[420 Girl]

In light of Gov. Chris Gregoire's ambition to raise some cash with more state liquor stores, we the people are wondering if government-run booze shops are the way to go. Not only is there a calling to open more state-run liquor stores, the governor wants to have nine more stores open on Sundays as well as allowing stores to remain open on seven holidays -- because who doesn't like to bend the old elbow on Presidents Day?

Along with new stores, why not take alcohol sales on the road? The Washington State Liquor Control Board could employ a fleet of electric Tipple Trucks emblazoned with the state seal that makes the rounds through city neighborhoods while playing a jaunty calliope version of "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" with giant mechanical heads of Gregoire rotating on top.

Adults would run out of their homes with their cash in hand, chasing the Tipple Truck up the street screaming, "Wait! Wait!" and dissolving into tears when the opportunity is missed and the truck disappears off into the distance never to be seen again. Until the next day.

When I visit my home state of California I can always count on doing a slight double take at the supermarkets where large family-sized jugs of hard liquor sit near the checkout stands as an impulse item. If grocery stores here sold booze, a typical grocery list might read something like this:

milk

bread

vodka

peanut butter

tequila

lemons/limes

salt

If the state boosts the availability of hard liquor, it mustn't forget to fortify the public health system. Mobile on-site clinics stationed at liquor store parking lots would be a start.

But if anything could generate a killer revenue stream, the cultivating and selling of cannabis would. Look at the models. Call some experts in for a meeting. The time is right. There are plenty of unemployed and soon-to-be unemployed people who would harvest for the state. After all, one doesn't have to smoke the stuff to enjoy the mind-altering benefits it offers. I've never heard of a good vodka brownie. But although it has been deemed legal and socially acceptable to drink something that alters your reality, it remains a super-sin to smoke something that produces similar effects -- unless that something is tobacco. So instead of visualizing packs of joints at Costco, imagine what life might be like if we were able to remove the legislative ties that bind the ability to produce industrial hemp.

Industrial hemp products and smokable cannabis are scientifically different and are cultivated in very different ways. Hemp was the crop that produced the fiber that was a major thorn in our Paper Daddy's (William Randolph Hearst) side for a long time. The history is a bit twisty but I'm going to give it a go:

Back in the mid-1930s, industrial hemp production was run under the guidance and oversight of the Department of Agriculture. It is well and widely documented that the cost-effective production methods and multi-use of the annually renewing crop threatened Hearst's financial interest in timber and pulp mills. Because hemp fiber was becoming a viable source of sturdy fabric as well as an option to plastics, the mighty DuPont chemical company also was threatened.

A Federal Bureau of Narcotics supported Hearst, and his media network was able to generate a slanderous and racist demonizing of cannabis, which has been maintained by our government.

Could the modern Hearst Corp. invest in acreage and sponsor a hemp farm and be the first daily printed on hemp? Could Gregoire restore oversight of hemp production to the state Department of Agriculture? They are supposed to protect the state's resources and agriculture industry.

I say let's grow the economy with fields of hemp; let's put our unemployed to work in factories and hemp-pulp mills; let's use our brainy eco-tech geeks to make it happen in an Earth-friendly way.

Whether the plant is harvested for medical, industrial or personal use, the industries it creates could be the Green Stimulus plan our state needs.

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