky, where hemp was the state's largest cash crop until 1915, argue that commercial hemp could help save their farms. California doesn't face that particular dilemma but, in theory, hemp agriculture eventually could bestow innumerable benefits on the state, from tax their farmers to grow hemp, one wonders what they know that the U.S. doesn't. "I'm not going to comment on what other countries do," Sapienza says.

The DEA argues that the revival of hemp farming in the U.S. will somehow increase the availability, use and public acceptance of marijuana. Hemp activists dismiss this argument out of hand, as does one of their most formidable allies, former CIA Director James R. Woolsey. Hailing from the political right, Woolsey vehemently opposes any loosening of America's marijuana laws. But in his experience, he says, most people, once they become informed about hemp, see no
justification for America's prohibition against the crop. "They understand that there's not been any increase in use of marijuana in, say, Europe or Canada as a result of industrial hemp cultivation. It's one of those issues in which there are no real substantive arguments on the other side."

Sapienza points out, as DEA officials often do, that the agency merely enforces the law. In truth, though, the DEA also interprets the law, creates exemptions to it and makes judgments that determine how statutory abstractions translate to on-the-ground realities. A case in point is the agency's declaration in late 2001 that all edible hemp products--cereals, health bars, sodas, salad oils and the like, products sold in the U.S. for years--are illegal. Hundreds of retailers were given a few months to get such items off their shelves. If a federal court hadn't intervened, a multimillion-dollar industry would have been wiped out by a DEA decision to reinterpret existing law. For
now, edible hemp products remain legal and commercially available in the U.S., pending a 9th Circuit court ruling expected sometime this year.

Despite hemp's stigma, state legislatures in recent years have been surprisingly bold in their willingness to address the issue. Though Davis vetoed California's 2002 bill requesting research, in 1999 both the state Assembly and the California Democratic Party approved unambiguous resolutions supporting hemp commercialization. Twelve other states have passed similar resolutions or bills. Since 1997, North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, West Virginia and Maryland have legalized cultivation, and in 2000, the National Conference of State Legislatures passed a resolution urging the federal government to clear the barriers to domestic hemp production. But entrenched federal opposition renders all these political machinations meaningless beyond symbolic value.

The DEA, which is within the Justice Department, justifies its unbending posture on hemp with assertions that legal hemp agriculture would provide camouflage for illegal pot growers. From the air or at a distance, the agency says, industrial hemp and marijuana are virtually indistinguishable.

"The DEA is wrong," says Indiana University professor emeritus Paul Mahlberg, a plant cell biologist who has studied cannabis for more than 25 years and is conducting research on 150 different strains, both hemp and marijuana. "Hemp plants are tall, 8 to 20 feet. Marijuana plants in the field are shorter." And cultivated hemp grows a slender, nearly leafless lower stem, whereas marijuana strains are bred to be "Christmas tree-like in appearance," with abundant leaves, glands and flowers in which are stored the intoxicating THC.

Marijuana's bushiness requires far more space per plant, says John Roulac, a compost expert and owner of the Sebastopol, Calif., health-food company Nutiva, which imports sterilized hemp seed from Canada for nutrition bars. From the ground or the air, a hemp crop looks significantly denser than a marijuana crop. "In a square yard, you might grow one or two marijuana plants, whereas with hemp you might have 100 plants," Roulac says.

The argument about physical appearance should be a nonissue, hemp advocates say, given that the last place a marijuana grower would want to locate his drug crop is in or near a hemp field. The consensus among cannabis experts, supported by the logic of plant genetics and field studies, is that cross-pollination would sabotage the pot grower's efforts, causing his next generation of marijuana to be only half as potent. This genetic convenience delights hard-line anti-marijuana types such as Woolsey, the former CIA chief. He was skeptical about pro-hemp arguments when he first heard them. "But then I got into the science of it a bit, and it was quite clear to me that
not only is [hemp cultivation] a good idea, it's a major headache for marijuana [growers]," he says with an impish laugh. If it were up to Woolsey, tall, lush fields of industrial hemp would be greening
America, filling the sky with airborne pollen and frustrating marijuana growers everywhere.

The DEA flatly rejects the idea that a hemp field would degrade any marijuana in the vicinity. A spokeswoman for the agency recently maintained that "it cannot be said with any level of certainty that a cannabis plant of relatively low THC content will necessarily reduce the THC content of other plants grown in close proximity."

Hemp may be absurdly intertwined with marijuana, but the DEA could ease restrictions on hemp simply by removing marijuana from its list of most dangerous drugs. That may sound radical to a public conditioned to believe marijuana is as dangerous as heroin, but Mitch Earleywine, a drug addiction expert and associate professor of clinical psychology at USC, doesn't think so. In reviewing about 500 marijuana studies for his recent book "Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence," Earleywine found little or no scientific evidence for any of the most prominent allegations against the drug, least of all that it causes violent or aggressive behavior, decreases motivation or acts as a gateway to harder drugs. It is addictive, he says, but "it's nowhere near the caliber of, say, heroin, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, any of those drugs." Should it be a Schedule I controlled substance? "In all honesty, the idea that it has to be scheduled at all might be up for question," he says. "Americans are just too freaked out about [marijuana]."

One of the most persistent charges against the hemp lobby is that it's really just a marijuana movement in disguise.

"Let's not play dumb here," says America's reigning drug czar, John P. Walters of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "It is no coincidence that proponents of marijuana have invested a great deal of time and money in an effort to expand hemp cultivation. They
do this not, one presumes, from any special interest in industrial fiber resources, but from an earnest belief that more widespread domestic hemp cultivation will make the cultivation and distribution of marijuana easier, and that a legal hemp industry would frustrate law enforcement efforts against marijuana trafficking."

Unquestionably, the hemp and marijuana crowds overlap. Most pro-marijuana people think American farmers should be able to grow hemp, and many in the hemp movement condemn America's war on drugs and its marijuana laws. But the government's claim that virtually everyone
pressing for hemp cultivation has a hidden agenda amounts to a sort of psychotropic McCarthyism. Eric Steenstra represents a Hungarian hemp textile producer and runs an Internet-based advocacy organization called Vote Hemp. "Industrial hemp is a peripheral issue to the drug
war, but it has gotten caught up in it," he says. "It's frustrating. You can't discount this movement as being just a bunch of stoned hippies following the Grateful Dead."

Quips former Kentucky Gov. Louie B. Nunn: "Should we listen when Canada's Royal Mounted Police report no problems regulating hemp, or are they also working to legalize marijuana?"

Yes, there is Woody Harrelson, but the class photo also includes Nunn, Ralph Nader, Hugh Downs, Ted Turner and Woolsey, who sits on the board of directors of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, an advocacy organization founded in 1995.

"They've tried to tie us to the marijuana movement all along, and they can't get it done," says Erwin "Bud" Sholts, chair of the hemp council. Sholts is a 69-year-old farmer whose career as an alternative crop researcher for the state of Wisconsin convinced him America should consider hemp a valuable resource, not an outlaw crop. "If the rest of the world wants to make marijuana legal, that's fine, but we're interested in the agriculture crop."

When Jack Herer began his quest to emancipate hemp, he just assumed that everyone would find the essential facts about the plant's qualities so compelling that the battle would be won in six months--two years, tops. That was 29 years ago.

One of the many people intrigued by Herer's book was Dave West, a Midwest plant breeder with a doctorate in breeding and genetics. His curiosity about hemp had already been piqued by something he witnessed in the mid-1980s as he toiled one sweltering day in a Wisconsin
cornfield. A helicopter suddenly appeared low in the sky, then hovered over an adjacent field while several men rappelled to the ground. It was a drug-enforcement operation going after wild marijuana. "Which, as a plant breeder and as somebody who grew up in Wisconsin, I knew
was preposterous," West recalls. "I knew this was feral hemp and nobody wanted it, and that's why it was growing as a weed out there and nobody was picking it."

Since 1979, at a cost of millions of dollars annually ($13.5 million in 2002), the DEA has orchestrated an ambitious campaign of "marijuana eradication." The scene West observed in the cornfield was, and still is, a common one: a marijuana eradication team eradicating not
marijuana but harmless feral hemp, often called "ditchweed." Escaped remnants from commercial hemp harvests of long ago still grow along railroad tracks and fence lines and in fields and culverts throughout America's heartland. Justice Department statistics show that year after year, as much as 98% of the "wild marijuana" the DEA pulls up is actually ditchweed.

"Here was an agency of the government that was selling this line"--calling ditchweed "marijuana"--"that was obviously a perversion of reality," West says. "This is a genetic resource issue. Instead of collecting, preserving and working with it, we're sending the DEA to rappel down from helicopters to pull it out and destroy it wherever they can find it."

From July 1999 until recently, West presided over a state-sanctioned, corporate-funded quarter-acre test plot of cannabis on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. He possessed the only DEA license to research cannabis for industrial use. To meet DEA requirements, he fortified his site with better security than you'd find at a typical Russian nuclear stockpile. Ten-foot-high fencing topped with barbed wire, an alarm siren, infrared beam perimeter. You'd think he was manufacturing
enriched plutonium.

For nearly four years West worked to develop a strain of cannabis ideal for cultivation as industrial hemp in the United States. Funding proved difficult given that investors and grants don't tend to find their way to research for a crop that has been illegal in this country for 33 years. But when he shut down the project last fall, West says, his decision wasn't prompted so much by money woes as by the federal government's "strong and entrenched opposition to hemp." In a written statement he handed to DEA agents Sept. 30, the day he walked off the property for good, he left no doubt about his feelings. "I quit in protest," his statement said.

A few months earlier, he had begun girding himself for the unpleasant task of eliminating the very thing his labors had created. "When I pull the plug," he lamented with wry sarcasm, "the DEA will require that the seed be destroyed. It is, after all a narcotic with no known redeeming use here on this flat earth."

The DEA agents did indeed require West to destroy the seed. The government shows no signs that it will allow industrial hemp to be grown in the United States anytime soon.



A CANNABIS PRIMER

Because they're often used interchangeably, the terms cannabis, hemp and marijuana can be confusing. While cannabis encompasses all varieties of the species, hemp, often called industrial hemp, has come to mean a few dozen nonintoxicating varieties of cannabis bred and cultivated for commercial ends: clothing, paper, food, biofuels, biodegradable plastic, building materials, automobile parts, insulators, paints, lubricants--the list of possibilities goes on.

Marijuana, on the other hand, refers strictly to the cannabis drug plant, of which there exist endless varieties differentiated by the amount of intoxicating substances they contain, notably tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Today virtually all strains of cannabis are the product of human alteration, manipulated by scientists, breeders and drug dealers to increase or decrease THC content and other characteristics to suit their purposes.

Mitch Earleywine, a drug addiction expert at USC, says marijuana typically contains a THC concentration of 2% to 5%, and some strains have measured as much as 22% or higher. By contrast, industrial hemp has been reduced by breeders to 0.3%, a trifle that authorities agree
produces no psychoactive effect.



THE MYTH OF HEMP LICENSING

If you want to apply for a license to grow commercial hemp, you must solicit the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA consistently claims that no prohibition on hemp farming exists in this country, as if to suggest that all one need do is file the proper paperwork and make a
reasonable case.

"We don't have any preconceived notions that we are or are not going to approve or deny any application," says Frank Sapienza, the DEA's chief of drug and chemical evaluation, implying that every case is a judgment call that could go either way.

Nonetheless, the agency has rejected every application it has ever received. How many? There's no telling--literally. The agency will say only that "the DEA does not have records of the number of applications received for such activities"--an extraordinary claim from an organization that documents every marijuana plant that it and cooperating law enforcement agencies uproot from U.S. soil. (In 2001, the total was 3,304,760 plants, though nearly all of them were feral hemp, or "ditchweed," not marijuana.)

Any denial that there is a U.S. hemp prohibition contradicts a salient fact: The DEA has never approved an application for commercial hemp cultivation.

BRITISH COLUMBIA BEEF FARMERS OFFERED POT KITS

Pubdate: Tue, 17 Feb 2004
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Webpage:
http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/story.asp?id=9E423ED1-ACCD-4D52-AFDD-02D5C4BBD71A
Copyright: 2004 Calgary Herald
Contact: letters@theherald.canwest.com
Website: http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Sorcha McGinnis
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1667/a03.html?16391

BEEF FARMERS OFFERED POT KITS

B.C. Vegetarian Promises Profit

He's an unlikely ally for Alberta beef producers whose businesses have gone to pot, but Marc Emery wants ranchers to know they have plenty of "buds" in B.C.

Emery, a.k.a. the Prince of Pot, president of the B.C. Marijuana Party -- and a firm vegetarian -- is offering free grow-op starter kits to anyone who has cattle on their property and wants to make a little extra green as the mad cow crisis continues.

"If you've got a ranch or farm and you're not making any money, we'll give you the equipment to get started," said Emery, from his Vancouver home. "This will be much more profitable than what they've done previously."

The total retail value of the kit, which includes a 1,000-watt light bulb, soil, nutrients, seeds and a grow manual, is $600 to $800, but Emery says a single pound of marijuana can earn its grower $2,000, with a harvest once every two months.

The twice mayoral candidate in Canada's cannabis capital will even make house calls to install the equipment, and promises to help on the marketing end.

"If you've got good pot, you can sell it fast," said Emery.

Alberta ranchers laughed when they heard about the strange offer.

"It sounds like a joke, but we need a few things to laugh about right now," said Brian Edge, a veterinarian who also operates a ranch near Cochrane.

Edge says he isn't looking to get into a new racket. "Most farmers are still honest and hard working and don't think that way."

Brad Calvert, a third-generation rancher from Brooks, couldn't imagine why anybody would risk their homes and reputations for a shed full of the illicit weed.

"I don't think a rancher would have the marketing skills or the connections to make a go in that business," said Calvert. "We don't need that kind of help. We're a pretty reputable bunch."

The ranchers' thoughts were echoed by those of the Alberta Beef Producers.

"The politics in the beef industry are difficult enough without getting into the marijuana industry," said producer spokesman Ron Glaser.

He said as they wait for the U.S. to open its border to Canadian livestock that has been banned since last spring, ranchers have found innovative -- and legitimate -- ways to keep their operations afloat. Glaser's heard of families who have branded food or other product lines, opened restaurants and B&Bs, or pursued opportunities in the province's movie industry.

With the exception of a Manitoba farmer who has shown some interest, Emery said nobody has asked for a rush delivery on the kit.

As the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, producer of Pot-TV, and one of the world's biggest dealers in marijuana seeds, Emery also admits the offer is helping him achieve his political objectives.

Staff Sgt. Birnie Smith, commander of the Calgary RCMP drug section, doesn't expect he'll be forced to bust any ranchers, but says if he was required to, those breaking the law would be treated the same as their urban counterparts.

"We would treat it like any other offence," he said.

Emery may have few takers, but it appears the trade won't be going up in smoke anytime soon.

Forbes, a U.S. business magazine, recently noted Canada's marijuana industry "has emerged as Canada's most valuable agricultural product -- bigger than wheat, cattle or timber."

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