You are here:

User Tools
	Email this page
	Translate this page

Friday, March 26, 2004

State lawmakers consider allowing hemp farming

Alasdair Stewart, Nashua Telegraph

NASHUA, New Hampshire — So, you have a hemp wallet, send letters on hemp paper, wash your hair with hemp shampoo, use hemp lotion on your hands and tied the hemp laces on your shoes this morning.

Being a big fan of hemp, you look out on the back 40 and say, “Gee, I’d like to grow my own.”

In the eyes of the government, that would be no different from another kind of “growing your own.”

A bill meandering its way through the state House of Representatives seeks to change that, allowing licensed growers to raise crops low in the ingredient that makes marijuana a controlled drug.

The bill — HB 653 — allows for supervision and testing to ensure that the crop falls below 1 percent tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as THC. You will not be surprised, I suspect, to learn that the bill has been in “interim study” for more than a year.

In a twist bound to amuse the New Hampshire Motor Transport Association, much of the cost of monitoring the crops to make sure they comply with the THC limit would come from the state highway fund.

Even if the bill gets a second wind and is enacted, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which can in theory license hemp growers, would have to approve any farm’s plans for cultivation. As of 1998, no such licenses had been issued.

Setting aside the legislative and legal difficulties facing the movement to legalize hemp growing for non-narcotic purposes, let’s take a look at some of the goods and bads of the plant.

Proponents are quick to point out the myriad uses for hemp. Besides paper, cloth, personal-care goods and rope, hemp — a term that covers the whole non-THC-rich plant — can be used to produce ethanol, oil, construction materials and nonpsychoactive food.

In addition, hemp is touted as crop. It grows just about everywhere and is hardy, although it is susceptible to a few diseases and pests.

Hemp also appears to be a work-intensive crop — Purdue University’s Center for New Crops & Plant Products estimates that a single person could cut about a half-acre per day. When specialized tractors are used, a person could cut just under 10 acres in a day — not quite like running a combine through a cornfield.

One piece of the puzzle that is rarely mentioned in the hemp debate is that by whatever name the plant is called — hemp, marijuana, cannabis — it is a non-native species. Whether for political or ecological reasons, the plant is listed as a noxious weed by the federal government and several states.

And maybe for both reasons, Manitoba, which regulates cultivation of “industrial” hemp, requires that so-called volunteer plants be destroyed. This seems prudent — one of hemp’s advantages is that it grows quickly, choking out other plants.

On the whole, however, provincial agriculture departments paint an optimistic picture for hemp cultivation. Whether that will translate into change here remains to be seen.

Copyright © 2004, Nashua Telegraph. All rights reserved.

Top

Copyright © 1996-2008, Global Hemp, Inc. All rights reserved.
All other trademarks are acknowledged as belonging to their respective owners.

Web site design by Eric Pollitt Design Group