residents from 1955-1998 until the plant relocated overseas after being purchased by Berkshire Hathaway, resulting in the layoff of 812 employees).
The illegalization of hemp didn’t disrupt the economy at the time. Truth be told, hemp agriculture had already been declining since the passing of the 1938 Marihuana Tax Act. This one political action impaired the cannabis industry indefinitely. The Marihuana Tax Act instituted federal regulation that penalized hemp farmers who didn’t have a federal stamp. The only catch was this: the federal government never printed any stamps.
I, also, shared my grandfather’s irritation about his hemp rope being outlawed, although I had my own grievances altogether. All my lil’ lungs cared for—after an entire day of choking on glass dust—was whether or not I would, too, experience what these sailors had: a light-headed, silly acting, hemp high. So my little hands started working a little harder that day. I cut and grinded glass precariously fast. Luckily, I avoided making any mistakes.
When my chores were done, I cut several inches of grandfather’s hemp rope when he wasn’t looking. Filling my lungs with fresh country air, I sucked my gut and holstered the tether inside the waistband of my blue jeans. I was off. I ran into the verdant country terrain like the feral animal I was. Passing familiar landmarks, I hollered towards the homes of the hooligans. I whooped so loud every fenced-up dog began crowing along with me. I smiled, menacingly, when I heard the cacophony of spring-loaded backdoors whiplash behind the boys eager to answer my call. They all skidded to a stop when reaching our thicket hideout. Awaiting them was a 100 percent hemp-rope-rolled-joint. Their mischievous eyes darted from mine, to the joint, then back to mine. Pavlov would’ve had a field day studying these salivating wildebeests.
But no one was more eager than I. I took the first drag, methodically—like a champ. And, before I exhaled, I learned a very powerful lesson: you can’t get high from hemp. You only cough. A lot! Except for very irritable lungs, nothing happened. No marijuana high—I can guarantee YOU that! I felt so rejected I barely noticed the other boys kneeling over laughing at my expense. Even after witnessing me hack up a lung, the other boys didn’t hesitate to take drags too. Like a chipped tooth choir, all the boys coughed out of melody. The experience was very sobering. I got the brunt of the jests for the next few weeks; never again did I attempt to smoke hemp rope.
As I grow older, this experience has stuck with me. Now and then, I’ll reflect back to my first experience with industrial hemp—especially when others debate whether hemp and marijuana are the same thing. What people are still figuring out today, I already knew at age twelve in 1962.
Turner Heads
In 1996, a middle-aged Craig Lee was becoming a fixture at Kentucky’s county fairs. The county fairs are where the grassroots hold firm—a place where a vagabond hemp activist could reach people that normally, otherwise, couldn’t be reached.
I met and talked with people for hours, educating them on the virtues of hemp cultivation. I did so while representing the Kentucky Hemp Museum & Library, an initiative by the Kentucky Hemp Growers Association and Cooperative (KHGAC). I was a founding member of the hemp farmer cooperative and was, more or less, in charge of their guerrilla marketing. I wasn’t afraid to beat my chest and stand out. Advocacy is all about sharing ideas face-to-face; advocacy is not sitting on your Facebook regurgitating all that cow manure! If everyone shares the same ideas, then nothing ever gets done. Advocacy is about collaboration, hard work, and being present in the moment.
A wise man accurately described my feelings about advocacy and leadership in a single statement. It was a statement so important that he engraved it into a plaque and bolted it to the helm of his mahogany desk.
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way.
That wise man was Ted Turner. The next story is about my initial experiences with the Turner Foundation and how those experiences evolved from a grant opportunity into Ted Turner personally scheduling a meeting with my buddy and me—yeah, really!
For those who don’t know much about the Turner Foundation, their core mission was tackling large-scale international issues. They’re kind of a big deal. The foundation, just like it’s eccentric founder, quickly earned a reputation as being high stakes risk takers.
Before starting the foundation, Ted Turner wore many hats throughout his illustrious career. He was the founder of CNN (the first 24-hour Cable News Network) captaining the media empire for over twenty-years before selling to Time Warner Cable in 2000. Ted had a diversified portfolio of accomplishments beyond media too. He’s the diehard owner of the Atlanta Braves and, also, America’s first world sailing champion.
After living the better part of his life on the high seas, Ted decided to change gears toward saving the planet. And the foundation, driven by Ted’s lofty ideals, were not afraid to rock the boat. And, without a doubt, hemp was a controversial subject in 1996. The general public just couldn’t accept that hemp was not marijuana.
Those of us who were a part of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Association Cooperative (KHGAC)submitted a compelling proposal to convince the Turner Foundation that we shared their values concerning deforestation. We knew we could demonstrate that bi-annual hemp crops could be a feasible alternative to the insidious practice of clear-cut logging. Our pitch to the Turner Foundation was that the co-op would promulgate a new mode of agriculture to curb future deforestation. In addition to saving the world’s trees, we told the foundation that a paradigm shift toward hemp cultivation would increase revenues for struggling farmers as well fuel a new rural value chain. They loved the entire concept from the get-go. The Turner Foundation, impressed by our professionalism, financed our clear and concise corporate mission:
The Museum and Library Corporation was established to promote public education about the cultural, historic, and economic importance of the hemp industry in Kentucky and the United States.
The funds will be used to employ and support activities of a qualified curator; to obtain hemp implements, tools, machinery, industry artifacts, and books, photographs and other media descriptive of the hemp industry as it operated in the U.S. and as it now operatives in other nations; and to sponsor conferences and symposia on the use of hemp as a non-wood substitute for paper, construction materials, and other wood-based manufactured products. Grant Proposal submitted to Turner Foundation Inc. December 19, 1994
Over a three-year timespan, the Turner Foundation granted our small farmer cooperative $75,000, which covered the cost of outfitting the Kentucky Hemp Museum & Library Mobile Exhibit, traveling costs, and spending money to keep me fed while on the road. With our financial backing secured, I wholeheartedly carried out my end of the bargain: I educated the masses on the personal and economic benefits of industrial hemp. I traveled nearly 100,000 miles during my tenure operating the cooperative’s mobile marketing tank. Once on the open road, the KY Hemp Museum & Library Vanimmediately became the talk of the state. Our haters thought we had somehow pulled a fast one on the Turner Foundationand were in some way abusing the charitable tax code.
Others simply wrote us off as loose cannons. It’s fair to say that not everyone liked what we were doing. Many behind closed doors secretly hoped our “little fad” would die sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, our supporters saw real hope and were impressed by our rapid progress.
Before the Turner Foundation became our underwriters, I had been wandering the state like a mad cow in my beat-up white Chevy van. The old brute was getting craggy. My van wasn’t designed for all the hemp displays and artifacts that overflowed every time I opened the door. I was a laughingstock, although, I did my best with whatever was available. I tried hard to stand out amongst the fairs’ staple events: farming equipment, rodeo cowboys, circus acts, sheep shearing,
