cannabisnews.com: Canada's Reluctant Hemp Revival!





Canada's Reluctant Hemp Revival!
Posted by FoM on December 27, 1998 at 15:39:55 PT

 Rod Macivor, The Ottawa Citizen / Senator Eugene Whelan says he has known of the benefits of hemp since he was agriculture minister in the '70s. His support, and that of Senator Lorna Milne, played a role in the decision to legalize Hemp.
 Wayne Hiebert, The Ottawa Citizen / Hemp products include paper, soap, as well as hemp-reinforced plastics, twine, hair products and clothing.Senator Eugene Whelan knows a thing or two about farmers' fields and what will grow there. After two decades in federal politics, his folksy demeanour and trademark Stetson hats made him Canada's most recognized agriculture minister. Behind the scenes, though, he has been a supporter of a sometimes controversial crop -- hemp, the distant and non-intoxicating cousin of marijuana. It's a plant that growing numbers of people believe could revolutionize farming, save trees and keep poisonous pesticides from seeping into the environment. "I was aware of it when I was minister of agriculture. We just didn't do anything about it," says the Trudeau-era cabinet minister. "I can remember when you talked about hemp or marijuana, my God if you talked about legalizing it you were from Mars, from outer space." Not any more. This year, Canada legalized hemp farming for the first time in 60 years. The experience was considered a qualified success by most, but it was one fraught with delays caused by government red tape. The reason? Bureaucrats set up complex rules intended to keep hemp farmers honest. They were intensely concerned that hemp farming would be corrupted by drug dealers who might turn farmers' fields into marijuana groves and that voters might believe politicians were engaged in a back-door plot to legalize marijuana. The bureaucrats' deepest fears never came true. No hemp farmers were busted on drug charges, and the general public didn't seem at all worried that its politicians were from outer space. "I think they were over-concerned," says Mr. Whelan. Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin show just how worried the government was in the three years of negotiations and backroom lobbying that led to the legalization of hemp farming this past March. The government was still jittery just two weeks before the law came into effect, as a Feb. 28, 1998, internal memo to Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief indicates: "Enforcement agencies are concerned that this may open the door to increased illicit drug market activities if rigorous enforcement mechanisms are not built into the regulatory framework." A January 1997 internal memo points out that while hemp farming may be legal in parts of Europe, Canada's wide open spaces might prove alluring to criminals. "Here in Canada, we have vast areas to cover, some of which could be in relatively isolated areas ... we need to adjust our methods to suit the Canadian experience." The hemp revival began in earnest in Canada in 1994 when Health Canada granted the first licence to cultivate the crop -- strictly for research purposes -- to a southern Ontario company. But it would take four more years of hand-wringing to overcome the "reefer madness" attitude that led to the ban on hemp when it was outlawed with marijuana in 1938. Hemp contains minuscule amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its potency. "You'd have to smoke a tonne of it (hemp) to get a headache," says Mr. Whelan. In recent years, a growing movement of hemp supporters -- very often the same drug culture types who want to legalize marijuana -- has shown the potential economic benefits of the crop. It can be used for a variety of products from clothing to car parts to medicinal oils to the best and strongest rope money can buy. Hemp, which is farmed legally throughout Europe and Asia, is resilient to most bugs; therefore the crop doesn't rely on pesticides, which makes it environmentally friendly. More conservative types such as 73-year-old Whelan, who believes smoking marijuana is morally wrong, have also come forward with their support of hemp farming. As Mr. Whelan points out, the parachute that saved former U.S. president George Bush when he bailed out of his fighter plane in the Second World War was made out of hemp. "It's an all around good crop when we talk about saving our trees, our forests," says Mr. Whelan. "It's a renewable crop, one you can grow every year. At the turn of the century, about 90 per cent of our paper was made from hemp." Government regulators have acknowledged the economic potential of hemp but its connection to marijuana still makes them nervous. "The challenge for regulators is to develop a framework which permits legal production of hemp and minimizes any opportunity to produce marijuana," says a June 1997 Agriculture Canada discussion paper. The documents show bureaucrats were concerned the public wouldn't understand the simple distinction between marijuana and hemp. A January 1998 draft of an Agriculture Canada public relations strategy says the department "should focus on the fact that industrial hemp is an agricultural crop, used for food and fibre purposes, and that it does not contain enough THC to make it attractive as either a medicine or a narcotic." The same document identifies Mr. Whelan and Senator Lorna Milne as hemp supporters. "No vocal hemp opponents have come forward to date, however opposition from those who fear this is the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing marijuana, is expected," warns the communications strategy. As it turned out, there was no such groundswell of public opposition, said Niels Hansen-Trip, the hemp program manager for Health Canada's Bureau of Drug Surveillance. And how many of the 250 farmers licensed to grow hemp across Canada became involved in criminal activity involving marijuana? "None to my knowledge," said Mr. Hansen-Trip. "Most people were serious about growing industrial hemp and want it to be a reliable source of income." As it turned out, the most controversial aspect was caused by the government regulations themselves. They covered every aspect of hemp growing and selling, the importation of seeds and the export of products -- the intention being to prevent someone from slipping a batch of potent marijuana past government regulators. Indeed, hemp is the only agricultural crop to be regulated by Health Canada's Bureau of Drug Surveillance. In May 1996, New Democrat MP Svend Robinson tabled an unsuccessful motion in the House of Commons calling for the transfer of regulatory authority to Agriculture Canada. In her report to the Senate on the hemp season, Mr. Milne noted that Health Canada was "extremely late" granting licences. Separate licenses are required to purchase the seed and to grow the crop. Though many farmers were pleased with their results, the late start in planting reduced yields by 20 to 50 per cent, the senator noted in her Dec. 8 speech to the upper chamber. Part of the new regulations call for close inspection of the crop to make sure the THC levels remain acceptably low. As Ms. Milne told her senate colleagues: "Testing is required three times throughout the growing season. Costs incurred by the farmers was enormous. "Indeed, several growers were unaware of the requirement for these tests until they received their approved licence." Ms. Milne noted that Kenex Ltd. of Chatham, Ont., handled the administrative duties for its 52 farmers because they were "overwhelmed by the paperwork." Kenex president Jean Laprise said both government and industry had a steep learning curve this past year. Still, he called the myriad regulations "cumbersome" and hoped that over time -- as hemp farmers proved they could be trusted -- the regulations might be relaxed. "That fact that it's in the cannabis sativa family somewhat dictated the need to keep some control, on seed in particular, and the location of the plots," he said. Mr. Laprise said it took a lot of lobbying for business to legalize hemp farming. "The initial work began in 1994 and the regulations came into place in 1998," he said. "It took a few years, so it was fairly difficult." Mr. Whelan says the bureaucratic preoccupations with marijuana display a naivete. "You and I both know there's marijuana available to anybody pretty near any time they want it," he says. Drug dealers, he says, are too smart to grow marijuana in a hemp field in this age of satellite photography. "It's pretty difficult to grow it outside any more and not be found out." Long ago, Mr. Whelan says matter of factly, he realized hemp was nothing to worry about. "The village where my wife comes from in Yugoslavia, she remembers this as a little kid, her mother worked in a hemp mill. They had ponds where they soaked the stocks and they had women who had to go in and turn this thing so they could shred it," he recalls. "We spent seven weeks, three years ago, in the Ukraine and they grow hemp all over the place." 
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Comment #2 posted by herbman on December 27, 1998 at 20:31:07 PT:
Canadians are from Mars!
Don't let this hemp growing fool you!You have to have a crop circle of the virgin mary in your fields before you can grow it!We are further away than Europe and the States for Med users and Decriminalization or Legalization!However our tho our government is slow to react on the latter issues ,perhaps our cold air will snap some sense into the politicians soon!Hemp has a 1001 uses-it's about time we embraced the tree of life and it's ancient history has a modern tool for human life improvement!Bless Everyone for their good sense(i)!herbman
The Hemp Canadian
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Comment #1 posted by herbman on December 27, 1998 at 20:30:06 PT:
Canadians are from Mars!
Don't let this hemp growing fool you!You have to have a crop circle of the virgin mary in your fields before you can grow it!We are further away than Europe and the States for Med users and Decriminalization or Legalization!However our tho our government is slow to react on the latter issues ,perhaps our cold air will snap some sense into the politicians soon!Hemp has a 1001 uses-it's about time we embraced the tree of life and it's ancient history has a modern tool for human life improvement!Bless Everyone for their good sense(i)!herbman
The Hemp Canadian
[ Post Comment ]

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