Giving the high sign

From the Associated Press for Monday:

Food products made with hemp will remain legal after the Justice Department declined to challenge a ruling that overturned a Bush administration ban, lawyers for the hemp industry said.

Monday night was the deadline for the government to challenge a federal appeals court's February decision that the United States cannot ban the domestic sale of hemp foods.

I think it can be fairly said that the true measure of fanaticism is not found in the big things, which can be driven by any combination of hope, fear, ignorance, wisdom, greed, and emotion - and any of those perhaps only in passing or the heat of the moment - but in the little things, the things that don't matter in any rational sense but which the fanatic must nonetheless control.

By that standard, the DEA's declaration three years ago that any food products intended for human consumption that contains hemp would be banned under the Controlled Substances Act is fanaticism at its purest. Hemp, you see, can contain trace amounts of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana) - so gasp! horror! people are gulp! choke! ingesting mind-altering drugs!

Of course, this had to be stopped immediately. And of course, the fact that it's not possible to get high on the tiny amounts of THC found in these foods - AP notes that more than 200 companies make such products, which include "energy bars, waffles, milk-free cheese and veggie burgers" - made no difference. Fanaticism does not recognize nuance - or even billboard-sized facts, for that matter.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put the law on hold just before the products were pulled from the shelves, allowing the industry to continue selling its hemp-food products with hemp produced in Canada and overseas while the legal battle continued.

And now the feds have thrown in the towel. Did some lonely strand of light pierce through the darkness and illuminate some logic? Or did they walk away bitterly, swearing revenge against the "fools who don't understand?" I don't know. But fortunately, walk away they did.