Speaking to a crowd of farmers while on a campaign stop in North Dakota, Ron Paul praised the potential of industrial hemp as a cash crop, AP reported today.
"There's no reason, in a free society, why farmers should not be free to raise hemp," Paul told the cheering crowd.
Actually, I'm guessing Paul doesn't even know the extent to which hemp was a mainstream agricultural product in America before it got tainted by the drugs prohibition movement.
Hemp is a near cousin to marijuana of course, which gets the war-on-drugs crowd hot under the collar. These are the folks who think the reason that fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars haven't won the war on drugs is because we haven't been trying hard enough.
Paul is the only candidate in the GOP race who approaches the drugs question with an iota of common sense. He recognizes that 50 years and hundreds of billions is long enough to prove it ain't gonna work, so maybe trying something else, like regulation and taxation, might be worth a try.
So it stands to reason that he's not going to go along with a hemp ban just because the plant looks like pot.
Before the fear-mongers got all over it Henry Ford was experimenting with using hemp fibre for body panels on his cars. It's also useful for making clothing, construction material, and alternative fuel.
Hell, hemp could save America!
Here's the article:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDcO2-n1XQVO9fzxkzpH2cVbs-2Q?docId=1269e9b4a0d4429083c359c924b1c82c
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