David Bronner of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. Photo credit: CNBC.

By Jane Wells
CNBC
May 11, 2009

What if Americans could buy cigarettes but were banned from growing tobacco? Buy bread but not allowed to grow wheat? That is the case with industrial hemp, a product in everything from car doors to milk ... legally.

Hemp farming was banned in the U.S. decades ago as part of the earliest drug wars. Hemp contains THC, like marijuana. But hemp is not marijuana. "It's like a Chihuahua versus a Saint Bernard," says David Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, which sold $29 million in hemp-related products last year. The THC in industrial hemp is so minute that "the only thing you will get from smoking it is a headache," says Gregg Baumbaugh, CEO of FlexForm Technologies, which uses hemp in car doors for Dodge Vipers. Both companies import their hemp from Canada or France, adding 10 to 15 percent to costs.

"A classic overreach," says Rep. Ron Paul, the one-time Presidential candidate who has co-sponsored a bill to legalize domestic production of industrial hemp. "There's not another country in the world that prohibits the raising of hemp. Only in America ... I mean, it's utterly ridiculous."

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A reading of The Caitlin County Hemp Wars play. Photo credit: The Phoenix.

By Chris Faraone
The Phoenix
April 29, 2009

When liberal congressmen like Barney Frank begin co-sponsoring bills with libertarians like Ron Paul, there must be something funny in the air. That stench — according to activists, agriculturalists and economists alike — is the manure that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials have fed Americans about industrial hemp for decades, which has resulted in policies that allow for hemp to be imported, but not ones that let suffering American farmers cultivate it themselves.

Coincidentally simultaneous with the landmark (and fashionably dubbed) Paul-Frank proposal — which would lift senseless restrictions on industrial hemp farming — local playwrights Terry Crystal and Don DiVecchio are rolling out their five-years-in-the-making musical, The Caitlin County Hemp Wars, for one night only at the Zero Arrow Theatre in Harvard Square. Their motivation is simple: banning non-psychoactive hemp because of stigmas regarding its genetic cousin marijuana is like banning bananas because of Ron Jeremy.

"It's outrageous that something so potentially useful is illegal to grow in the United States," says Crystal, a Boston University librarian who first became interested in hemp as a functional material while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design more than a decade ago. "It's ridiculous, and you just have to wonder why."

Innovation in Textiles
April 29, 2009

At the recent JEC Composites exhibition at Porte de Versailles, Paris, CELC Masters of Linen showcased the use of flax and hemp fibers in the future world of renewable composites. According to CELC, the environmentally sustainable properties of these two European-grown fibers are proving increasingly attractive to manufacturers seeking to incorporate sustainable solutions into their products.

The natural mechanical properties of flax and hemp bring high performance and competitive cost to new composite materials now being used in the automotive, furniture, boat building and leisure industries, the organization says.

"As renewable fibers, European-grown flax and hemp help safeguard the environment, as their cultivation requires no irrigation, little or no artificial fertilization, and no pesticides. Their use within an otherwise intensive crop rotation regime allows the land to recover fertility and quality, to enjoy an 'environmental pause,' encouraging bio-diversity," a spokesperson for CELC Masters of Linen said.