Jivana’s Journal

Poring Over Facts About Milk: Cow's, Goat's, Soy, Almond, Rice And Hemp
The Los Angeles Times has a look at the nutritional pros and cons of standards and newcomers in the dairy case and natural foods aisle.

Evaluating The Public Interest: Regulation Of Industrial Hemp Under The Controlled Substances Act
Christine Kolosov has a very in depth look at why the DEA cannot legitimately deny or delay licenses to applicants who have been licensed under state regulatory systems like North Dakota's in the UCLA Law Review.

Unconventional Crop - Hemp - Could Sprout New Industry
The Alberta Research Council, a not-profit which is owned by the province of Alberta, is working to help hemp find its way into everything from homes to cars to clothes.

Bill Revives Kentucky Hemp Industry
Kentucky Public Radio covers the pre-filing of a hemp farming bill in the state Senate. A good story with audio and a transcript of the radio report.

By David Montgomery
The Washington Post
October 14, 2009

You want to dig a garden, you need a shovel. You want to dig a guerrilla garden of illegal hemp on the front lawn of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) headquarters and get arrested for the cameras, you need a symbol.

Shortly before they all were happily handcuffed Tuesday, the farmers took one look at what the activists had brought to dig with, and just shook their heads.

The symbolic shovels were shiny, chrome-plated affairs, the kind for turning the earth in a Washington photo op, stamped with slogans: "Reefer Madness Will Be Buried." When the shovel blades were experimentally pressed into the mulch outside the group's hotel, they bent like toys.

Supporters had high hopes - sorry - when the 2009 Oregon Legislature legalized the growing of industrial hemp, but it appears the crop is growing nowhere fast.

Even though Oregon made it legal to grow and possess industrial hemp and to buy and sell hemp commodities and products, the federal government hasn't yet signed on. The feds still equate hemp with pot, and no one can grow it until they say so.

"We're still sitting and waiting," said spokesman Bruce Pokarney of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. The agency would license growers and test field samples if hemp growing is allowed. Some people have accused the department of stalling the process, but Pokarney said that's not the case.

I am a fourth generation farmer, grandfather of three, and have never been arrested for anything. I traveled to Washington, D.C. to join hemp business leaders in a symbolic planting of hemp seeds on the DEA headquarters' front lawn. This action was taken to raise awareness of the distinction between industrial hemp and marijuana. Today non-dairy milks, protein powders, cereals, soaps and lotions are made from the nutritious omega-3-rich hemp seed, while everything from clothing to building materials to automobile paneling is made from the fiber and woody core.

Along with another North Dakota farmer and state Rep. David Monson, I am involved in a lawsuit against the DEA, now in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, to prevent DEA interference with licensed North Dakota farmers cultivating and processing industrial hemp under North Dakota's state industrial hemp program. However, it has been almost a year since the case was given to the judges to decide if states can act without federal government intervention.