If You Don't Associate Your Poppy Seed Bagel with Opium, then why….

…..is it still against the law to grow industrial hemp in the United States? According the the NYTimes, a bipartisan team in California is working to change that. Liberal Democrat Mark Leno and Republican Charles DeVore are working together to fight the DEA’s ban on industrial hemp.

Hemp grows easily in a variety of conditions, and requires little to no pesticides, making it a much more environmentally-friendly crop than, say, cotton. But now there are so many products made with hemp, that American farmers are missing out on a moneymaker.

Their bipartisan communion underscores a deeper shift in hemp culture that has evolved in recent years, from ragtag hempsters whose love of plants with seven leaves ran mostly to marijuana, to today’s savvy coalition of organic farmers and health-food entrepreneurs working to distance themselves from the drug.

Hundreds of hemp products, including energy bars and cold-pressed hemp oil, are made in California, giving the banned plant a capitalist aura. But manufacturers must import the raw material, mostly from Canada, where hemp cultivation was legalized in 1998.

The new hemp entrepreneurs regard it as a sustainable crop, said John Roulac, 47, a former campaigner against clear-cutting and a backyard composter before founding Nutiva, a growing California hemp-foods company. “They want to lump together all things cannabis,” said David Bronner, 33, whose family’s squeeze-bottle Dr. Bronners Magic Soaps, based in Escondido, Calif., are made with hemp oil. “You don’t associate a poppy seed bagel with opium.”

I love my hemp seed oil and hemp granola, as well as my hemp conditioner. It would be great if the ingredients for some of my favorite products could actually be grown in my own country. For more on hemp’s health benefits, read this transcript from the Organic Consumer’s Association.

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Starre Vartan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Eco-Chick and author of The Eco-Chick Guide to Life (St. Martin's Press). A problogger and oft-quoted green living expert who has been featured in the NYTimes, Elle, Glamour and Whole Living, she is a contributor to The Huffington Post, Inhabitat, and Hearst's The Daily Green, and is currently editor-at-large for Coco Eco Magazine. An active ecofashionista, she has style edited for Plenty magazine and coordinated runway shows. She splits her time between Connecticut and NYC and calls Sydney, Australia her second home, even though it was her first (as that's where she was born and most of her family resides). When not writing, blogging, or researching her next book, she is trailrunning, trying to cook, or snowboarding.

2 Comments on “If You Don't Associate Your Poppy Seed Bagel with Opium, then why….”

Kim

I eat my hemp granola almost daily. Isn’t it delicious? They have somehow mastered the perfect texture for granola and I love the little flax seeds also. For another hemp note, there is a hemp bread that I used to eat religiously – it is very high in fiber and protein – yummy.The best part is, I do service at a treatment center so I have to hide the containers for my refer meals (in deference to others.)

The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer was given to me when I was a teenager and it changed my perception of hemp and marjuana, among other things. Highly recommend it (pun intended.)

09/02/06 » 6:01 am »
anne

I just linked you (re: this post in particular). Hope you don’t mind.

09/12/06 » 8:57 am »