Throughout many areas of the United States a small, slender plant can be found growing in the wild. It is commonly referred to as hemp. Hemp is a plant that comes from the Cannabis sativa family. Hemp looks strikingly similar to marijuana and can very easily be mistaken for it, but these two plants are far from being the same. The major difference between the two is that hemp contains no chemicals that produce the same euphoric effect produced by marijuana. The plants growing in the wild are the descendants of those that at one time were grown in abundance on many farms. For generations hemp has been grown, cultivated and processed into many useful products in the United States. The uses for hemp were numerous and the profit from this crop was higher then that of most other cash crops. Today, in the United States growing hemp is illegal in almost every state. The possibility of reintroducing hemp cultivation in the United States is something that is now being debated in several state legislatures and in the United States Congress. There is a rather large movement pushing for the repeal of laws that prevent this crop from being grown.

Hemp cultivation cannot and should no

The solution to this problem is the introduction of bio-engineered seeds that would be THC free. Currently, many corporate seed producers are developing seeds that are identical to present seeds, but they do not contain the THC component. In a few years this will solve the issue of drug testing. Once the trace amounts of THC are removed from industrial hemp, then hemp will have no effect on drug testing. With the technology to genetically alter and form new types of hemp there must be a way to alter the appearance of the plant. If the appearance can be altered in some way to make it look less like marijuana, then law enforcement agencies across the country will have an easier time tracking marijuana verses losing time over false identifications.

With so many alternatives to hemp and so few demands, should it be cultivated and then used in food products that would render drug tests useless? In today's society almost every business relies on drug testing to screen potential employees who may have a drug problem. Testing applicants and then continuing with periodic testing can be costly for the business, but in the long run keeps individuals with drug addictions from hurting themselves or others on the job. If hemp is used in foods, then present methods of testing for THC would be useless. Trace amounts of THC would be found in people who ate these products. The group that uses marijuana would be able to blame the positive test results on edible hemp products.

In this case, the THC content was 0.0014%. Marijuana contains anywhere between 4 to 20%. 0.0014% is a small amount, too small to have any narcotic or psychoactive value, but a spokesperson for the DEA made the point that these seeds could be used to produce foods that, when consumed, would cause drug tests to show the presence of THC. He raised an interesting question: "What happens to the people who are using hemp oil to cook and THC turns up in their drug test?" (Clark 86). This is a great question.

If these tests were rendered useless then millions of dollars would have to be spent in order to develop new methods of testing. If testing became more costly then many companies could go out of business or even abandon drug testing altogether. Does having the right to cook with hemp seed oil justify destroying the reliability of a test that makes the workplace a safer environment for millions in the United States?

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Approximate Word count = 1959
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)