CAN WE HAVE ROPE WITHOUT DOPE?

PLANT WIZARDS FIGHT WARTIME DRUG PERIL

We need hemp – lots of it – for cordage, but hemp means marijuana, too.

Can scientists take the drug menace out of this useful plant?

Co-operating with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American farmers will produce 75,000 tons of hemp fiber this year, and probably more than twice as much in 1944. The record-shattering crops will replace Manila fiber from the Philippines and sisal from the Dutch East Indies, which are now cut off by the war.

The result will be a boon to users of cordage – and a headache for law-enforcement officers. A Jekyll-and-Hyde plant, hemp provides twine and rope urgently needed for military purposes. But it also yields marijuana, a drug that makes depraved creatures of its addicts. What can be done to keep these enormous new supplies, from which there almost inevitably will be “leaks,” out of their twitching hands?

Twitching hands? I’ll concede that I’m depraved but pot has NEVER made ny hands twitch!