Charlottesville Mayor: Hemp Farming Should Be Legal in Virginia

Updated: 7:31 PM May 21, 2010

The campaign to legalize hemp farming in Virginia is getting a big boost Friday from Charlottesville's Mayor. You can buy hemp products, but grow it and you could go to jail, because the plant looks so much like it's cousin marijuana.

Posted: 6:25 PM May 21, 2010
Reporter: Bianca Spinosa
Email Address: bianca.spinosa@newsplex.com

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May 21, 2010

The Founding Fathers knew a thing or two about hemp. Mayor Dave Norris wants to hearken back to those days.

"In Virginia, for centuries we grew industrial hemp," says Norris. "There's this fear mongering about industrial hemp. People link it to a different type of hemp used for illicit purposes. But that's not fair. It's a completely different product."

Supporters of the plant, like Eric Steenstra with "Vote Hemp," say industrial hemp can't make you high if you smoke it.

"Hemp has such a little amount of the component that gets you high. It's three-tenths of one percent in the plant. There's no possibility to use it as a drug," says Steenstra.

People moisturize with hemp seed, bathe in hemp seed, and eat hemp seed. Products are sold in natural food stores around Charlottesville like Integral Yoga.

"The hemp products are very popular. For one thing people buy them for the protein. They have all the amino acids," says Janet Dressel with Integral Yoga Natural Foods.

The store sells large bags of hemp seeds, but none of the seeds can be grown locally.

Critics point out that the hemp plant looks too similar to its illegal cousin, marijuana, posing a problem for law enforcement.

"From afar or above you can't tell whether you've got industrial hemp in your field or the 'wacky tobaccy,'" says Joe Thomas, radio host for WCHV.

Personally, Thomas says he doesn't mind the idea of growing hemp locally, but from a business standpoint he says it wouldn't be practical because of federal regulations.

"In places where it's been legalized to grow and to cultivate there are so many regulations on growing that you have to fence around it, you have to have a GPS track, you have to account for every acre and every leaf that's grown. It becomes fiscally impossible," says Thomas.

But tell that to fans of growing hemp. They say they wont stop trying until they have the right to grow the plant in their backyards.

Currently nine states including West Virginia allow farmers to grow industrial hemp.

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