Agriculture is still No. 1 here in the Commonwealth. Hemp has a long and much honored economic and historical place in Pennsylvania's early development.

One need not be a "rocket scientist" or visit the Anslinger Papers at the Pattee Labor Archives to know the difference between a "toke of pot" for the head and "a poke of rope" for thread.

If knowledgeable students at just the Big Ten/Pac-10 universities were to hop on the Infobahn in the next weeks an issue and e-mail/fax-in/fone-tree/call-in establishing a back channel to the White House on these matters as herein described, we could be responsible for singularly/together "upgrading" the "Drug War" debate dilemma, separating the agriculture (non-drug) aspects of the public misconceptions over marijuana, and force the administration to take the "high road" (pun intended) in the public debate over marijuana for the "terminally ill" and "addiction interruption" or dosage reduction and medical maintenance treatments in the process. No slight feat in itself.

A few minutes at your laptop, a few notes in your local well, a call to a fone-person, a talk-show host, a TV assignment editor, a letter to the editor, an inquiry to a wire service, or a fax to Vice President Al Gore, Sens. Patrick Leahy and Tom Harkin, or Chairman Richard Lugar's offices today, tomorrow, over the weekend and soon there might be hundreds of citizens taking the initiative over this issue.

Our motto: "Hemp: It's an industry! Stupid."