Rapid City Journal, August 02, 2002
By Heidi Bell Gease, Journal Staff Writer
MANDERSON - The third time was a charm for Alex White Plume and his family as they quietly harvested their first crop of industrial hemp this week. "It really felt good," White Plume said Friday. "Just like a sense of relief."
This was the third straight year the White Plume family planted hemp on their land near Manderson. Two years in a row, federal agents confiscated the plants before they could be harvested, although the U.S. government did not file any charges against any of the White Plumes, who planned to produce and sell hemp oil and other products from the plants.
This time, family members beat government agents to the punch. They harvested most of the 3.5-acre crop Monday night. "They weren't that tall, but they were done pollinating," White Plume said. "So we took some out, we cut it and it's dried." The dried hemp already has been sold to Madison Hemp & Flax Co. of Lexington, Ky., which joined with the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association to ship a trailer full of Canadian hemp to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after the White Plumes' first crop was confiscated in 2000. That hemp was to be used for bricks in a hemp house.
Industrial hemp is a form of the cannabis sativa plant, also known as marijuana. Unlike marijuana, hemp cannot be smoked to get high. But it can be used to make everything from rope to paper to cloth to soap to animal feed, and itrequires little water. White Plume said the seeds they planted contained little or no tetrahydrocannabinol, the ingredient in marijuana that produces a "high."
FOR THE REST OF THE STORY:
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2002/August/02-2879-news08.txt
TO SEE A DETAILED ARTICLE BY MOTHER JONES MAGAZINE:
http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/pineridge_hemp.html
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