North Dakota man fights for hemp rights

Zach Lee
Opinion Columnist

 North Dakota isn’t the first place that springs to mind when conversations turn to progressive politics – especially on the hot-button issue of U.S. drug policy.

California, with its penchant for policy change, seems a much more likely setting for the denouement of the war on drugs.

When Denver decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2005, it looked like Colorado could be where the peace treaty was signed between those who fight against drugs and those who use them.

But now, more than a year later, it’s the Dakota that doesn’t have Mount Rushmore that’s taking the next step.

David Monson, a North Dakota farmer, school superintendent and Republican state representative, has applied to be the nation’s first licensed grower of industrial hemp, The Associated Press reported Monday.

Hemp is a plant that is related to marijuana, but it shares none of its more popular cousin’s hallucinogenic properties. Instead, hemp is known for its strong fiber and can be used to make cloth, rope, carpet backing and paper products.

Strangely enough, however, hemp falls under the jurisdiction of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In 2005, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, tried to right that wrong by introducing legislature that would effectively label hemp as a non-combatant in the war on drugs by eliminating it from the definition of marijuana in federal drug law.

But, like so many logical ideas on Capitol Hill, Paul’s bill never came to a vote.

So, after passing a criminal background check and coughing up more than $2,000 in nonrefundable fees, Monson still needs approval from the DEA before he can begin to cultivate hemp.

And all of this is 10 years after he originally pushed a bill through North Dakota legislatures to study the viability of industrial hemp as an alternative crop for the state’s farmers.

The fact that it’s now 2007 and Monson could be the first licensed industrial hemp farmer in the United States – Canadians have been doing it since 1998 – is indicative of a sobering fact: The people making strategy decisions in the war on drugs are just as inept as the people making strategy decisions in the war on terror.

That the U.S. has been fighting the elder war since before most college students were born doesn’t make it any better.

It would be naive to think that Monson’s motives are altruistic; he’s out to make a profit just like everyone else. Still, his cause isn’t a bad one.

As federal and state governments continue to hemorrhage money fighting to stay on an even playing field with those who supply Americans with the means to get high, it doesn’t make sense to spend more tax dollars on suppressing a substance that simply cannot be abused.

It’s like racial profiling for plants, and that’s just absurd.

Lee, an English/Spanish senior,
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu