HARSH RESULTS

HARSH RESULTS: So are all you cannabis users- whether medical or recreational- thrilled at the news that an industrial hemp research pilot program (HB154 HD2) has passed the Hawai`i state house and is headed to the senate?

If so, you probably don't know Jack- or Jane as the case may be- about what makes your reefer "da kine" as opposed to that cough-producing ditch-weed your parents and grandparents gave up on 50 years ago.

The myth is that they grew up and simply stopped "experimenting" with pot. But the reality is that they got tired of coughing their heads off and at best, after six joints, maybe experiencing a slightly altered consciousness and at worst winding up with a splitting headache.

That's before the "experts"- many of them continuing their then-outdoor experimentation right here on Kaua`i (as well as on Maui and Hawai`i Island)- started pulling out the male plants leaving only the sticky, gooey, seedless females and began to breed out the fiber and breed in the ever-increasing levels of THC... until it took only a puff or two to attain real results, whether medicinal or otherwise.

The fact is that, as with all organisms that breed with each other, eventually there's only going to be room for one "kine."

Once the pollen from that state-grown "hemp" starts wafting across the street and sprinkling it's fiber-producing fairy-dust all over your little victory garden it will spell the end of that sweet, special breed of cannabis that you've come to know, love and, in many cases, depend on for your continued health.

As plants are wont to do, the male flowers that cannabis users shun will be busy doing their "birds and the bees" thing willy-nilley and will not only be fertilizing your beautiful sensimillia causing it to "go to seed," but the seeds it creates will be the progenitor of that useless stuff that used to grow down by the railroad tracks.

If you're celebrating the state's interest in planting hemp on all the old cane lands, you are also celebrating the end of efforts to decriminalize home-grown marijuana- not because a bill to do that wouldn't pass the legislature but because it'll permanently turn your back-yard stash of resiny bud into a pile of industrial textiles.

The moral? Be careful what you wish for until you've figured out exactly what it is you you want. It's rope vs. dope out there and only one will survive.