GROWN IN THE USA?

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By the time a domestic supply could become available, Friedman thinks he would have tapped out his Hungarian suppliers who may then be persuaded to share their methods with Americans just starting out. He sees a time frame of from one to two years before initial growing efforts get under way here, and perhaps five years before companies like his are relying on it as a commodity. Though in the next year one may watch the legal front for five or ten states to pass laws to grow hemp or study its prospects. In fact, this is a process already underway. "What we're really waiting for is something out of D.C. to take it out of DEAs hands," he says.

Mari Kane, editor and publisher of the trade magazine HempWorld, founded in 1993, concurs. Over the next year, says Kane, "There will be a lot of activity in the state legislatures, but unfortunately it's not gonna do us much good when the federal government steps in and says, `No, we're not gonna let you grow it: "

The backlash against hemp sometimes takes amusing forms. In Omaha, the executive director of anti-drug group Pride Omaha Inc. complained, "We're seeing more and more promotions of hemp and we're very much opposed to it." An employee at an Omaha bank laid claim to the illegal practice of removing dollar bills from circulation because many were turning up with the graffiti message scrawled by George Washington's mouth: "I grew hemp." (Though in Washington's day hemp cultivation was akin to growing cotton, his planting diaries reflect that he also grew a little of the plant for its drug properties, as was also common in his time.)

Feckless drug czar Lee Brown, in a gaseous outgoing moment, upbraided Adidas for marketing a shoe called, "The Hemp," labeling it a "cynical marketing game" and an attempt "to capitalize on the drug culture."

Adidas president Steve Wynne replied: "I don't believe you will encounter anyone smoking our shoes anytime soon." The company has since renamed the shoe "Gazelle Natural," and it sells with a label declaring its hemp composition.

As it happens, the commercial and agricultural breakthrough will be one and the same for hemp when the time comes. Northern California stationer John Stahl of the Evanescent Press has been applying for the legal grower's permit for more than three years, complying with every one of what he calls the "insane regulations" just because he really wants "to crack this nut open." There may be some encouraging news in his saga (his last government communication appears to give him the go ahead to plant a small amount of hemp), but he seems determined to keep at the authorities as long as it takes for him to get his permit. Of course, the same laws are blocking him from growing hemp for paper as block any other North American paper company from getting into cannabis.

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