Does Joe Strobel, Canada's first modern hemp farmer, support Bill C-7, the government's latest attempt to suppress the recreational use of marijuana? This question could not go unasked at the meeting of the Coalition for Green Economic Recovery in Toronto City Hall on February 22, where Strobel was to speak about his experiences with growing hemp.
The meeting is intended as an open forum for coalition members to learn about the uses of hemp. It opens with several pot entrepreneurs setting out their hemp wares on the tables usually occupied by the elbows and briefcases of sleepy city counselors.
The audience mingles. Samples spicy Hemp seed "popcorn". Browses through pro-hemp legalization literature. Checks out the latest in hemp cloth fashions.
No bongs, pipes, or roach clips here. There is nothing even mildly suggestive of the jollier green stuff, industrial hemp's older bro the recreational grade, "let's get high!" GANGE. I am not surprised. Days earlier, I had called The Friendly Stranger, a Toronto Hemp store, to ask about the Coalition meeting.
"Not a regular cannabis event-""Just hemp?"
"Hemp, hemp, hemp"
And hemp it is. I find a seat in City Hall, and Joe Strobel opens his presentation by further clarifying the point. "The other (the stuff you smoke) is a separate issue," he says, "mixing the two will create a problem. Especially at this point, with what is going to happen with Bill C-7. I think you realize that we will be in an interesting position if it passes and an interesting position if it doesn't."
"Interesting" seems hardly the word to describe the position that smokers of weed will be in should Bill C-7 become law. Images of rooms with bars where everyone can watch you crap fill my mind. I imagine that the standard, unvoiced reaction to Strobel's statement is "But, but...Bill C-7 has nothing to do with hemp legalization, and everything to do with hemp prohibition!"
So why does Strobel imply that Bill C-7 treats recreational and industrial cannabis differently?
Maybe he's been watching T.V. The popular press has been misrepresenting Bill C-7 to the public for a long time. Many have been led to believe that Bill C-7 makes explicit provision for the industrial production of hemp.
I listen some more. Strobel is talking about how much he had to pay the RCMP to patrol his fields, as a condition of growing hemp. I try to concentrate, but my mind keeps drifting back to what he said about Bill C-7.
The next day I make a call to the Canadian Hemp Association. They too believe that Strobel is simply misinformed.
"There is no clause dealing with the legalization of hemp," says Robin Ellins, an Association representative, "only a clause that says the government may change the law to allow for the experimental, scientific or industrial uses of certain banned substances. The list includes cocaine, heroine, and cannabis."
The Association also takes exception to Strobel's attempt to separate industrial and recreational grades of marijuana. To them, the low thc variety is a bastardized strain, ill fitted to the Canadian environment.
"The high THC variety has been growing in Canada for hundreds and hundreds of years it has adapted," says Joy Jacobson, also of the Canadian Hemp Association. "We aren't allowed to bring our [low THC] hemp to seed. So the seeds for industrial grade hemp are shipped over from Europe". A much different environment.
Strobel's presentation at the Coalition meeting was designed to downplay the drawbacks of industrial grade cannabis, partly at the expense of the high THC variety.
"There is considerable medicinal value in THC," he admitted, "there are also over a hundred chemicals in the hemp plant that can be used for medicinal purposes. So, a good variety there."
Later, while telling us how to reason with people who are opposed to the production of industrial hemp, Strobel suggested a disturbing analogy. "If you want to go by comparison," Strobel said, "and you look at a bunch of dogs on one hand you have your poodle. And on the other hand you have your terrorizing pit bull. On the one hand you have your fibre hemp, and on the other your narcotic hemp."
Such statements hardly make him the cutting edge of the entire pro-legalization movement. Yet there is still much common ground, places where interests meet, and seeds are sown. In the end, the meeting of the Coalition for Green Economic Recovery was not an occasion for fractured opinion or rivalries. It was a celebration of the growth of the pro-legalization movement: its achievements, and its potential.
Besides, as Robin Ellin said to me later, "If they legalize industrial grade pot, they've got to legalize the better stuff. They can't patrol the fields forever".
I agreed. It wouldn't be profitable.
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