DON'T GET SUCKED IN BY HEMP-LACED FOODS

Kudos to Georgia state senators who voted in favor of a bill to
prevent the sale of marijuana-flavored candy. Members of the
Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee realized that the
availability of hemp candy on store shelves is harmful to our
children and undermines Georgia's anti-drug laws.

Senate Bill 511, which did not win final legislative approval this
year, only scratched the surface. Next session's bill must be more protective.

Hemp is low-potency cannabis, i.e., marijuana. Hemp products are
being freely sold to anyone who walks into certain specialty food
stores. These stores carry items such as cereals, salad dressings,
protein powers and dietary supplements that contain small amounts of
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a hallucinogenic substance. Anyone with a
credit card can go online to purchase these same products.

The sale -- and marketing -- of hemp food products raises several
concerns. First, medical research tells us that even low levels of
THC can build up in the body's tissues, posing particular health
risks, including nerve impairment and hormone disruption, to
developing fetuses, young children and teenagers.

Second, any drug prevention message could easily get lost on young
people if they think it is OK to buy cannabis products at a grocery
store or online. Children are already experimenting with marijuana at
a young age. According to a 2004 University of Michigan study, 16
percent of eighth-graders, 35 percent of 10th-graders and 46 percent
of 12th-graders have admitted to using marijuana at least once during
their lifetimes.

Third, efforts at random drug testing can be circumvented. High
school students who undergo drug tests, for instance, or the nation's
12 million safety-sensitive transportation employees who likewise
undergo drug screenings, can defend a positive drug test by claiming
ingestion of one of these hemp products. Several scientific studies
(one of which is published in the Journal of Toxicology,) have shown
that eating hemp foods can cause positive results in urine specimens.

Fourth, permitting foods that contain hemp to be marketed, sold and
consumed in the United States creates a slippery slope to the
dissolution of our nation's anti-drug laws. The Congressional
Research Service has reported that the pro-hemp movement is spurred
by drug legalization advocates, including Jack Herrer and High Times
magazine. These advocates argue that if hemp can be marketed, sold
and consumed in the United States, it should be cultivated in the
United States. Where low-potency cannabis may be grown as hemp,
high-potency cannabis can also be grown as a drug of abuse.

Public officials at all levels of government play a role in reducing
the availability of cannabis in the United States. At the national
level, the Food and Drug Administration must strictly enforce the
current laws on the books; companies that include hemp in their food
products are in direct violation of FDA regulations. At the state and
local levels, willing legislative bodies, like the Georgia Senate,
should adopt more thoroughly protective bills that ban all cannabis
plant derivatives from grocery store shelves.

If no action is taken, we as a society, it seems, are implicitly
endorsing the sale of cannabis and effectively rendering our nation's
drug laws obsolete. This is not the way to protect our children from
the harms of drug use.