Posted on 03/26/2002 6:37:12 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
he war on drugs is about to become a trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada.
A Canadian agricultural company that grows and sells what it terms sterilized hemp seed that Americans use in bird feeders will try today to convince U.S. officials that hemp is not marijuana — and it will use the North American Free Trade Agreement to argue the charge is a misfire in the war on drugs.
Kenex Ltd. says the U.S. anti-drug campaign has gone too far by targeting the hemp-based chips, pretzels, nutrition bars, clothing, oil and seed products that in the past five years have found a market in the U.S., becoming a $7 million annual industry.
A Kenex shipment of birdseed to a Baltimore client was confiscated, leading company President Jean Laprise to sue the U.S. for $20 million for alleged NAFTA violations.
"A few million dollars would not even begin to cover the cost of the financial hardships Kenex has suffered through DEA's [Drug Enforcement Administration] harassment of our business and the hemp food marketplace in general," Laprise said.
The Bush administration announced in October a rule that would list hemp products as controlled substances — the same way marijuana is classified. This month, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked that rule, which was to take effect March 18.
Kenex lawyers will outline its suit today at a State Department meeting with an array of federal agencies, from the DEA to Customs and the U.S. trade representative.
President Bush's drug czar, John Walters, recently called hemp products a Trojan horse for the movement to legalize drugs. "You cannot pretend there is not a broader issue of legalization behind this," he said.
Administration officials were not immediately available to comment on today's meeting.
The Canadians will remind the feds hemp was once considered a strategic asset. In World War II, the U.S. embarked on "Hemp for Victory" campaign to make rope, tarps and parachutes — just like the chute former President George Bush used when he bailed out over the South Pacific.
Life is horribly unjust for the pro-dope brigade.
Oh no! We must never allow hemp into this country. I mean think about what could happen if a bird ate hemp seed, got all hopped up on goofballs, and then flew into a surgeon during a procedure. People could die! For the children we must not allow the devil hemp!
Hemp is not dope. Silly Kevikins . . .
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No hemp brownies?
I'm surprised he hasn't figured out that poppy seed dressing is really a Taliban plot to get us all addicted to heroin.
The U.S. anti-drug campaign went too far as soon as a certain bureaucrat dreamed it up as a way of radically expanding government power and enabling the imprisonment of millions of innocent people.
YEP!! And as far as I am concerned, the country that legalizes drugs last, or resists the longest, is the one that is profiting the most from "drugs" being illegal.
There is one hemp product in particular which is peculiarly useful in treating tyrannophilia...a suitable length of hemp rope.
Maybe a medical necessity clause can be invoked, at least in your case.
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