Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:04 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Billings Gazette) The state this month issued its first license for an industrial hemp-growing operation to a woman who said she wants to develop a domestic market for the plant despite federal law barring its cultivation.
Laura Murphy, of Bozeman, was the first to apply for the two-year license since the state Legislature approved its commercial cultivation in 2001.
Federal law prohibits such activity, but the license issued by the Montana Agriculture Department on Oct. 14 could challenge whether the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is willing to override the state.
Montana applied to the DEA in 2002 for recognition of the state’s hemp growing law. The request was denied, but Montana Agriculture Department attorney Cort Jensen said it could be reconsidered now that a license has gone out.
“Obviously hemp is a little different than ordinary marijuana, but they have declined in the past,” he said. In the meantime, he added: “We will administer the state law.”
In her license, Murphy was warned by Jensen that “growing hemp is still illegal.”
“You still need to get permission from the Drug Enforcement Agency in order to grow it without facing the possibility of federal charges or property confiscation,” he wrote.
You know what I’d do if I were Laura Murphy? Plant just one industrial hemp plant. Local and state cops aren’t going to harass her since she now has a legal Montana license to grow it, and it would be fun to see if the DEA really wants to make a spectacle out of uprooting one non-psychoactive hemp plant, prosecuting her for growing it, and seizing her property over it. Or maybe just grow 99 hemp plants so she falls short of the five-year mandatory minimum threshold of 100 plants. In the context of the recent Obama DOJ memo telling federal prosecutors it is a waste of resources to go after medical marijuana users in states that have declared it legal, wouldn’t it also be a waste of resources to go after hemp producers in states that have declared it legal?
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 3:43 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Huffington Post) A group of civilly-disobedient hemp farmers and business leaders were arrested Tuesday morning while digging up the lawn to plant industrial hemp seeds at the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
David Bronner, the president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a more than 60-year-old company that does tens of millions of dollars of business annually, was among those arrested.
Bronner buys the hemp used in his soaps from Canadian farmers. He was arrested outside the DEA museum, which shares space with the headquarters.
“Our kids are going to come to this museum and say, ‘My God. Your generation was crazy. What the hell is wrong with you people?’” he said as Arlington County Police handcuffed him and walked him to a waiting car.
Wayne Hauge and Will Allen, farmers from North Dakota and Vermont respectively, brought shovels and seeds to the protest, where they were joined by representatives of Vote Hemp, which advocates for federal legislation that would allow states to craft their own hemp policies.
Currently [eight nine] states — Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, [Oregon,] Vermont, and West Virginia — allow industrial hemp production or research, but federal law, which requires nearly-impossible-to-obtain-permits to grow hemp, trumps those state laws. A bill introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) would allow states to craft their own policies.
Of all the insanities in the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs, the ban on industrial hemp is the looniest. We have the Drug Enforcement Administration enforcing a ban on something that is not a drug! They’ll tell you that by strict interpretation of the law, hemp does contain THC, so it has to be banned, even though the THC contained in hemp is so minute that you could literally burn a field of the stuff and not catch the slightest of buzzes.
They’ll tell you that if hemp were legal, growers of illicit high-THC pot would hide their crops in-between the rows of hemp. Any farmer can tell you that what you’d get is cross-pollination; the hemp would ruin the high of the pot and the pot would ruin the strength of the hemp.
Then they’ll tell you that if hemp were legal, law enforcement would be burdened trying to determine which fields were hemp and which were pot. This doesn’t seem to be a problem for the police in China, Australia, Canada, or most of Europe, however, as they seem to be able to tell the difference between a tall, reedy hemp plant and a short bushy pot plant without much difficulty. Maybe our American cops are just too stupid to handle basic botany.
The ban on hemp remains for two reasons. One is to protect the entrenched business interests that would stand to lose market share to legal hemp crops. Hemp can produce anything you can make from a tree or a barrel of oil, and do it cheaper, make it better, and cause less environmental damage along the way. Hemp paper resists oxidation far better than wood paper. Hemp pressboards are as strong as steel and save our forests. Hemp seed oil has the highest energy value of any seed oil crop – all current diesel engines can run on hempseed oil with no modifications required. Hemp seed is one of nature’s highest protein foods and a source of important anti-oxidants. Hemp cloth is impervious to mildew, repels water, and holds heat better, and requires no pesticides. Can you begin to imagine all the companies that would lose money if forced to compete fairly with hemp?
And the second reason is psychological. If hemp is legal, cannabis is just a plant. It’s a subtle thing, but under the current framework, the government can tell us cannabis is an evil drug. But if hemp is legal, then sometimes cannabis is an evil drug and sometimes it is just a plant. Once cannabis is sometimes just a plant, it is harder to scare people into thinking it can be evil.
We are approaching the 400th anniversary of the first colonial hemp plantations in North America. Hemp is our American heritage – this country exists because of hemp and our entire history is infused with its cultivation and use. The forces that combined to ban hemp in the 20th Century have stolen our very birthright and declared nature itself to be illegal.
Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 5:14 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Paul Stanford’s Facebook) I just left Jack Herer’s bedside at Portland’s Emmanuel Hospital. While I was there, our mutual friend, Tim Pate, played his guitar and sang to him. Tim has been playing for Jack daily for the past week. On Tuesday, as Tim played, Jack’s eyes opened for the first time and there has been some progress since then. As I spoke to Jack, his eyes shifted and looked into mine. As Tim plays, Jack’s gaze shifts from watching the guitar strings and watching Tim singing gently. Given the circumstances, Jack’s recovery to this point is astounding. Last week, he was in a deep coma with little brain activity. I urge you to continue to pray and send positive energy and thoughts to Jack.
EEG testing has shown some progress this week, but I am told there is permanent damage to his heart and brain. Jack is breathing with a respirator and remains in critical condition in the Intensive Care Unit.
Jack’s wife, Jeanie Herer, has set up a fund at US Bank, the Jack Herer Fund. She has incredible expenses, traveling from California and staying here by Jack’s side, and no money. Please make a donation in person or by mail at any US Back to the Jack Herer Fund.
Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 11:43 am | By: Radical Russ
I’ve arrived at Portland Hempstalk this morning and picked up the latest news on Jack Herer from my friend and Hempstalk volunteer Brian, who tells me Jack is in critical condition and lies in a medically-induced coma. His wife Jeannie and his son are with him.
Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 9:32 am | By: Radical Russ
Jack Herer speaks at Portland Hempstalk
The author of the seminal marijuana legalization tome The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer, collapsed backstage at the fifth annual Portland Hempstalk, shortly after delivering a fiery speech on the Main Stage. NORML’s Madeline Martinez followed Jack in the speaking lineup and noted his apparent weakness, telling him he should find some shade from the high temperatures that were close to records in this usually cool Pacific Northwest climate.
A Hempstalk security volunteer named Matt and a hired park security officer were first on the scene to attend to Jack, performing CPR and trying to keep him comfortable as paramedics arrived at the Kelley Point Park. Hempstalk musicians and speakers gathered backstage, including activists and friends who have known and worked with Jack for many years, stood in shock as the medical personnel fought to keep Jack alive using breathing tubes, IV drugs, and the defibrillator. The decisive action by Hempstalk staff in responding to the emergency and subsequently clearing the paths for the ambulance certainly made a huge impact on Jack’s fight for life. Madeline commented, “Matt is my hero today; he was just phenomenal. He knew exactly what to do and immediately started CPR. He probably saved his life.”
Jack had suffered a stroke a few years back at another hemp rally, coincidentally while posing for photographs with Madeline and others. Ironically, at the Cannabis Common Sense show the night prior, Jack was discussing the stroke and his recovery since. Paul Stanford had noted how much Jack’s speech has been improving even since the prior year at Hempstalk, to which Jack replied “I’m feeling better than I have in ten years.”
Initial reports of the incident occurred as I was preparing NORML SHOW LIVE. I could see the entrance of the ambulance from my vantage point at the Hemposium, but was unaware that it had arrive for one of my heroes. Cannabis Karri ventured out to recruit live guests at 6:20pm and that was when we got first word of the attack, with the only news at that point being “Jack Herer has collapsed, people performed CPR, paramedics said ‘he has a pulse’ as he was taken from the backstage.”
As the evening rolled on we spoke with one of the staff at Jack’s booth, situated next to Oregon NORML’s and just two booths away from the Hemposium. She told us that Jack’s son was with him at Emanuel hospital, he’d suffered a heart attack due to arterial blockage and was on the operating table in critical condition undergoing an angioplasty[UPDATE: Initial reports I received of an angioplasty were unfounded; he had had an angiogram and the volunteer relaying the information to me confused the two terms. I apologize for the misinformation - things were a bit chaotic]. A decidedly somber tone had fallen over the entire Hempstalk proceedings, with onstage speakers telling the crowd about the situation and calling for best wishes and prayers for Jack, his wife and family.
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 10:31 am | By: Radical Russ
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (CBS4) ? The Army has made an unusual and unwanted discovery at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal northeast of Commerce City.
They are in charge of cleaning up the arsenal, a job that includes reseeding some areas. When their seed started to grow, they realized it was marijuana.
It isn’t commercial grade, but it’s still an illegal drug. It’s called ditch weed or feral hemp, the kind that grows in the wild in some places.
The Army blames the supplier for the snafu. It says it bought the mulch for its ground cover from a supplier in Kansas where the low-grade weed is common. Some of it apparently got mixed in with the grass.
Ditchweed like this is of such low THC percentage that smoking a field of it wouldn’t even get you a light buzz. This feral hemp grows all over the Midwest, remnants of the 1940s “Hemp for Victory” program, where our farmers were allowed to grow industrial hemp for the war effort when Philippine and Chinese sources of hemp were taken over by the Japanese.
I’d also note that whenever you hear of a task force, especially in the Midwest, crowing about how much illegal marijuana they’ve eradicated with a street value of one bazillion dollars, remember that 96%-98% of what they’ve ripped out of the ground is this non-psychoactive feral hemp. That’s your taxpayer dollars in action, spent to send men with guns in helicopters to pull weeds in the wilderness.
Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 11:20 am | By: Radical Russ
SALEM — Oregon is about to become the first Western state to permit its farmers to grow industrial hemp.
The owner of a business that makes hemp-based clothing, [Dena] Purich is excited about the possibility that the supply chain is one step closer to running from Oregon farmers to her Eugene-based Earthbound Creations. Right now, she and her two employees design and assemble men’s sports shirts, women’s skirts and other garments from hemp that’s grown in China, woven or knitted there into 100-yard bolts, and shipped across the Pacific Ocean.
State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat who championed Oregon’s hemp bill, did the same thing every session going back to 1997. Just as the issue moved from the fringes to the mainstream in Salem, Prozanski said he thinks recent action in statehouses, along with growing public acceptance of hemp as an industrial resource, will help compel Congress and the Obama administration to follow suit at the federal level.
“All that will have a very positive impact on getting things shifted and changed at the federal level,” Prozanski said. “I expect to see things change there within the next two years.”
A bill introduced this year in Congress with bipartisan sponsorship would make it legal for American farmers to resume growing hemp. An act of Congress would be unnecessary if the Obama administration decided to rule that industrial hemp no longer should be considered a Schedule 1 controlled substance, as it has been since 1970. Advocates of such a move, including Prozanski, say that’s the most sensible approach.
Oregon is not the best place in America to grow hemp. Hemp grows well in places where corn grows well, and the Pacific Northwest, rainy as it is, is fairly dry during the summer growing months. In Canada, Manitoba and Saskatchewan grow the majority of hemp and British Columbia, similar in weather to Oregon, only grows 2% of the nation’s crop.
However, Oregon has a natural base of hemp product manufacturing and hemp product consumers. We have timber mills lying dormant that could easily be converted to making hemp pressboard (strong as steel, light as wood) and companies that are already making hemp clothing, like Earthbound Creations, and hempseed and hemp-oil based foods and skin care products. We’ve got a very eco-conscious population that will buy up that stuff in a second.
So growing hemp in Oregon in places like the Willamette Valley, with access to irrigation, will be economically attractive to keep the supply of raw material close to the manufacturers. Especially in the first few years when only seven states have laws on the books ready to grow hemp from Day One.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
I get to post a whole lot of “Reefer Madness” stories here on the Stash, but it is rare that I get to post some “Hemp Hysteria”. This is from a piece entitled “The Hemp Deception“, written by John English here in Portland, Oregon, “a retired professional locksmith of 27 years and a member of Drug Watch International,” who “has instituted a new approach of bringing his former out-of-control drug community to be family-friendly.”
I think that new approach is called el gringo es muy guano loco in Spanish.
Most of us don’t like liars. Lying by omission, by deception, is no less offensive.
With hemp, deception’s the rule! Honesty’s the exception.
Legislators and farmers don’t know that at least 8 of the 9 founding officers and directors (of the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) – hemp’s major U.S. trade group) are also vigorous pro pot legalization advocates. That they don’t know, … that’s intentional.
Don’t you love it when they say, “The people behind hemp (or medical marijuana) want to legalize pot!” Look, if I think everyone should have access to high-THC cannabis, how can I not support everyone’s access to low-THC hemp (or patients’ access to high-THC cannabis)? Am I supposed to say, “Sorry, I support legal pot; get that hemp crap out of my face!”
Suppose I believe in legalizing prostitution and I form an organization that provides free HIV/AIDS testing for prostitutes. Even though you may disagree with legal prostitution, is it not a good thing to offer free AIDS testing? Is my AIDS testing organization a “deception” to get people to legalize prostitution? Of course not; free AIDS testing is a good thing for society regardless of my supposed personal views that legalized prostitution would be a good thing.
Likewise, support for industrial hemp is a good thing for society, independent from and regardless if you think legalized pot is a good thing.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 am | By: Lynnette
Thank you for contacting me regarding legalization of commercial hemp production. I appreciate the opportunity to learn of your views on this subject.
The authority derived from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate controlled substances and to determine the purposes for which they can lawfully be used. Congress declared that illegal possession of controlled substances impacts interstate commerce when it passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (section 801 of Title 21, United States Code).
Furthermore, Article VI of the Constitution states that the Constitution, Federal laws and all treaties are to be considered the supreme law of the land. State law exists alongside federal law, since both have jurisdiction on this area. But Federal law is controlling when in conflict with state law because of the Supremacy Clause.
For the time being, government policy on this issue is reflected in the DEA’s arguments against commercial hemp production. They contend that commercial cultivation would increase the likelihood of covert production of high-THC marijuana, significantly complicate DEA’s surveillance and enforcement activities, and send the wrong message to the American public concerning the government’s position on drugs. For many drug users, marijuana is the beginning of a destructive cycle of drug addiction. For these reasons and more, I cannot support the legalization of commercial hemp production.
Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
I look forward to discussing this or any other issue affecting our 3rd Congressional District with you in the future. For upcoming Town Hall meetings, or for information on issues or legislation pending before Congress, please visit my website at www.lungren.house.gov
RevRayGreen: MASS TWEET THIS -@ChuckGrassley Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer sadness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
RevRayGreen: @ChuckGrassley http://bit.ly/55Ejsi Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer madness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
SneakerPimp: one last thing Puff puff pass to any one who wants it
SneakerPimp: i wanna here about the imminent MiniSpof sounds like time for some
SneakerPimp: im estatic and excited for NSL today.
SneakerPimp: mountain time wake n bake
SneakerPimp: oh yea also wake n bake
SneakerPimp: its central im high as a kite everybody
SneakerPimp: ill grab that WUD
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
First Montana hemp license issued, may challenge DEA ban
sounds like time for some 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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