CANNABIS / Growers aiming for a first harvest in August seek new respectability for a plant banned almost 50 years.
The Globe and Mail – Tuesday, June 7, 1994
By Chris Armstrong, Tillsonburg, Ontario
It didn’t look like much: two men and a 40-year-old tractor, watched by a dog, seeding a field on a Saturday afternoon. Every half-hour or so, a car passed by, its occupants looking straight ahead, unaware that they were gliding by a piece of Canadian agricultural history – unaware that the seeds weren’t for tobacco, but for hemp, a banned substance. Hemp cultivation, once widespread in Canada, has been outlawed since the end of the Second World War – because hemp fibre comes from the cannabis plant, the same plant that produces the drug marijuana. But hemp took a big step toward renewed respectability this past weekend when Joe Strobel, a 64-year-old retired teacher turned tobacco farmer, and his partner Geof Kime, a 27-year-old engineer, planted four hectares of the crop.
The plantation, near the small Southwestern Ontario town of Tillsonburg, is the first government-sanctioned hemp crop in almost 50 years. It was made possible by a special research licence issued by the federal Health Department’s Bureau of Dangerous Drugs, allowing the men to grow hemp and to test its viability as a commercial crop for use in making rope, paper, and other products.
Late Saturday afternoon, after their first historic day of seeding, Mr. Strobel and Mr. Kime were in a celebratory mood (a mood enhanced, it must be added, by nothing more than a couple glasses of beer). “It’s a great feeling. I was going to say it’s a high, but that wouldn’t sound right,” joked the grey-haired Mr. Strobel. The boyish-looking Mr. Kime, his black Doc Marten shoes dirtied by a day in the field said: “It’s going to alter the way we think about natural resources in North America and alter what people expect from their farms.”
Hemp growers cultivate respectability
With seeds imported from Britain and France, Mr. Strobel and Mr. Kime will be growing five strains of cannabis that have very low levels of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive drug that gives marijuana smokers their high. (Hemp generally refers to the fibre from the stalks of the cannabis plant, while marijuana refers to the plant’s leaves and buds, where most of the mind-altering THC is found.) Dr. Ross Hossie, head of licensing at the Bureau of Dangerous Drugs in Ottawa, says the THC levels in the plants grown by the two men will be much too low to give anyone a high. And, Dr. Hossie adds, the project will be monitored closely to ensure that only low-THC cannabis plants are grown. “We can go in at any time and determine what’s going on,” says Dr. Hossie. “Samples can be taken at any time of any plant, and they will be taken.”
Both the RCMP and the Ontario Provincial Police were consulted before the licence was given, and Mr. Strobel says he will be staying in close contact with both forces. Mr. Strobel and Mr. Kime will send their first harvest, expected in late August, to various researchers and manufacturers in Canada and the United States, where the hemp will be made into rope, paper, and fuel for furnaces. Mr. Strobel thinks hemp, which has been grown throughout Canada’s western and central provinces in the past, can give a boost to Canada’s farming community, particularly Southwestern Ontario tobacco farmers hurt by decreased demand in recent years. “We hope this thing works in such a way that it helps preserve family farms.”
Commercial cultivation of low-THC hemp has been legalized in recent years in several European countries and Britain. Mr. Kime extols hemp’s environmentally friendly characteristics. Studies suggest it can been grown with little or no pesticides or herbicides. And because it can be used to make paper, it is seen as an alternative to logging.
The two men are a study in contrasts the grizzled, common-sense farmer and the young, idealistic eco-visionary. Mr. Strobel wants to save Canada’s farmers; Mr. Kime wants to save the world. They represent two faces of the hemp issue as it sits today.
But the hemp issue has a third face. There are many in the pro-hemp movement who want all types of cannabis both low- and high-THC strains — decriminalized, thus allowing marijuana to be used for medical and, of course, recreational use.
One of Canada’s most prominent pro-hemp organizations is HEMP Canada, whose acronym stands for Help End Marijuana Prohibition. Chris Clay, a HEMP Canada director, says he strongly supports Mr. Strobel’s project. But Mr. Clay, who runs the Great Canadian Hemporium in London, Ont., a shop that sells both hemp products and marijuana-smoking paraphernalia, also stresses the importance of the decriminalization movement. “I’m concerned about the environment,” he says. “But I’m also concerned about my rights and the rights of all people who smoke it. And there’s the medical use.” Mr. Strobel says he has no interest in the marijuana issue. “Myself, I’ve never smoked the stuff.”
He says he’s grateful for the support and useful information he’s received from organizations like HEMP Canada, but he thinks it would hurt his cause to be strongly identified with them. “I am turning my back on them in a way,” Mr. Strobel says. In spite of his attempts to steer clear of such groups, some people still see the project as nothing but a cover for the decriminalization movement.
Lambton Families in Action, a small prohibitionist group based in the city of Sarnia, Ont., is strongly against any cannabis cultivation, even of low-THC strains. “There really isn’t any need for hemp in this modern world,” says Charles Perkins of the group. “It’s just smoke and mirrors for the drug culture.”
With the Tillsonburg field planted, all eyes will now be on Bill C-7, a federal drug bill that passed second reading in March and is now in committee. The bill, expected to get third reading in Parliament later this month or in the fall session, would allow for commercial cultivation of low-THC hemp, at the discretion of the Health Minister.
Mr. Strobel worries that the minister could find it politically difficult to allow commercial hemp production if the general public is confused about the difference between marijuana and hemp. “People who are dead against marijuana are going to raise Cain [about large-scale hemp production],” he says.
Toronto-area Liberal member of Parliament Paul Szabo, who heads the subcommittee examining Bill C-7, agrees that the bill’s allowances for hemp are politically tricky. “I can see that there could be a lot of problems,” said Mr. Szabo. “It’s the wrong time to be [seen as] weak on drugs.” For now, Mr. Strobel and Mr. Kime must sit back and wait, and hope for about 10 centimetres of rain over the next 90-odd days, during which time the plants should, with any luck, shoot skyward, reaching the height of close to three metres and displaying much smaller versions of those green, jagged-edged leaves you see on T-shirts.
The field is surrounded by a few rows of corn, which will obscure the hemp from view during its first couple months of growth. But, sometime in August, the hemp is expected to outgrow the corn. At which point, Mr. Strobel worries, the “funny guys” may discover the field and decide to sample it. There won’t be anything much to sample. The plants, low in THC to start with, will be much closer together than is the practice in marijuana cultivation. Dense planting promotes stalk growth and keeps the leaves small. And there won’t be any buds the part of the plant richest in THC because hemp is always harvested early, before the buds form, when the stalks are strongest.
Mr. Strobel grimaces at the thought of pot smokers tramping through the field, spoiling the research, looking for a non-existent buzz. “The marijuana issue is going to be a hindrance to the hemp issue,” he says. “Because the words have been synonymous for so long, the plant itself has been defiled.”