SASKATOON – Someday farmers may be allowed to grow the plant that produces marijuana and hashish, but don’t hold your breath.
The federal government is poised to pass a bill legalizing the commercial growth of hemp. The plant that has been banned from Canada since the 1930s.
Joanne Ford, spokesperson for Health and Welfare Canada, said the bill has passed second reading in Parliament and has one more reading before it receives royal assent.
It would give farmers the authority to grow hemp commercially, but that’s not the end of the process.
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Regulations would still have to be drafted and approved. If the bill passes, she thinks it will be at least two growing seasons before farmers are legally allowed to plant it.
Growers would be restricted to hemp with very low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which is the active ingredient in pot. Plants will be tested to ensure THC levels don’t exceed 0.3 percent, a far cry from the levels found in marijuana which range from three to five percent.
So why grow the plant if you’re not going to smoke it? Hemp has many other uses. It can be used to produce paper, rope, cloth, lumber, fuels and biodegradable plastic containers.
Joe Strobel, an Ontario tobacco farmer, sees a bright future for the plant if it overcomes the legislative hurdles. He and a few other farmers have acquired government licenses to produce hemp on an experimental basis.
If it was up to him they would have seeded the 18 acres reserved for hemp a couple of weeks ago, but there’s been a problem getting the seed across the border.
“I’ve been saying this for three months. I think we’re getting close.”
Government cautious
The government is cautious about introducing any new crop, especially one that can be used to produce illicit substances.
“There will be a lot of people wanting to get seeds and grow that stuff that makes you a millionaire overnight,” said Strobel.
Richard Garlick, director of communications with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, isn’t concerned legalizing commercial hemp will lead to a black market for growing marijuana. He said the differences between commercial hemp and mind-altering cannabis are substantial.
The two plants come from different seeds, have a different growing time, are harvested differently and most importantly they look different. Hemp grown for fibre has tall stalks and small leaves, while the smoking variety is a very leafy plant.
Garlick would like to see commercial hemp introduced in Canada. He said a lot of people applying for licenses to grow it are tobacco farmers from southern Ontario.
“Frankly, we would rather have them growing hemp for commercial purposes than tobacco, which truly is a dangerous drug and kills 35,000 people in this country every year.”
