What Can I Do?

We can continue to help make progress on state hemp legislation. Bills and resolutions are also advancing in — Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota and Vermont. You can keep track of all state hemp legislation on Vote Hemp's State and overall Hemp Legislation Pages.

Also, in North Dakota the Farm & Ranch Guide reports that NDSU is still looking for funds for their industrial hemp research site. You can help! Please make a donation today to their Farmer Support Fund to help NDSU, or to their General Fund to help them continue their work and bring hemp farming back to its rightful place in America. Visit Vote Hemp's What Can I Do? page with tips to help you take action and work towards positive change.

Previously (2/11/09) in a Q & A in The Washington Post Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was quoted as saying "In a perfect world, everything that was sold, everything that was purchased and consumed would be local, so the economy would receive the benefit of that." Prior to that, farmers in Vermont shared their opinions at a well-attended public hearing on the future of farming held by the House and Senate Agriculture committees at the Statehouse. Vote Hemp has been working for nearly nine years to make this vision of locally grown crops reality for the hemp industry as well. It would be a positive boost to the marketplace to have hemp farmed and processed in the U.S. once again.

At least eight companies — Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, French Meadow Bakery, Hemp Oil Canada, Hemp Traders, Living Harvest, Manitoba Harvest, Merry Hempsters and Nutiva — have donated products to Vote Hemp to help educate state legislative committee members about industrial hemp so they can make intelligent and well-informed votes on the bills before them. These companies have been on the leading edge of the sustainably growing hemp food and body care markets, which is currently estimated to be $113 million a year by the Hemp Industries Association.

Hemp Advocacy

For many people the name lobbyist conjures up images of well-dressed groups of people trying to influence the decisions of legislators and government officials. Often times these images are negative ones, but it need not always be so. As constituents our elected officials should be representing us and serving our best interests. We at Vote Hemp like to refer to the work our supporters do asking their representatives to introduce hemp farming, study bills and resolutions and supporting them in the legislature as advocacy. To be an effective advocate you need to learn how the system works and where the levers of power are, as well as a well balanced knowledge of the issues surrounding industrial hemp.

An advocate should not resort to misinformation or hyperbole, obvious and intentional exaggeration, to educate people about hemp farming. All to often well-meaning hempsters end up sounding like an over the top TV commercial selling something that you don't really need, or even worse, a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. Your pitch should not sound like this: "As a hardy perennial, hemp needs no year-after-year replanting, nor pesticides or herbicides. It doesn't need water, either. Easily grown in the Sahara, hemp yields thousands of gallons of oil per acre along with tens of thousands of tons of dry matter as well. Plus, you would have to smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole to just get high. It chops, it grates, it dices, it slices, it juliennes fries in three different ways and costs only $9.95. Order before midnight tonight. Hemp, it's better than magic beans!"

It's obvious to us that these statements are not true, but to someone who does not know a lot about the subject it sounds like you are intentionally misleading them just to get a law passed. We do not want to fall into the same trap that our opponents are in by using these techniques. All too often we unintentionally end up using arguments that are the opposite of the ones that they do and since many of those arguments are disingenuous at best, what does that make ours? So, how can we do better?

The best thing to do is to read up on the issues surrounding industrial hemp. To start with we highly recommend watching the six minute video Controversial Crop from Episode 315 of America's Heartland, which is produced by KVIE in Sacramento, California. When you are done with that you should download and read the Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report Hemp as an Agricultural Commodity by Jean M. Rawson. You want the latest revision from March 23, 2007.

Next please download and read the Reason Foundation Policy Study Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition by Skaidra Smith-Heisters. You will notice that all of these documents are from third party sources. Now that you have some new found knowledge, please click > here < to write to your Representative in the U.S. House and Senate urging him or her to consider introducing a bill, or an amendment to a bill, similar to H.R. 1009, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2007.

Hemp Industries Association & TestPledge - Hemp Food Consumption Survey Please Take Five Minutes to Help the Hemp Industry

San Francisco, CA — The Hemp industries Association (HIA) and TestPledge signatory companies have developed a brief survey on hemp food consumption. The survey is intended to verify the TestPledge trace THC standards that were established several years ago for consumption of hemp foods. The goal of the TestPledge program is to ensure that hemp food consumers never fail a drug test due to hemp food consumption.

Please take five minutes and fill out the simple online survey as accurately as possible. All TestPledge signatory companies will share this information. No personal information will be collected. Please click > here < now to take the survey online.

Thank you for your help!

About the HIA

The mission of the HIA is to represent the interests of the hemp industry and to encourage the research and development of new hemp products.

The HIA and HIA Members:

* Educate the public about the exceptional attributes of hemp products
* Facilitate the exchange of information and technology between hemp agriculturists, processors, manufacturers, distributors and retailers
* Maintain and defend the integrity of hemp products
* Advocate and support socially-responsible and environmentally-sound business practices.

Web Site: http://www.thehia.org

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