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Dear Reader,
If you were to sign up for email news alerts
from Google News or Yahoo News with "hemp" as a
keyword, you would end up with a lot of news
in your In Box, such as the latest on
Glamorgan Cricket's David
Hemp, a story about hemp
bales in Arrow Rock,
MO and another about climbing Mt. Everest with hemp
ropes and other vintage equipment.
Automating the hemp news collection process
can be done, but it does not offer the
personal touch and editorial focus that Vote Hemp's
Weekly News Update does.
The nature of hemp news is changing as hemp
goes mainstream. More and more
manufacturers are adding hemp to their
product lines. To many readers, it's not a major
point of interest, and there are only mentions in news
stories, much like finding hemp foods in your
local mainstream supermarket. A good example
is Burt's
Bees Chemical-Free Sunscreen with Hemp Seed
Oil. If you do a search for the word "hemp"
on the Burt's Bees
Web site, you won't find any results. But,
if you pop open the list of ingredients on
the product
listing page, there it is, the second ingredient.
Another example of a mention of hemp is in
the San Francisco Chronicle story,
Slow
Wear. News stories like this, with just a
mention of hemp here or there, are why we added
the "Hemp Shorts" section to the newsletter. We
will continue to sift through the growing volumes of
hemp news, passing along to you only that which we
feel is most relevant and germane — and
always with a personal touch.
If you value the Weekly News Update, as well
as our general
lobbying and legal efforts, please make a
contribution
to Vote Hemp today to help us continue fixing the
situation here in the U.S.
We need and truly appreciate your support!
Best Regards,
Tom Murphy
Weekly News Update Editor
| Hemp Making Comeback in Finland |
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By Juhani Saarinen
Helsingin
Sanomat
May 17, 2007
"It looks sparse now, but in the autumn there
was such a jungle here that you couldn't get
through," says farmer Ari Niemi.
Stalks of hemp about two meters high fill
Niemi's field. The stems, which are nearly
one centimeter thick, break easily. The dried
plants are ready for harvesting.
A century ago the sight would have been a
very ordinary one, as fast-growing hemp
was a very common agricultural plant in
Finland. Nowadays the plant is familiar
mainly from pictures of police operations,
because the plant is the raw material for the
drug Cannabis.
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| Cannabis that Can Be Worn, Not Smoked at Chelsea Flower Show |
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By Lewis Smith
Times Online
May
22, 2007
Cannabis plants have been put on display at
the Chelsea Flower Show to educate visitors
about the uses plants can be put to.
A special licence was required to grow the
plants and to show them at the Royal
Horticultural Society's premier event. It was
claimed to be the first time that Cannabis
plants have been at the show but, to the
disappointment of many intrigued visitors,
the variety on display is different than the
one popularly known as weed.
The Cannabis sativa plants are the
strain better known as industrial hemp and
were being shown to illustrate the uses of
plants in modern society.
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| Hemp Processing Plant Backed |
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Thetford and Brandon Times
May 22, 2007
Plans to establish the UK's largest hemp
processing plant in the heart of Norfolk have
been given the go-ahead despite objections
from residents.
On Monday, Breckland councillors approved the
controversial £3.5m Camp Farm
application for Roudham, but imposed a series
of conditions.
Under the proposals from Essex-based company
Paul Rackham, the hemp processing plant will
be built on a former storage site, operate
round the clock for up to 300 days a year and
employ 14 people.
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States Push to Legalize Hemp Cultivation |
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By Cheryl Corley
All Things
Considered, National Public
Radio
May 24, 2007
It may look like marijuana but it's not
likely to lead to any reefer madness.
The crop known as industrial hemp is a
non-narcotic version of Cannabis, better
known for its fiber and oil than for its smoke.
There's been a virtual ban on farming
industrial hemp in America for nearly 50 years.
Now, as NPR's Cheryl Corley reports, a number
of states are fighting to make hemp farming
legal again. North Dakota is one of them.
[More...]
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