Another injustice with the failed 'war on drugs'.

[icymist]

Pine Ridge farmer struggles to grow hemp

By Chet Brokaw -- Associated Press

MANDERSON, S.D. (AP) - Alex White Plume hoped his extended family could make a good living growing hemp when he first planted seeds on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota, but years of fighting with federal drug officials have left him in financial trouble.

The White Plume family planted hemp for three years from 2000 through 2002, but they never harvested a crop. Federal agents conducted raids and cut down the plants each year because U.S. law considers hemp, a cousin of marijuana, to be a drug even though it contains only a trace of the drug in marijuana.

''We had all these plans of grandeur and independence, to lead the way with industrial hemp,'' White Plume said. ''None of it worked out.''

White Plume plans to sell much of his ranching operation this fall. He said he probably can keep his house and at least some of his buffalo that graze among the pine-dotted ridges that give the reservation its name. His horses, a truck with license plates reading ''HEMP'' and other equipment likely will be sold to pay off some of his debts.

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Can anybody explain to me why growing industrial hemp is such a threat to the government?

[Greyhound]

1. The energy, paper, and chemical industries don't want any competition.

They fund the government to do their bidding and the government is only too happy to do it.

BTW, it was the same industries, run by largely the same families, that made marijuana illegal in the first place.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. hey you...

check your phone. :)

[High Plains]

2. A reflexive reaction from the culture warriors.

Just as Albert Hoffman once famously complained that the hippies ruined LSD, I would suggest that it is precisely the embrace of hemp by counterculture activists (thanks to Jack Herer's "The Emperor Wears No Clothes")that make it very difficult for people like the DEA and the drug czar to budge on the issue.

For them, to legalize hemp farming would "send the wrong message" about marijuana, just as allowing sick people to use marijuana "sends the wrong message."

It is absolutely stupid and illogical, but when did the drug war have anything to do with logic?