Hemp, Hemp, Hooray. Rolling Stone, April 1995, by Chuck Dean.
In grassroots America, the buzz is that products made from hemp, marijuana’s funky fun cousin, are dope — er, we mean hip.
“There’s more of a market than can be satisfied right now,” says Mari Kane, editor of Hemp World magazine. Made using imported hemp fibers or sterilized seeds (it’s illegal to grow the stuff in the U.S.), hemp products include all sorts of clothing (even sandals), cosmetics, paper, building supplies, and food products like hemp beer, hemp (not ice) cream and even hemp (not beef) burgers.
“People think it has to do with drugs,” says Richard Rose, 38, founder of a California company called Sharon’s Finest (phone: 800-NJOY NOW), which offers a low-fat, “barely legal” cheese alternative called HempRella.
“It’s as much about drugs as poppy-seed bagels are about opium or Coca-Cola is about cocaine. Hemp is rope, not dope. It’s the temperate climate strain of Cannabis that is high in fiber and low in THC.”
In other words, don’t bother smoking this cheese, brother.
