Although growing hemp has been legal in Canada for almost a decade, farmers and activists south of the border are still fighting for the right to plant the crop.
In mid-January, North Dakota assistant house majority leader and farmer David Monson applied for an industrial hemp licence from the state’s agriculture commissioner.
“I expect that the state will grant me a hemp farming licence, but I’m not sure the $3,440 non-refundable registration fee I will send to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) with my application for manufacturing and importing will get me anything,” he said.
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Burton Johnson, an agronomist and professor at North Dakota State University, has submitted applications twice since 1999, Monson said, but has never received a licence.
“I’m prepared to take this to court if the DEA refuses to grant a permit in a reasonable amount of time or places onerous restrictions on it,” Monson said.
He is expected to receive permission in the coming weeks, making him the first grower to receive legal authorization from a state legislature since 1957, said Adam Eidinger, communications director for Vote Hemp, an organization advocating legal acceptance of the crop in the United States.
Eidinger expects the DEA will either ignore the application or refuse it immediately. Either way, Eidinger said, a decisive court battle is likely to result.
“We have been waiting for the right case: the right farmer and the right place to do it,” Eidinger said.
“North Dakota really has all their state government behind this.”
Monson is unlikely to plant a crop unless he receives an emergency injunction that would protect him from being arrested while the case is in court.
“Our best case scenario for 2007 is that he will win an injunctive relief while the case is being litigated, which would legally prevent the DEA from interfering with his planting in May of this year,” Eidinger said. “If he can get injunctive relief for two years while the courts review the issue, it would be a huge success.”
He said activists are also pinning their hopes on the chance that the recently elected Democratic majority in Congress might be able to clear a path for legal hemp by adding it to the upcoming U.S. farm bill.
