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IHA Reply to Proposals for Canadian Industrial Hemp Regulations
Submitted to Jean Peart, Manager, Hemp Project, Health Canada by the International Hemp Association on January 5, 1998
According to the "Proposed
Industrial Hemp Regulations", industrial hemp will still be regulated in a drug
control framework, rather than an agricultural crop. Agriculture Canada is
conspicuously absent throughout these proposals. Even if the present sentiment of
legislators is that industrial hemp is a drug issue, it is not. Although industrial hemp
does contain trace amounts of THC, it is of no practical significance. There is also
a minor percentage of precious gold dissolved in sea water, but it is no more
economically feasible to extract than is THC from hemp. Feral hemp, often higher
than 0.3% THC, grows abundantly across the former hemp growing regions of North America, yet it only very rarely
(and then only fraudulently) enters into the illegal drug market. Parsley and oregano have also been used as
marijuana substitutes, but like industrial hemp, they simply don’t make marijuana
smokers "high".
In Europe, there are no presently
reported problems with the diversion of hemp crops to the illicit drug trade, or the
growing of marijuana in industrial hemp fields. Industrial hemp has been grown in
many parts of Europe for decades, and despite the lack of any common or
centralized system for the regulation of hemp, there are no problems with its diversion. One trusts that Canadian law
enforcement and agriculture officials will be just as able to administer industrial
hemp growing as their European counter-parts.
The proposed hemp legislation
treats farmers as potential criminals. Governments do not regulate the sale of ammonium nitrate or urea fertilizers to
farmers, although it is well-known that they can be used to make powerful bombs. Somehow, in this case, it is
assumed that the vast majority of farmers will use fertilizers in a responsible way,
and we allow the criminal justice system to be invoked only after laws have been
broken. Although preventative regulation is often effective, it appears that the
administrative costs of monitoring industrial hemp growers far outweighs the benefit of preventing a few misguided
and uninformed people from attempting to use hemp as marijuana. Farmers and consumers of their products, will
ultimately bear the costs of this unnecessary control system.
Enforcement under a system
similar to Europe will be nearly failure proof, if the new Canadian regulations follow Europe’s lead. The various
European systems require that only certified hemp varieties can be purchased for
sowing and only from a licensed seed seller, by a licensed grower with a declared end use for the crop. This
system has proven quite effective everywhere it is used.
If law enforcement officers have
a question about the authenticity of an industrial hemp crop, they can simply ask
the farmer to present a permit to cultivate industrial hemp. If a farmer presents a
permit, and law enforcement is still skeptical about the farmer’s motives, they can
then perform field or laboratory THC tests to confirm or disprove their
suspicions. In this way, government funds are focused efficiently, only on situations
where problems may have arisen.
Establishing that all hemp seed,
regardless of whether it is sterilized or not, is to be controlled by the Drug Police
is ill-advised. Hemp seed is one of the few Cannabis products on which Canadian farmers can capitalize, without
waiting for the establishment of a supporting industrial infrastructure. If food
grains are regarded as drugs (even though clean Cannabis seed contains no
THC), food producers will be discouraged from using hemp seed. Corn, grapes and many other farm products are used to
make alcoholic liquor, but they are not controlled until the fermentation process
begins.
The 0.3% THC limit may
interfere with the early establishment of the Canadian hemp industry. We anticipate
that there will be a shortage of commercially available sowing seed for at least
the first few years. There has been little arrangement, such as production
contracts, put in place for the reproduction of hemp cultivars in Canada. This means
that for the near future, all seed must be imported. Several of the most productive
industrial hemp varieties (i.e., ‘Kompolti TC’ and ‘Novosadska Konoplia’) are
well known in Eastern Europe, but have not been approved as yet by the EU. Their THC levels often test at 0.3% or
slightly above. It would be a shame to limit a fledgling industry, facing a
shortage of available seed, to be hampered by overprotective legislation. A more tolerant
limit for unrestricted cultivation (up to 0.5%), well below the level of
potential diversion (1.5%-2.0%), but allowing a larger window for legitimate hemp
farmers, is needed. In addition, since the chemical content any plant sometimes varies, a "cautionary buffer zone"
(0.5%-1.0%) is recommended. A farmer cannot be subjected to a situation of unfair jeopardy in which at harvest time
each year, the crop will be deemed legal and harvestable, or illegal and subject to
destruction.
Research within secured
circumstances with hemp strains of higher THC content (above 1.0%) should be allowed
under the proposed hemp regulations by procuring a special Health Canada
Cannabis research license. It will be
necessary for plant breeders and other researchers to use these higher-THC strains as a source of valuable genes for
various traits (e.g., pest resistance, etc.).
If industrial hemp must be administered as a potential drug
problem, then at the very least a time-table must be laid out, so that when industrial
hemp has proven to cause no law enforcement problems, administration of industrial hemp should be handed over
from Health Canada to Agriculture Canada.
If Canada is going to proceed
with industrial hemp, at least give the industry a fighting chance.