On Dec. 4, activists in Austin and 20 cities nationwide will load up backpacks with all the spoils of a good lunch and head to their nearest Drug Enforcement Administration offices, hoping to share their lunchtime nosh with DEA employees coming and going during their lunch break. All the good eats — veggie burgers, cheese, tortilla chips, pretzels, maybe even ice cream — will contain hemp seed oil, which the DEA outlawed on Oct. 9. At issue, DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson said in a press release, is that hemp-derived products contain trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana. And since marijuana is illegal, the bureaucratic reasoning goes, food products derived from hemp seeds must be illegal too (see Hemp Hemp No Way, Oct. 19). Hemp seed product manufacturers are challenging the DEA ruling, claiming it is nothing but an attempt to put the burgeoning $5 million-a-year industry out of business. For more info, see the Web sites for the Drug Reform Coordination Network (www.drcnet.org), Vote Hemp (www.votehemp.com), the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (www.norml.org), and the Hemp Industries Assoc. (www.hia.com).
This article appears in November 30 • 2001.