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David Bronner was recently arrested for attempting to eat a healthy breakfast. Does that sound stupid? Even once you know the details, it should sound stupid:  Bronner’s food of choice was bread spread with hemp seed oil he pressed himself from industrial hemp plants, which he did in front of the White House under a banner reading: “Dear Mr. President Let U.S. Farmers Grow Hemp.”

Bronner’s company, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, spends over $100,000 to buy over 20 tons of hemp seed oil from Canada each year to use in its soaps. Bronner wants to give that money to American farmers instead.

If it’s legal to use in soaps – and even to eat – then why is it illegal to grow here? Because according to the government, hemp is a drug. Specifically, it’s considered identical to its close cousin, marijuana. But Bronner says it is no more a drug than a poppyseed bagel. The plants he gathered seed from to press his oil in front of the White House had been tested to confirm they contained less than 0.3 percent THC, which means it would be “impossible to get a high of any kind” even from smoking extremely large quantities of it. A more likely result from smoking that much industrial hemp would be a bad headache or perhaps a sore throat.

Bronner explains that his protest was “the culmination of a lot of frustration,” saying, “We’re just sick and tired of this policy. It basically hands the world’s largest market for industrial hemp seed and fiber products to the Canadians, Europeans, and Chinese, who are laughing at us all the way to the bank.”

He and others have lobbied to legalize growing industrial hemp in the U.S. for more than a decade. The environmentally friendly soap company appreciates that hemp can be grown without toxic agrochemicals, but it’s the high omega-3 fatty acid content that really draws him to eating it and using it in his soaps. Bronner finds that the omega-3 content of hemp seed oil “makes the soap a lot smoother and emollient and less drying.” As a food, it has the “ideal ratio” of omega-6 to omega-3, about three to one.