The Penn State communications department ranks second to Michigan State, its agriculture department is sixth in the nation. Its Alumni Association is second in size to only the University of Illinois. All Big Ten schools of which Joe Paterno's team is conference champ, many with big agriculture industries. And we all know the Rodham-Clinton connection that played Old Main's lawn so well in 1992's first Democrat plurality in pastoral Centre County since 1944.

At least three other Big Ten university towns have marijuana control ordinances that treat "simple possession" in public as a traffic or nuisance violation. No prints, mug shots, bail hearings, jail cells or threats of any subsequent university disciplinary action.

A "ticketable" offense that carries from $25 to $100 fines for "up-to-an-ounce." Sen. Jacob Javitts' (R-N.Y.) famed "magic ounce" which the Presidential Commission recommended to be a national policy. Pac-10 Berkeley, long a den of youthful political and social activism three decades after the Free Speech Movement, also has a minimal-fine solution as a workable social policy for "college experimentation." True, some of these ordinances came as a result of Initiative Referenda at the ballot-box while others have withstood puritanical attempts to rescind them in the same manner. Others were the craftsmanship of conscientious elected officials decades ago, and have proven their social worth over time.

Perhaps with a moderate Republican candidate whose tenure as Philadelphia's district attorney brought about the first in the nation ARD (record expungement) program for young and first-time small amount drug busts on record supporting hemp for agriculture in a state where it is still the No. 1 industry, we could expect responses from all the presidential candidates of both major parties and their platform committees concerning the most important economic and environmentally sound industry. If only the media would ask.

Certainly the very first time that this issue might be broached by the 104th Congrees and the Clinton administration is the upcoming confirmation hearings for former Kansas Democratic Congressman Daniel Glickman (D-Kan.) as secretary of agriculture.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) could use this unique chance to guide the public debate in this matter. Let us use this opportunity to separate the hemp question from the anti-Prohibitionist's compassionate "medicalization debate" and the civil libertarians' constitutional "privatization arguments" once and for all.

We have been saying "Hemp: It's an industry, Stupid" for two years here in Pennsylvania and now that numerous Congress members are fax and e-mail-connected it is our time to produce a steady trickle of data, statistics and arguments that support the President's Executive Order June 6, 1994 (EO129-19) that apparently restores hemp to the nation's strategic materials reserves and authorizes various Cabinet secretaries to guarantee that preservation and development of just such an industry in the nation's "war and peacetime" best interest.

May we suggest that you e-mail the congressional members, key senators, especially those on the Agriculture Committee or who are, or are thought to be, interested in running for the presidency in 1996 that you feel you might get or want a response from regarding this matter and fax a copy to us here at the American Drug History Institute so that we may compile a "constituency response" record for this first in the nation e-blitz call of campaign 1996! It's never been done before in quite this mode or on this scale.

We are hoping to get a quantitative and qualitative response to this request and are in the hopes that the arguments will be persuasive enough and of a caliber to convince the mass media and Washington establishment that this is serious. We mean business! Not likely to go away. And call for your help now. "HEMP-HEMP-HOORAY!"