After a two-and-a-half-year lawsuit, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Hemp Industries Association and against the DEA. As Judge Betty Fletcher wrote in the decision, "they [the DEA] cannot regulate naturally-occurring THC not contained within or derived from marijuana -- i.e. non-psychoactive hemp. ... The DEA has no authority to regulate drugs that are not scheduled." Please visit http://www.SaveHemp.org to read more about the issue and http://www.SaveHemp.org/HIAvDEA_9th_final_decision.pdf to download the decision in its entirety.

As the case closed, the DEA agreed that hemp foods have no abuse potential. In his final arguments, DEA attorney Daniel Dormont stated, "The DEA has never said, has never focused on the particular products, and said anyone can get high from them, or that they pose a harm to people." (To download the hearing transcript, please visit http://www.SaveHemp.org/Oral_Arguments_HIAvDEA.pdf .) Despite this, and in the face of widespread outrage over the DEA's proposal, the DEA still attempted to ban hemp-based foods, claiming falsely that hemp- based foods would interfere with drug tests.

The DEA was only able to justify its war on hemp because marijuana is illegal. If marijuana were legally regulated, the DEA would not have been able to claim that hemp products containing THC were also illegal. To help MPP in its battles against the DEA -- and MPP's effort to end the war on all marijuana users -- please consider visiting http://www.mpp.org/donate0908 to make a donation.

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The Marijuana Policy Project hopes that each of the 43,000 subscribers on this e-mail list will make at least one financial donation to MPP's work in 2004. MPP will be able to tackle all of the projects in its

2004 strategic plan -- http://www.mpp.org/2004plan -- if you and other allies are generous enough to donate the following sums in 2004:

TYPE OF DONOR ..... $ GOALS FOR 2004 ..... $ RAISED IN 2004

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monthly pledgers ........ $60,000 ............. $8,140 ....

less than $1,000 ....... $583,000 ............ $20,373 ....

$1,000 donors .......... $300,000 ................. $0 ....

$1,001 to $25,000 ...... $200,000 ............. $5,000 ....

$25,001 to $100,000 .... $500,000 ............ $60,000 ....

$100,001 and up ...... $1,000,000 ................. $0 ....

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TOTALS ............... $2,643,000 ...........  $93,513 ....

Please consider visiting http://www.mpp.org/donate0908 to make a financial contribution now.