Hemp products themselves are not illegal in the U.S. We currently import hundreds of thousands of tons of it to make some of the many in demand products from hemp. However, outside of some states legalizing it at the local level the feds still categorize hemp as marijuana and refuse to legalize it, even though every international treaty recognizes hemp as different from marijuana and is grown in most other first world countries (i.e. Britain, France, Canada, Germany, etc.).

This is a travesty for two reasons. The first is that our farmers are not allowed to make money growing it our damn selves. The other is that hemp will produce over 4x the amount of ethanol to drive vehicles on than corn does, while not needing pesticides/herbicides that end up in our ground water. When you elevate the efficiency that much then the price of ethanol, currently around $8 a gallon, becomes far less expensive than gasoline. We would then be oil independent like Brazil. Current estimates say that we would have to plant roughly 23% or our current cropland with hemp to accomplish this (based on figures gleaned from Popular Mechanics, May 2006, The Truth About Bio-Fuels).

Gives you a good idea why it's languishing in Congress, doesn't it? Makes me wonder who these assholes we elected are working for anyway.