From the Seattle Times of Wednesday, 1/25/95--a feature article taking up 3/4 of the front page of the "Scene" section with photos..here are excerpts from the article by Mary Elizabeth Cronin titled: "HEMP IS HOT"...... A hip, mostly younger crowd is tuning in and turning on to hemp as a comfortable and environmentally clean fabric. You may know hemp by one of its aliases: cannabis sativa, marijuana, weed. But unlike the infamous leaves, hemp fabric -- produced from the stalk -- is legal tender. Go ahead and stash your hemp/cotton work shirts in your hemp canvas courier bags without paranoia -- as long as you don't try to grow your own threads. Hemp grew up, dropped the leaves and got a job in the clothing business. And in the past two years, the Pacific Northwest has become a hub for hemp clothiers; Robert E. Jungmann started Manashtash Mountain Products in Seattle last January. He now has his hemp backpacks and briefcases, hemp/Guatemalan cotton print vests and hemp/silk boxers in 40 retail outlets nationwide. Most retailers have been receptive. But when Jungmann first tried shopping his ware in the Midwest, "I got a lot of strange looks. I got the boot out of a few stores. It's not like that in Seattle." It's not a joke, man. It's an industry now. Nearly passe are novelty hemp items such as baseball caps emblazoned with a marijuana leaf and the slogan, "Don't smoke this hat," say local retailers. Rich Morrisey, formerly of the Seattle-based Generra sportswear company, plans to shop his new line of up scale 100% hemp linen shirts and hemp/silk vests and boxer shorts at the men's wear show in Las Vegas next month. The "Just Naturale" label is derived from latin and means "laws of nature." "Sort of fitting," said Morrisey, legal counsel and executive vice president of finance for Generra for nearly a decade. Last October, Morrisey stepped down after six months as chief financial officer for American Hemp Mercantile in Pioneer square to launch his own line. Hemp attracts local clothiers for some of the same reasons seafarers of yesteryear used hemp for sails. The blustery, nautical climate in Seattle is ripe for hemp clothing, proprietors say. It's a fabric both insulating and breathable, durable and water-resistant, and feels good on the skin. How good does it feel? It's all in the weave. Spun fine and woven with silk, it's soft and flowy. Combined with cotton it feels like your favorite pair of old jeans. A 100% fine weave hemp is the linen of old. "It's what linen was made from for hundreds of years before people got confused between the fabric and the drug." Morrisey said. The confusion reached a crescendo in 1937, when Congress outlawed the growing of hemp. Cannabis has been an illegal crop ever since, except for a World War II waiver to produce the fabric for military use. During that WWII hemp heyday, Kentucky was a leading producer. Last month, Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones formed a task force to study whether hemp could once again be a viable crop for Kentucky farmers, especially given the slump in the tobacco market, said jim Claycomb, the governor's administrative assistant and agricultural liaison to the Hemp Task Force. Industrial hemp, now produced in China and Eastern Europe, is harvested from the stalk. The plants, sown 4 inches apart, grow 10 to 15 feet high. Harvesters soak the stalk to loosen the fibers for the fabric. The core is ground to make particle board. Industrial hemp is grown from a type of cannabis that does not pack the punch the smoking variety does. "As we understand it, basically, what (smoking) it gives you is a sore throat and a headache," Claycomb said. Local hemp clothiers are closely watching Kentucky's first step toward legalizing industrial hemp production. Hemp cloth would cost less if it were produced domestically, said Ken Friedman, president and founder of American hemp Mercantile. He pays a Hungarian mill from $4 to $9 a yard, depending on the weave and weight of the hemp fabric. Clothing-quality cotton direct from the mill starts at 41 to $2 a yard. Friedman got into the business, indirectly, from the legal side first. Some of the clients Friedman defended as a criminal defense attorney turned him on to hemp as paper. Friedman and Hal Nelson, American Hemp vice president, searched out and set up a deal with a mill in Szeged, Hungary, and began importing paper in January 1993. By that August, the business expanded to manufacturing hemp clothing. American Hemp now has 600 wholesale clients throughout the country. American Hemp Mercantile, in the Smith Tower, was among the Pacific Northwest's first hemp clothing wholesale and retail businesses. It has become a de facto information and wholesale clearing-house for local designers and retailers. Besides it's own line of clothing, the store carries first-time designers such as Matthew Dubin, who produces snowboarding coats and baseball-style shirts out of his Olympia (Washington) home. Next month American Hemp plans to introduce a line of canvas hemp oxfords, mules and lace-up boots from Deja Shoe in Portland, Oregon. Hemp grows like the weed that it is and requires no pesticides or fertilizers. The clothiers say they want to prove the business of environmental responsibility can be profitable. "It's a selling point with the younger crowd I'm appealing to," said Dubin, a former horticulture student at Evergreen State College who turned to designing hemp clothing after his scholarship ran out last year. "One day the idea hit me: I should do something with hemp," said Dubin, who calls himself "a cottage-industry type of a guy." many of the local clothiers have just, or are nearly, finished with college. That group includes Dubin, Jungmann, Hemp Textiles International wholesalers, Yitzac Goldstein and Robert R. Gould in Bellingham (Washington), and Cory Brown of the Fremont Hemp Co. Brown used college term papers to research his niche in the hemp business. He is nine credits short of receiving a marketing degree from the university of Washington, but he already has a retail store, the Fremont Hemp Co., which he opened with partner Erica Karson in November. I discovered that retailers couldn't keep up with the demand for the product," Brown said... * OLX 2.1 TD * ..What we got here is an ability to communicate.. ___ Olms 1.60 [PSTB94B4] --- Gecho/RA/USR-V.34 * Origin: (1:343/70)