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Hawaii County's controversial pot-eradication program is going up in smoke.

Responding to citizen complaints of privacy intrusions and alleged police harassment, the County Council voted 5-4 Wednesday against spending $582,000 for "Green Harvest" helicopter operations.

"I just think it's time to stop this marijuana war," said Ka'u Councilman Bob Jacobson, a longtime critic of the eradication program.

Voting against the program were Jacobson, Hamakua Councilman Dominic Yagong, South Kona Councilwoman Brenda Ford, Puna Councilwoman Emily Naeole, and Hilo Councilman Stacy Higa.

Hilo council members J Yoshimoto and Donald Ikeda joined Chairman Pete Hoffmann of Kohala and North Kona Councilman Angel Pilago in voting to continue funding the pot raids.

The swing vote was cast by Higa, who expressed reservations about turning down the federal grants.

"We've always accepted the money," Assistant Police Chief James Day told lawmakers. The program started more than 20 years ago.

All three grantsinclude money to rent private helicopters that police use to search for pot plants, Day said. Another portion pays for informant information and to buy drugs, he said.

"It's going to curtail our activities as far as eradication of marijuana," he said when asked by Higa what would happen if lawmakers refuse the grants.

Council members voted to remove the money from next fiscal year's operating budget. That action won't be final, however, until lawmakers again vote to approve the countywide budget and send it to Mayor Harry Kim to consider signing into law.

That second vote is expected at the council's June 1 meeting in Hilo.

The county hasn't received the money, but had expected to get the grants so the funding is included of the proposed countywide budget that starts July 1, Deanna Sako, county controller, told lawmakers.

The "Green Harvest" money can still be added later, should lawmakers reverse course and accept the eradication grants, she added.

Getting future grants will now be harder since that money will be shifted to other states, Day said.

The council's vote won't stop the federal Drug Enforcement Administration from conducting helicopter raids, Prosecutor Jay Kimura told lawmakers.

"Whether the council accepts the money or not, eradication would continue," Kimura said, noting marijuana is illegal under federal law.

That prompted Ikeda to vote against rejecting the money, which he added cannot be shifted to combat crystal methamphetamine, a drug known locally as "ice."

"It's not like we're ignoring 'ice' and only concentrating on marijuana," Ikeda said.

Yagong argued that it's time to look at other eradication methods besides using helicopters. Wednesday marked the first time Yagong voted against the program in his more than six years on the council.

But Yagong cautioned that ending local "Green Harvest" raids may not help the situation.

"It may get worse," he said.

Naeole said the program "terrorizes" people.

"I've gone through it myself," the lifelong Puna resident said.

Yoshimoto, an attorney, said he needs to uphold the law, which criminalizes marijuana for non-medical use.

Hoffmann used the same argument in voting against rejecting the funding.

Lawmakers voted after listening to nearly 50 people speak on the subject. Nearly all urged council members to halt the "Green Harvest" program.

Program opponents talked about helicopter noise and prop wash scaring livestock, overturning tents, and disturbing their sleep. Others said smoking pot has reduced their pain and made life more enjoyable.

"Why are they flying over my house at 7 o'clock in the morning when I would like to be resting until maybe 7:30?" asked Hawaiian Acres resident Kena Slaughter-Miyamoto.

"Marijuana helps people," she added. "It helped my dad when he was paralyzed."

Star Newland also urged lawmakers to end the program.

"Please zero out 'Green Harvest,'" she said. "Please listen to what the people say. Move accordingly and vote accordingly."

The standing-room-only crowd applauded when Hoffmann announced the funding had been rejected.

Some of those people were later overheard talking about a party to celebrate the council's historic vote.

There are dozens of species representing some 22 genera, and Cannabis sativa has emerged as the one multi-purpose plant, used primarily for fiber in the stem, and preparations from that fiber such as paper, textiles, construction, plastics, food, medicines and oil from the seeds. Of course, the third part of the Cannabis sativa equation is the intoxicating resin, (Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) or THC, secreted by epidermal glands, and that’s what gets a person high.

So, why aren’t we growing it America? Easy -- you already know the answer: the Federal Government says ALL hemp is marijuana, and that’s the myth, almost.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp, and refusing to grow the plant was against the law in the US during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its fiber was used to make sails and ropes for ships, paper for books and writing paper and clothing. The seeds have been used as food for centuries, and two 19th century famines in Australia saw hemp seed used for protein and it’s leaves for roughage.

You get the idea: this is one versatile natural resource, and our government calls it dangerous. How did all that start? I’ve researched dozens of verifiable sources and settled on some facts and, of course, some conspiracy theories.

Part of the reason apparently goes back to Mexico’s Pancho Villa, who relieved William Randolph Hearst of some 800,000 acres of prime timber he planned to use in the production of paper products. Hearst’s vilification of the Mexican people in his newspaper empire could well have come as a result of his loss.

Hearst, along with Lammont Dupont, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller and the DuPont family were apparently alarmed by hemp’s ability to provide an alternative source for paper, fiber, plastic and more, which would threaten their growing empires. DuPont developed fuel additives and a process to make paper from wood pulp that proved to be less expensive than manufacture by hemp, along with synthetic products such as plastics and nylon. The problem with hemp at that time was the man-hours it took to harvest the crop to make it usable, but a man named George W Schlichten invented a machine called a decorticator, which shortened the harvesting process to such a degree that hemp became the best and most inexpensive material for making paper and other synthetic products. Development of the decorticator was believed to make Hearst’s vast timber reserves worthless, and DuPont’s synthetic petrochemicals would become less attractive. An alleged conspiracy was hatched to derail the development of hemp and destroy the decorticator. It worked, and the developer of the decorticator, George Schlichten, died a broken man, his patents expired and the machine scrapped.

Hearst’s nationwide newspaper chain launched an intensive propaganda campaign portraying hemp, or Cannabis, as a dangerous drug, turning "normal" (meaning "white") people into psychotic killers. Yes, race was a major part of that campaign, and racial slurs were directed especially at African-Americans and Mexicans. The campaign was successful, and when the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was brought to a vote, most people didn’t know that hemp and marijuana came from the same plant. As a matter of fact, most had no idea that the law would aid in destruction of the hemp industry, which is exactly what happened.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 imposed a levy of one dollar on everyone who buys, sells, raises, imports or in any way deals in the commercial use of marijuana. The hook was the penalty provisions of the act, which called for five years’ imprisonment and fines up to $2,000 or both for anyone not buying a Treasury Department tax stamp and dealing in marijuana.

The act says “The term ‘marihuana’ means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L, whether growing or not; the seeds thereof, the resin extracted from any part of such plant and every compound, manufacture, salt derivative, mixture or preparation of such plant…”. Hence our laws today say hemp is marijuana and it’s illegal.

According to Biomassive.org,

Thus, the Marijuana Tax Act and other similar tax policies in the years to come not only placed petrochemical and timber industries at the center of our country's physical and technological development, but as a result even shaped our very social, economic, and spatial structures. It converted a largely rural, agricultural nation into an urban, industrial one in a matter of a few decades.

So that’s where we stand today. While America sleeps at the wheel of hemp, other countries are cultivating and producing a wide variety of hemp products. Canada, The Netherlands, France and the UK are leading the world in hemp technology.

Research is ongoing in the US, Canada and European Union to breed of low THC plants, although none have at this point created a strain 100% free of THC.

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From todays Star Bulletin ...

There is more to space than meets the eye, a Mauna Kea telescope demonstrated yesterday with the release of a striking image of a normally invisible gas cloud in the Orion Nebula.

Not bad for an installation that, with its 49-foot dish, looks more like a radar site than a telescope.

In announcing the use of the two instruments yesterday, the British-Canadian-Dutch Joint Astronomy Centre, which operates the Maxwell telescope, released images from the Orion Nebula, a dusty, gassy area in the "sword" of the constellation Orion.

They are the first clear images of such a large area of space looking at radiation shorter than radio waves.

The Maxwell astronomers focused on the frequency given off by carbon monoxide, the same gas found in cigarette smoke and car exhaust.

The actual size in space is more amazing. Light starting at the top of the cloud would need 30 years to reach the bottom.

Next, the astronomers made more pictures, each in a slightly different wavelength of submillimeter radiation, depending on whether the CO molecules were moving toward or away from the telescope.

(HARP-B with the ACSIS backend) actually observes 8192 different frequencies simultaneously at 16 positions in space. What actually happened is that the telescope scanned across Orion, collecting data at 8192 frequencies the whole time, and then the resulting data (called a time-series cube) was turned into a spatial/spectral cube. The “slices” are as they described, sampling a discrete frequency for a given region of space.