No, I'm Not Using Slang. It Really Is Tea.

Jacob Sullum | March 4, 2009, 3:17pm
According to a new report (PDF) sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project, field tests commonly used by police to identify marijuana and other drugs yield false positives in response to a variety of legal substances, resulting in the arrest and detention of innocent people. Worse, "millions of people have been, and continue to be, prosecuted and convicted of marijuana charges without proof that they possessed marijuana." The author, forensic drug expert John Kelly, says an investigation he conducted in collaboration with former FBI scientist Frederic Whitehurst "reveals a drug testing regime of fraudulent forensics used by police, prosecutors, and judges which abrogates every American's Constitutional rights."
Some of the cases Kelly cites may ring a bell. In April 2007, for instance, the NarcoPouch 928 drug test kit falsely fingered Don Bolles, drummer for the punk band The Germs, for GHB possession, reacting to a sample of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. "Subsequent testing," Kelly notes, "found that a wide variety of natural soaps as well as soy milk test positive for GHB." In August 2008, Ron Obadia and Nadine Artemis were detained at Toronto International Airport en route to the U.S. because the Duquenois-Levine color chemical test indicated that the raw chocolate they carried contained hashish. "Subsequent lab testing proved there was no hashish in the chocolate," Kelly writes. "They were released but stuck with a $20,000 legal bill." The same thing happened again the following month.
According to Kelly, "millions of people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted of marijuana charges on the basis of the Duquenois-Levine (D-L) color chemical test, both with and without a microscopic exam." Experiments with the D-L test described at the end of the report found that "patchouli, spearmint, and eucalyptus tested positive for marijuana, while lavender, cypress, and oregano (which previous studies showed produced false positives with the D-L test) gave inconclusive results." In tests using just the NarcoPouch KN Reagent kit, 33 of 42 substances—including vanilla, anise, chicory, and peppermint—tested positive for cannabis.
Nick Gillespie noted the Bolles case in 2007.

Licensed Hemp Farmers Heard by U.S. Court of Appeals

Farmer Dave Monson, a Republican representative in the North Dakota Legislature, says the variety of the cannabis sativa plant grown as hemp is an ideal crop to rotate annually with wheat and barley.

Canadian farmers 20 miles north of his Osnabrock farm do a brisk business selling their hemp to Detroit carmakers who use it inside door panels and for insulation in seats, he says.

Monson says the hemp has no value as a drug because it has a low concentration of THC, the ingredient in marijuana that causes a high.

Hemp fibers, oil and seed can be imported from Canada, Europe and Asia and used to manufacture products in the USA, but growing hemp in the USA is illegal, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says.

"The level of THC in the plant doesn't matter. If there's any THC in the plant, it's illegal," DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney says. "To get those pieces of stalk that are legal, you have to grow a marijuana plant."

David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps in Escondido, Calif., says he spends more than $100,000 a year to import hemp oil from Canada for his soaps, lip balms and lotions.

"I think the market has explosive potential," Bronner says. "As soon as hemp goes into the ground here, it'll be a massive boost. If you look at Canada, where they don't have this draconian, absurd drug policy, there's mass penetration of hemp into the market."

The farmers sued the DEA in June 2007. They are backed by the North Dakota Legislature, Gov. John Hoeven, a Republican, and the state agriculture department. In 1999, the Legislature passed a law allowing farmers to grow hemp, and a licensing process was finalized in December 2006, Monson says.

On Nov. 28, 2007, U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in Bismarck, N.D., dismissed the case.

The farmers appealed, hoping for a ruling that hemp "is not subject to regulation by the DEA and that our farmers aren't going to be charged with a crime," says Tim Purdon, a Bismarck lawyer who represents the farmers.

"It's really frustrating for these farmers to look across the border and see Canadian farmers growing it and making a living from it," he says.

The district judge should not have dismissed the case without hearing evidence about the differences between hemp and marijuana, adds Washington lawyer Joe Sandler, who will argue the farmers' case before the appeals court.

The lawsuit is funded by Vote Hemp, a Washington lobbying group that seeks to legalize hemp farming. The group has spent about $100,000 on the lawsuit, says spokesman Adam Eidinger.

Wayne Hauge, the other farmer who brought the lawsuit, says farming hemp won't lead to legalizing marijuana.

"I personally have never smoked marijuana and don't want to," says Hauge, whose Ray, N.D., farm is about 60 miles from the Canadian border in the western part of the state.

"That's a different agenda. I want to grow this crop for its economic value."

Throughout October we're having a 15% Off Shoes Sale!

Come in and get your feet ready for fall with some brand new hemp kicks!

The Simple Shoe Styles included will be:

Women's:
GT Jane
Avocatoe
Toepaz

Men's:
Sno Tire (Black)
Sno Tire (Natural)
Sno Tire (Charcoal)

Also Hemp Sisters:
Hemp Recycled Boots

You can find more information and see 360* views of the Simple Shoes at their website.

Listen as Adam Eidinger explains his first hand account of the "Night of Terror"

Adam Eidinger Reporting

There have been at least four armed (guns drawn) police raids on activist homes in the Twin Cities this morning-on top of last night's armed raids on a home where a meeting was in progress and on the Convergence space.

Cesar Maxit Detained in China

CHINA

Security tightens as Olympics open

Western China tense after militant threats; Americans detained in Beijing for protesting.

By William Foreman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, August 09, 2008

YINING, China — Security forces squeezed their grip on China a notch tighter Friday for the start of the Olympics, edging up restrictions in the capital and imposing much tougher ones in a restive Muslim area in the country's far west.

The Beijing Games' glittering curtain raiser went off without any obvious signs of trouble, a day after a Muslim group seeking independence for China's Xinjiang province threatened to attack buses, trains and planes during the two-week competition.

In Beijing, authorities closed streets and iconic Tiananmen Square for most of the day as President Hu Jintao hosted dozens of world leaders at a luncheon in the adjacent Great Hall of the People. Motorcades later sped the dignitaries, including President Bush, to the main Olympic stadium for the evening ceremony.

The square reopened, and thousands flooded in to watch a fireworks show after the ceremony, hemmed into designated areas by armed police. Hundreds of celebrating Chinese who gathered outside the stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, were also ringed by police.

Three Americans were detained Friday after trying to protest near the entrance to the Bird's Nest just an hour before the games' opening ceremony, according to a pro-Tibet group.

Three men — Jonathan Stribling, 27, of Oakland, Calif., Kalaya'an Mendoza, 29, of New York and Cesar Maxit, 32, of Washington, D.C. — displayed Tibetan flags just before the ceremony began, according to Students for a Free Tibet.

Photos posted on the New York-based group's Web site showed police officers grabbing two protesters who were waving Tibetan flags. Theother man, draped in a Tibetan flag, was on the ground with two officers on top of him.

Authorities this week deported at least seven foreigners for protesting. Three Americans — Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Brandi Swindell and Mike McMonagle — were sent back to Los Angeles after unfurling a banner that read "Jesus Christ is king" in Tiananmen Square for two consecutive days, criticizing China's handling of issues such as abortions.

Another group of activists was deported to San Francisco and Germany on Thursday — a day after putting up "Free Tibet" banners on lamp poles outside the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing.

On the other side of China, near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, anti-terrorism police patrolled towns in Xinjiang province.

In Yining, the site of a major protest in 1997 calling for Xinjiang's independence, streets were eerily empty and most shops were closed during the opening ceremony. The few people on the sidewalks wore arm bands that said "safety inspection personnel." Some held black, rubber riot clubs.

Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur minority that has long had difficult relations with the central government, has been on edge since an attack Monday by two men who killed 16 border police and wounded 16 others.

On Thursday, a video purportedly made by the Turkistan Islamic Party, a militant group seeking independence for Xinjiang, was released and threatened attacks during the Olympics.

At a shopping plaza in Urumqi, one Uighur businessman who would only identify himself as Kurban, said he didn't support violence and valued his relationship with Han Chinese, the nation's ethnic majority. He said he also sympathized with rural Uighurs who live in poverty and repression.

"The countryside is tense and very poor," he said. "But if I talk about them anymore, the police will come and take me away."

That shirt our mannequin Scarlett is wearing is the brand new 100% Hemp T-Shirt by Jung Maven.  Hemp has been known for years for its rough feel and the stigma that you have to be a hippie to wear anything made from hemp.  Lately, more and more clothing companies are taking advantage of the wonder crop known as hemp and have begun to fashion hemp products that rival anything at American Apparel or the like.

The new shirts are the softest hemp products (I'll even go as far as to say the softest shirts on the market now) any of us at Capitol Hemp have felt and we would like to pass them on to you.  If you come in this week the shirts will cost you $17.50, based on our August Super Sale and Tax Free Week!

So swing on by and grab a shirt you won't be disappointed.

Today marks the beginning of our month long Summer Clear Out Sale.  In order to have room for all of our Fall and Winter Hemp Collections we need to sell the Summer styles quick!  So whenever you come into Capitol Hemp in August  just know all of the clothing will be 30% off!  So swing on by, hang around and pick up a new Hemp jean skirt or some 100% Hemp slacks, whatever! It's all 30% OFF!