Source: stormlakepilottribune.com
An Iowa hemp activist is bringing his campaign for legalized hemp farming to Storm Lake next month. "I don't want to do it by smoking a joint on the steps of the State Capital," said Boris Shcharansky, proprietor of Heartland Hemp and spokesperson for the fledgling Iowa Hemp Association based in Urbandale.
Shcharansky calls his campaign "Cultivating Opportunity," and hopes to meet with farmers, people interested in medicinal cannabidol oil extract, and even law enforcement in a town hall setting. The meeting will be August 23, with a site and time still to be determined.
He lobbied the legislature last session, and succeeded in getting nonpartisan bills proposed in each house to make it legal to cultivate hemp plants in Iowa, but the political leaders "dragged their feet" and the issue ultimately died, he said.
Shcharansky hopes interest from the public in places like Storm Lake will be more successful. "Education is the only answer," he said.
He said he has seen the difference cannabidol, a non-psychoactive component of the marijuana plant, can make in the lives of seriously ill people.
One Storm Lake man who encouraged him to bring one of his first meetings on the issue to this community, is also a believer. He said his became aware of the issue after his very young daughter suffered a seizure disorder, and the family had to search for medicinal relief.
"I about decided to move to Colorado to be able to access cannabidol, because it doesn't have the side effects that the available drugs have," the man said. The little girl has since become seizure-free and will not need the medication, but the father hopes the option becomes available for others in need.
The issue has just gotten a boost from an unexpected corner - steadfast Republican Charles Grassley. Grassley who joined Democrat Dianne Feinstein from California to file a request for the Justice Department to study the potential medical benefits of cannabidol. "The analysis is long overdue," he said. "Streamlining the research process... will bring us closer to understanding the potential medical value of this substance for thousands of children with intractable epilepsy and other debilitating conditions."
While the Storm Lake town hall will touch on medicinal potential, Shcharansky is pumping hemp as an alternative cash crop for the Iowa economy.
His company is involved in finding all the potential uses for the plant - all of which can be realized without the state approving the controversial recreational use of the drug. "Nobody is smoking this plant," he says.
The hemp plant offers three revenue streams in one, he says. The seed has high value to the health food and beauty product industries - the "low hanging fruit" for those who would farm the crop, he feels. The seed cake byproduct from these operations can be used for animal feed and is sought after by the makers of protein powders, who now are forced to buy the material from Canadian or European suppliers where growing hemp is legal.
Oil from the plant has tremendous application for biodiesel fuel, he believes. The stalk is very fibrous, and more research is needed into its applications, but Shcharansky plans to build his own house out of pressed hemp, which also makes good insulation, paper products and base material for diapers. It can be used in fabrics for clothing, and in some food products. It can be converted to sugar for ethanol or the alcohol industry. The flower of the plant can be used for various medicinal products.
"It's a treasure trove. Compared to corn and soy, the profit is there," he said, adding that he believes legalized hemp would be a small-scale farming operation, and would never replace the vast fields of corn and soybeans.
Iowa has an ideal climate for hemp, in fact, he says, he recently took a picture of himself with a wild ditch plant he found that was seven feet tall by June. The plant was successfully grown as a cash crop in the state into the 1940s, and requires little or no pesticide because it outgrows the weeds, he suggests.
"We're falling behind on this opportunity. Other parts of the world farm help legally. Few people realize that Colorado has been developing processes for using the other parts of the plants they are growing for recreational marijuana. This is a field Iowa could have pioneered - we have state universities that have been the leaders in developing product uses for corn and soybeans, but we have ignored the economic potential for hemp."
The problem is separating the image of hemp as a flexible, potentially profitable crop, from the image of marijuana as an illegal drug.
"People tend to just get further entrenched in their corners. Hemp has always been around as a subculture as marijuana, and that has really been a detriment to this plant. It has been associated with a certain type of person. If you can sit down and talk to people, maybe you can begin to change that," Shcharansky said.
The recent Iowa Hempfest in Des Moines was one step in the process of separating hemp from marijuana.
Shcharansky personally is an advocate for medicinal use of marijuana, and realizes that may make it difficult for some to separate his advocacy for non-psychoactive use of hemp as a crop.
"I just hope to make people comfortable in discussing the topics. I'm not going to tell anyone that cannabis is going to cure everything."
He has already found at least one high-profile ally. Meeting with Willie Nelson at a recent concert stop in Cedar Rapids, Nelson signed a guitar made from pressed hemp, which will be available to view at the Storm Lake meeting.
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