By Michael Graham Richard, Source: TreeHugger

Hemp, which is considered to be a wonder-crop by many, is now legal in Colorado. Voters not only gave the thumb up to marijuana in November, but also to its THC-light cousin. Since hemp has so many uses, from being an ingredient in many types of foods, to skin care creams and lotions, to paper, textiles, bio-plastics and building materials, biofuels, etc… It’s going to be very interesting to see how commercial production will shape up and, hopefully, how it’ll influence the mindset of the rest of the country and the world.

NPR has a great little piece about this, which you can listen to or read, and the Denver Post also weighs in on the federal-state issue:

Like marijuana, hemp is still illegal in the eyes of the feds, despite Colorado’s clear electoral mandate to legalize it.
Federal officials have said little about how they will react to Colorado’s new law. Some analysts say it’s unlikely they will target individual users, but the outlook is less certain for federal crackdowns on larger enterprises, such as farm-scale growing.Hemp backers say that would be an extreme injustice, given that hemp has no narcotic properties. But federal law does not differentiate between the cultivation of hemp and marijuana. (source)

Hopefully the feds will soon clarify their position and allow large-scale hemp cultivation, and this will turn out to be the beginning of a larger trend. After all, if hemp didn’t look like pot, it would probably be legal to grow everywhere.