In 2009, walking into the Capitol, Ben Droz was stopped and almost arrested for possessing legal hemp products. The next day Droz delivered releases to the Press Chambers.
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON STOUT
Ben Droz, a legislative assistant for the hemp products industry advocacy group Vote Hemp, was walking through the U.S. Capitol on the way to a series of meetings with Hill staffers on the afternoon of Aug. 11 when he was stopped at an inspection point by Capitol police. They'd run his belongings through the X-ray machine and had one question: What exactly was he carrying in his shoulder bag? Given where he works, the answer should be obvious: hemp. Specifically, he was carrying samples of industrial hemp, the non-narcotic cousin of marijuana. Droz had a variety of hemp products in his bag – hemp seeds (which make good snacks or salad toppers, for example) and hemp fibers (both the long bast fibers, good for making textiles, and the inner, woody hurd fibers, which are good for making certain kinds of paper products).