Hemp

Like a bloodhound, Gira Balistreri is racing through the palatial Whole Foods Market in El Segundo, sniffing out some of her favorite foods. A new employee at the 65,000-square-foot flagship store, she goes directly to several shelves of hemp shakes and snacks, then trots over to tidy rows of hemp butter and oil, then rushes down an aisle and snaps up a fresh package of hemp tortillas on her way to the hemp bars, hemp bread and hemp bagels.

AB 1147 is not the biggest bill of this legislative session, but it is one of the most intriguing -- and most fun. Start with its purpose: to legalize the growing of hemp, a cousin of marijuana -- both members of the notorious cannabis family. Then proceed to the bill's \o7joint \f7authors, a pun that's unavoidable. One is a liberal San Francisco Democrat, Assemblyman Mark Leno; the other a conservative Irvine Republican, Chuck DeVore.

I loved your article on hemp as a food source ["Soy's New Competition: Hemp," May 14], but you failed to mention that hemp doesn't have seeds per se. They are more correctly identified as an achene, which is defined as: A small, dry, indehiscent one-seeded fruit with a thin wall, as in the sunflower. I hope to see more articles on this very good source of food and nutrition. JEFF JONES \o7Los Angeles \f7

From the virtuous buzz about Akasha -- green building materials, organic produce, Fair Trade coffee, waiters in hemp aprons and organic cotton jeans -- I pictured the new Culver City restaurant from chef Akasha Richmond as a funky cafe filled with Ed Begley Jr.-types, their bicycles tied up just outside the door. But it turns out Akasha is nothing like that. First of all, it's a great-looking place with a distinctly urban vibe. The huge loft-like space features enormous arched windows looking onto Culver Boulevard, bare brick walls and an inviting long stretch of bar serving up blood orange margaritas, among other libations.

The City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday banning the sale of marijuana-flavored lollipops, gumdrops and other treats, becoming the first major city to prohibit the confections that have appeared in convenience stores nationwide. The candies are legal because they are made with hemp oil, an ingredient used in health foods and some household products. The oil imparts marijuana's grassy taste but not the high.

An Australian architect is having a house built from hemp, the botanical relative of cannabis, and is harvesting 2.5 million plants that will be ground up and used to make bricks. The hemp bricks are said to have better insulating qualities than traditional ones. The hemp used has a low level of THC, the active chemical in marijuana.

On an otherwise unremarkable day nearly 30 years ago, in a San Fernando Valley head shop, an ordinary man on LSD had an epiphany. The one thing that could save the world, it came to him, was hemp. Thunderbolts come cheap on LSD, but this one looked good to Jack Herer even after his head cleared. The world needed relief from its addiction to oil and petrochemicals. From deforestation and malnutrition. From dirty fuels, sooty air, exhausted soils and pesticides.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday rejected a government effort to ban the sale of bread, protein powders and other food products made from hemp, the psychoactively benign botanical cousin of marijuana. The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals undercuts a dogged attempt to halt domestic consumption of hemp launched by the Drug Enforcement Administration in October 2001.

The hemp food industry declared victory Monday in its three-year battle over the federal government's effort to ban sales and consumption of bread, protein powders and other food products made from the psychoactively benign botanical cousin of marijuana. Federal officials declined to appeal a February ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the Drug Enforcement Administration's attempts to block sales and consumption of hemp foods. "It's a great legal victory," said John W.

They're nutritious, full of fiber -- and nearly impossible to keep lit. Yet because cereals, snack bars and other foods made with hempseed and hemp oil contain trace amounts of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, the Bush administration has been trying to ban these products -- increasingly popular with health enthusiasts -- for about a year. But the products will remain on retailers' shelves for now after a U.S.