Excellent Hemp article in my local right-wing paper

[SHRED]

Hemp industry may blossom

Change in legal status could allow proliferation of U.S. products

By Mark Sauer
STAFF WRITER

October 17, 2004

'There's hemp oil in this? You're kidding! I've been buying this soap for years and never realized that," Tamra Miller said.

She was at the Ocean Beach People's Organic Food Market examining the label of a gallon jug of "Dr. Bronner's 18-in-1 Pure Castile Soap." A key ingredient is hemp oil made from the first cousin of the marijuana plant.

"I buy it for the kids at my daughter's school. Maybe they're just a little bit happier washing their hands with this stuff," Miller said with a smile.

Hemp is the highly versatile member of the cannabis-plant family that doesn't get you high. It remains a four-letter word as far as the federal government's war on drugs is concerned.

But hemp's legal status in the United States has quietly undergone a dramatic change.
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Continued...
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041017/news_1c17hemp.html

[Warpy]

1. Legal hemp would cost the pulp industry

a lot of money. Paper can much more easily be made from hemp and the crop is renewed every years, not 10-15 years for a stand of even the fastest gowing pine. Legal hemp farms would likely cripple the wood pulp industry, although it wouldn't happen overnight.

The time for legal hemp is way overdue. It's an amazingly versatile plant that can replace a lot of environmentally unsound alternatives.

The only reason it was illegal is because it was distantly related to marijuana, and because the gummint wanted to protect wealthy donors in the wood pulp industry.

The only reason marijuana is illegal is because our government is stupid.

[SHRED]

2. Put the loggers to work in hemp

I believe you can use the same pulp mills with a little retooling.
You're just changing the feedstock from wood to hemp.