PAGE FOUR; NEWS STORY

We’ll have no high hair around here. That is what the USA’s Drug Enforcement Agency has recently decided. And while we are at it lets’s just get rid of all that addictive rope, life-destroying paper and all those harmful personal care products.
...In a massive abuse of power America’s DEA has changed the laws covering non-drug products containing hemp. Overturning legal definitions established in history in the most cynical and Machiavellian fashion, the DEA made their move -- which has profound implications for many Americans -- in a covert flanking action that circumvented the usual channels. As a result, from the spring of 2002 it became illegal to use any products containing hemp.
...Although it is illegal to grow hemp in the USA, the import of products containing hemp had been allowed. Claiming that these products confound their extensive drug testing activities, the DEA were advised by the Department of Justice that it was not possible to ban such products under current law. With two options open to them -- a proposal for Congress or a public enquiry procedure with a full hearing -- the DEA chose the option that no one else saw. In October 2001, the DEA issued a document that reinterpreted the rules covering hemp products. A reinterpretation of the law does not require a judicial or public enquiry. In one breathtaking but very quiet swoop, the DEA bent constitutional law to their own ends without regard for public feeling or hardship. The new rules came into force in March 2002. Although, at the moment, the rules apply to hemp products for human consumption, it is expected that the ban will soon take in personal care products like shampoo.
...The DEA’s action overturned long established and accepted definitions and precedents in an extremely furtive and underhand way. Since the institution of drug control legislation more than half a decade ago, there has been a clear distinction under American law between hemp and marijuana. Although it had become illegal to grow it in the States, the law recognised the historical pre-eminence of hemp as a raw material used in rope making, for paper, for fabrics, for nutrition and for its oils. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 contains a clear and specific definition of recreational marijuana that expressly excludes those parts of the hemp plant to which the DEA has extended its ban.
...This essentially places hemp products alongside such notorious killers as morphine toilet duck, amphetamine descaler and heroin eye shadow and brings the penalties in line with those for possession of those household articles.
...Not only that but, according to the DEA, such products should have been illegal for the past thirty years. They claim that Congress always intended that all hemp products should be prohibited despite the fact that the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 clearly differentiates between hemp and marijuana.