cannabisnews.com: Canadian Hemp Firm Victim of U.S. Drug War!





Canadian Hemp Firm Victim of U.S. Drug War!
Posted by FoM on January 06, 1999 at 05:40:47 PT

TORONTO A Canadian business group is mystified they've been charged in what Nicaraguan police are calling the biggest Marijuana bust in the country's history. The seven are partners in a company that has been growing Hemp with the blessing of the Nicaraguan Department of Agriculture. 
Grant Sanders of Hemp Agro has told CBC News that he couldn't believe it when masked, machine-gun-toting police raided the company on its 40-hectare farm near Managua just before Christmas and burned the entire hemp crop to the ground. Sanders says Hemp Agro's farm had all the necessary permits and that state authorities were excited about the venture to make hemp a valuable export. Hemp -- which has virtually none of the active ingredient in marijuana -- is used to make everything from nutritional supplements to paper. Judge Orietta Benavidez, however, has ruled that hemp and marijuana are the same substance, and that Hemp Agro is in the drug business. A mystified Sanders maintains he and his partners are as far away from being drug dealers as you can get. His American lawyer says it's no coincidence the charges came after Nicaraguan officials were visited by a member of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The Canadians have been caught up in the U.S. "war on drugs," Don Wirtshafter said. "It was my country that is responsible for this." Wirtshafter expects a preliminary hearing on the drug charges to start in a few weeks. Horticulturist Dr. Paul Wylie is the only member of the company in custody because the rest were outside Nicaragua when the court decided charges should be laid. 
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