LOUISVILLE - A Shelby County deputy sheriff says actor Woody Harrelson's appearance at an elementary school to promote the legalization of industrial hemp contradicted her anti-drug message to students.
"I was very, very upset," Deputy Sheriff Audrey Yeager said Tuesday. "Here I am telling them hemp is marijuana, and marijuana's illegal, and he's in there trying to promote the product to 10- and 11-year-olds. Who is going to go in and talk to 10- and 11-year-olds about growing hemp anyway? They're not even old enough to vote."
As the Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer at Simpsonville Elementary, Yeager had spent 17 weeks teaching fifth-graders to fight peer pressure and abstain from drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
Harrelson showed up at the school May 30, the day of a DARE "graduation" program, to promote industrial hemp.
Yeager's concerns were shared by the school's principal, Bruce Slate, and Kentucky State Police Sgt. Jimmy Richerdson, who is the statewide coordinator of the DARE program. Both said Harrelson's visit the day of the DARE graduation sent children a confusing message. Slate said he had no advance knowledge of Harrelson's appearance.
Harrelson is promoting industrial hemp as a clean and easy-to-grow crop that has little THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Harrelson says there is a need for industrial hemp as a fiber substitute in various products, and if legalized, it could be an important cash crop for farmers.
But Yeager and Richerdson say one hemp looks like another, and the legalization of one kind would create an enforcement nightmare. They said police wouldn't be able to tell the plant grown for drug use from the plant grown for production without testing every plant.
It was unclear exactly how Harrelson came to visit teacher Donna Cockrel's class. He was in Kentucky that week to attend a conference on fiber hemp in Lexington held by the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative. The next Saturday, he was arrested in a publicity stunt on a misdemeanor charge for planting four hemp seeds in Lee County.
Cockrel refused to explain Tuesday how Harrelson came to visit her class.