Posted on 10/15/2001 9:04:33 AM PDT by MadameAxe
This week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration banned all food manufactured with hemp grain, delivering a shocking blow to consumers and producers of hemp foods. According to DEA notices published in the Federal Register on October 9, 2001, any product that contains any amount of THC is, and always has been, a Schedule I controlled substance.
The DEA published this notice as an "interpretive rule", not as a new rule, thereby bypassing the usual requirement for public notice and comment. The DEA is stating that hemp food products have always been illegal and that they are just clarifying that fact with this new interpretive rule. The DEA justifies their decision only by saying that it is to "protect the public health and safety", but the DEA does not provide any evidence that THC in any amount is harmful.
"For the first time in U.S. history, the federal government is outlawing a whole class of food products", says Kathleen Chippi, co-founder of the Boulder Hemp Company, who was forced to suspend business last year when investors became nervous about rumors that the DEA was going to outlaw hemp. "It's the same as if the DEA outlawed wheat or corn."
Hemp grain, while not as commonplace as other grains, is touted by health food experts as being "the most nutritionally complete seed on the planet for human consumption."
THC may appear in trace amounts in some products made with hemp grain, just as opiates may appear in trace amounts in poppy seeds. Hemp food has been produced and safely consumed in the U.S. since the founding of the country and has been used worldwide for over 10,000 years without any adverse health effects ever.
The DEA notice in the Federal Register states that it is illegal to consume "any food or beverage (such as pasta, tortilla chips, candy bars, nutritional bars, salad dressings, sauces, cheese, ice cream, and beer) or dietary supplement". Consumers and hemp food manufacturers have until Feb. 6, 2002 to destroy any hemp food products they currently possess.
EXEMPTIONS: The DEA does exempt hemp products that "do not cause THC to enter the human body", such as paper, cloth, and rope. Sterilized seed remains legal for birds, but not humans. Sterilized seed will be exempt only if it is intended for bird seed and combined with some other seed or material that is "not derived from the cannabis plant". Raw hemp fiber is legal, but (strangely) unprocessed hemp stalks are illegal.
Personal care products, such as lotions, soap, shampoo, and lip balm are legal for now, while the DEA searches for evidence that these products can cause trace amounts of THC to enter the body.
There have been rumors for over a year that the DEA was going to ban hemp products. It's unfortunate for citizens that they chose to do this now, while the entire country is focused on terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan. You'd think they'd have more urgent things to do right now, like protecting us from bioterrorism, but such is the absurdity of our federal government and its War on Drugs.
This article from the Colorado Hemp Initiative Project. Edited for publication by Sierra Times.com
True patriots know that the Constitution forbids the federal government from regulating the intrastate making, distributing, possessing, or using of drugs.
You can't be serious...talk about spin. Drugs and their pushers are the terrorists in this war. Addiction, child-abuse, insane asylums, hepatitis-C, AIDS...byproducts all.
If you define your ability to shoot heroin and neglect your children, expecting a free hand-out and a bigger bureaucracy to handle it, constitutional, you are perverting the idea. Your ability to smoke some crack and get it cheaply, via a Government sanction of the drug, does just the opposite of promoting "domestic tranquility".
I speak from much experience, the child of an alcoholic, myself a former drug addict and proud member of AA. I have seen innumerable cases of the result in drugs, and have heard the common refrain, "Jail was the best thing that every happened to me".
I am sorry for the name calling, but the pro-crack-heroin-PCP-marijuana liberaltarians fit the term "idiot" perfectly.
God Bless you, GW Bush and thank you for your service as a Marine. For that I salute you and bid you adieu.
In a perfect world, I would agree. Democrats with their parasitic nature, however, will undoubtedly misuse the taxes, increase welfare roles for the druggies and their families, increase the size of government to achieve this end and subsidize it. Once they have achieved this boon, they will have their leftist defense attorneys - ABA - sue it, blame it on Republicans for "big drug company" support and then the defense attorney lobby would kick-back to the DNC. No thanks.
Haven't you learned from the attack on tobacco and the makers of OxyContin yet?...Do you think it will be any different?
In a perfect world, I would agree.
So it's OK to violate the Constitution because the world is not perfect?! And you call yourself a conservative?!? <spits in disgust>
Yes, true - I am sure hemp is no super substance, however it is no "demon, evil" substance either. The big hypocrasy is that those DEA officials, rush home at night to their liquor cabinets and pour a few stiff ones. A buzz is a buzz. No one ever died of a pot overdose - can you overdose on pot? (my husband has done pharmaceutical research on the substance in the past and said all the "pot is bad" talk is pure govt. propaganda, that the only bad is the smoke inhalation portion which is bad for the lungs, be it tobacco or other substances) And before you rush to judge me a "liberal pot head", that's not at all so. Simply said, the truth is the truth, however it may make some unhappy.
So ALL Americans should be prohibited from using drugs because YOU couldn't handle them?
(By the way, do you support banning alcohol too? If not, why not?)
True, but neither was saccharin, or CFC. My point isn't that there was no reason to ban hemp and hemp products but that it is amazing the vicious and vitriolic reaction you get on that score, but not in other, similar instances.
And I pointed out WHY I think it's so. Druggies, er, "those concerned with civil liberties," know they can't win going in the front way, so true to their authoritarian roots they'll try around back.
Too much metal for you, pal. Turn down the volume and pick up a book or two about libertarianism, before you keep on making the idiotic equation between liberals and libertarians.
Once you get your facts and ideologies straightened out, lemme know.
Yeah! All those authoritarian druggies! Try again.
In order to achieve your high(must be stoned)minded version of constitutionality it would, WITHOUT DOUBT, end in a huge increase in the Federal Government - anti-Constitution. More regulations, more misused taxes, more welfare, more children on welfare, more liberal lawsuits and T.V. commercials. All this to protect your narrow-minded myopic view (obviously drug induced) of the Constitution.
When abortion was illegal, there were a lot less...but I am sure the freedom loving pro-drug-choicer you are applies to the God given right to both get f#$%ed up and murder your young, right?
(By the way, do you support banning alcohol too? If not, why not?)
One cat is out of the bed pissing all over the place and tearing the house down, why not let the other 6 out. Why make it worse?
Thank God you are among the 3% of morons who think drugs are a good thing...thank God almighty!
I think those drugs are really diminishing your capacity for logic. Don't worry, you will still be able to get loaded on illegal drugs, pick up under-age prostitutes and buy pornography and spit.
idiot (id-i-ot) n. 1. a mentally deficient person who is permanently incapable of rational conduct --->This is your mind on drugs. Does the shoe fit?
For example, the authoritarian druggies want to subject the will of the great majority of the people in this country, those who do not wish drugs legalized, to their own will, hiding behind the Constitution as an excuse to drag everyone else down with them.
In essence, these pseudo-libertarians aren't really concerned about "liberty" in the abstract at all, but rather they want sin without remorse, crime without conscience, cause without effect, rash action without consequence.
When you explain to them that their concept of "not doing harm to others" is flawed, then you're a "statist" (A "statist," I have come to understand, is anyone that believes in obeying the law, even when they don't feel like it to).
Well, if you don't like it you can always go to some other country where they don't have this kind of horrific oppression.
Thank God you are among the 3% of morons who think drugs are a good thing...thank God almighty! [et cetera ad nauseam]
And another Drug Warrior coward makes a clumsy attempt to dodge the constitutional issue.
Run, coward, run.
So it's OK to violate the Constitution if it's being used as an "excuse"? And you have the gall to call yourself a conservative?!
What new regulations and taxes would be required?
more welfare, more children on welfare, more liberal lawsuits
If you don't like welfare or liberal lawsuits (as I don't), fight THEM---don't use them as a cowardly excuse for further violations of the Constitution.
and T.V. commercials.
How are T.V. commercials anti-Constitution?
All this to protect your narrow-minded myopic view (obviously drug induced) of the Constitution.
Don't just call names---prove that the Constitution allows the feds to regulate the intrastate making, distributing, possessing, or using of drugs.
Go on---we'll wait.
(By the way, do you support banning alcohol too? If not, why not?)
One cat is out of the bed pissing all over the place and tearing the house down, why not let the other 6 out. Why make it worse?
Why not capture that one cat---why not ban alcohol? Come on, answer the question.
Smoke another joint.
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