Source: themercury.com.au
FARMERS are frustrated at the failure of politicians and bureaucrats to grasp their argument that industrial hemp crops are harmless.
Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association chief executive Jan Davis said that was despite the fact that industrial hemp, grown around the world for food and fibre, did not contain usable quantities of the cannabis drug.
With state and federal health ministers to soon decide if hemp seed and its oil should be allowed for use in the food industry, Ms Davis said it was recognised in most parts of the world that hemp fibre and seed crops couldn't be used as smoke screens for growing dope.
She said farmers were wondering what it would take to convince the State Government that extreme red tape, such as keeping hemp crops out of sight of public roads and 5km away from public buildings, wasn't needed.
Ms Davis said given that Tasmania's poppy industry had safely grown substances as strong as opium - a painkiller ingredient - next to main roads for the past 30 years, hemp ought to be a no-brainer.
She said the hemp industry had the potential to become a major, green earner for Tasmania.
Ms Davis said the industry faced another brick wall, with the Gillard Government hinting it would continue a Howard Government policy of not allowing hemp products to be used for food and cosmetics in Australia.
"They didn't want to be seen as soft on drugs," she said.
Australia is the only western country that bans the human consumption of non-drug hemp, which has ratio levels of Omegas 3, 6 and 9 in the most digestible form of any vegetable oil.
State Health Minister Michelle O'Byrne said the Government backed moves to remove prohibition on low-THC hemp products for food but, at a state level, a crop licensing system was important.
"Cannabis sativa is a schedule 9 drug in all states and territories, so the only way to allow growing of low-THC crops is to licence them," she said.
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