The “weed” is tall, planted in tight rows and has the serrated leaf edges of your classic ganja.

As Hendrix’s 1968 epic “Voodoo Child” drifts from the phone, Norton jokes about having a suitable vibe for the plot. “We should have a speaker in the middle,” he says. “Would people go nuts? ”

Squash, cotton, peppers and watermelon are also grown at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

But this is not that kind of hemp. You don’t smoke this stuff. This is raised for its fiber. It’s industrial hemp, the kind Henry Ford sought to build cars with. And Mount Vernon has started growing it because George Washington did.

The landmark home of the nation’s first president, about 20 miles south of Washington, is part of an effort to return industrial hemp to its historical context and promote its use in the modern world.

Industrial hemp, while cannabis, is far different from its marijuana cousin.

While both contain tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, the substance that’s creates the “high,” industrial hemp contains only tiny amounts of THC and has no psychoactive effect,experts say.

Recreational marijuana has roughly 10 to 30 percent THC in its dry weight of flowers, said Michael Timko, professor of biology and public health sciences at the University of Virginia. Industrial hemp has .3 percent or less.

But the industrial strain, which was widely grown in colonial Virginia to make fiber for rope and other products, became lumped over time with the recreational strain. And both were stigmatized and suppressed in the early 20th century.

This gardener is working to preserve George Washington’s last surviving trees

“You have different strains for different things,” Norton said recently as he stood near his hemp patch, down the hill from Washington’s famous manor house. “They’ve really been able to come up with . . . really strong fiber plants, really strong oil plants and really strong recreational plants.”

Dean Norton, Mount Vernon’s director of horticulture, stands amid the estate’s newest crop, hemp. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

“But that’s not what we’re doing here,” he said. “This is totally for interpretation purposes. . . . You could a build bonfire with this, sit around it, breathe it, nothing’s going to happen.”

Still, Norton needed a license to cultivate. “My kids love to say I’m a grower,” he said. “I’m (license) number 86 . . . I think it’s really cool.”

Mount Vernon visitors are intrigued.

“The funniest thing is the people that are familiar with hemp, or the other,” he said. “They stop. They look. They go take pictures. [They’ll say] ‘Remember the old VW bug we had.’ It’s always a VW. It’s great. It’s really fun to watch the people that know.”

Industrial hemp was an important crop in colonial times. A sailing ship could require thousands of feet of hemp rope for its rigging, Norton said.

Hemp “is abundantly productive and will grow for ever on the same spot,” Thomas Jefferson wrote of it.

Jefferson invented a special hemp “break” for processing it. He wrote that he used hemp “for shirting our laborers” – his slaves – because cotton was too expensive.

In the 1700s, it was so valuable that Virginia paid farmers to grow it. Washington took advantage of that, writing in 1767, that he “applied to the fund for giving a Bounty on Hemp.”

He planted it in abundance, especially in one tract he called Muddy Hole.

But it was a labor-intensive crop.

A butterfly lands on one of the newest crops at Mount Vernon – hemp. It looks like marijuana, but it’s not for smoking. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

The outside fiber had to be separated from the inner core, or “hurd.”

It had to be pulverized, then soaked in water or dew, to help in the extraction. But when the process was completed, the fiber was long and strong.

The idea to return hemp to Mount Vernon came from Brian Walden, 37, a farmer in Charlottesville, who got the notion after a 2014 federal law cleared the way for academic research into industrial hemp cultivation, he said in a telephone interview.

Farmers were permitted to grow it if they joined a research program and partnered with a university that wanted to study industrial hemp, he said.

He connected with the University of Virginia. He “donated land, equipment, expertise,” he said, and began to grow it locally.

Last year, he came up with a hemp plan for Mount Vernon, to boost the crop’s image and illustrate its role in history. Norton was hesitant at first, but agreed this year. The first seeds were planted June 13.

The 6o-day crop should be ready for harvest soon, Walden said.

A similar plot has been planted at Montpelier, the Orange County, Virginia, home of founding father James Madison.

Virginia’s first hemp crop in decades could signal new opportunity

Hemp was a big crop in the colonial Mid-Atlantic, Walden said. “We couldn’t grow flax, like they can up north,” he said. “And we couldn’t grow cotton, like they do down south.”

But in the 20th century, with the rise of the recreational strain, all hemp became stigmatized. “They clumped them all together,” Walden said.

(Medicinal use of hemp/marijuana has been traced back to 1576, when it was recommended for use in treating an unstable Prussian duke, according to historian H. C. Erik Midelfort.)

In 1937, a huge “marihuana” tax was placed on hemp that “made every farmer drop it like a dime,” he said.

But in the 1940s, some production returned because of the wartime need.

In 1942, the Agriculture Department produced a 14-minute film, “Hemp for Victory,” urging farmers to grow it again.

For the sailor and the hangman, it had been indispensable in the past, the narrator declared. Now it was needed for shoe thread, parachute webbing, and 30,000 feet of rope for every battleship.

And in 1941, Henry Ford reportedly produced a short-lived “hemp car” with a body partly made of a hemp-derived substance.

But after the war, with the resurgence in use of the recreational kind, industrial hemp production fell back into disfavor.

Today, 15 states still ban industrial hemp cultivation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The other states allow its growth for commercial, research or pilot programs.

Congress is considering a bill that would legalize industrial hemp cultivation, Walden said.

But the United States remains far behind other countries in taking advantage of industrial hemp’s potential.

“The U.S. is one of the few developed nations that hasn’t looked at the use of hemp as a green, sustainable resource for any number of purposes,” said Timko, of the University of Virginia, the scientist who partnered with Walden.

“It wasn’t as if they didn’t know there was an industrial use,” he said. “It’s just that the federal government couldn’t figure out how to separate it easily.”

Industrial hemp is grown extensively in Europe, China and Canada, he said. The United States imports more than $500 million in hemp products a year. It’s used for clothing and backpacks, oils and additives, and in plastics.

“Why aren’t we growing that $500 million worth of hemp products?” he asked. “Why are we importing it?”

Americans “should learn that we grew industrial hemp . . . and it was really part of the culture that we’ve lost,” he said.

The trial which began Monday in Denver is the first time a jury will consider a lawsuit using federal anti-racketeering law to target cannabis companies. But the marijuana industry has closely watched the case since 2015, when attorneys with a Washington, D.C.-based firm first filed their sweeping complaint on behalf of Hope and Michael Reilly.

One of the couple’s lawyers, Brian Barnes, said they bought the southern Colorado land for its views of Pikes Peak and have since built a house on the rural property. They also hike and ride horses there.

But they claim “pungent, foul odors” from a neighboring indoor marijuana grow have hurt the property’s value and their ability to use and enjoy it.

“That’s just not right,” Barnes said. “It’s not right to have people in violation of federal law injuring others.”

An attorney for the business targeted by the suit plans to argue the couple’s property has not been damaged, relying in part on the county’s tax valuations of the Reillys’ land ticking up over time.

Vulnerability to similar lawsuits is among the many risks facing marijuana businesses licensed by states but still violating federal law. Suits using the same strategy have been filed in California, Massachusetts and Oregon.

Mirroring the Reilly complaint, several claim the smell of marijuana damages neighboring owners’ ability to enjoy their land or harms their property value.

The question now is whether jurors accept the argument.

“They can claim a $1 million drop in property value, but if a jury does not agree and says $5,000, that’s not that big of a deal,” said Rob Mikos, a Vanderbilt University law professor who specializes in drug law. “That’s why there are a lot of eyes on the case.”

Congress created the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — better known as RICO — to target the Mafia in the 1970s, allowing prosecutors to argue leaders of a criminal enterprise should pay a price along with lower-level defendants.

But the anti-racketeering law also allows private parties to file lawsuits claiming their business or property has been damaged by a criminal enterprise. Those who prove it can be financially compensated for damages times three, plus attorneys’ expenses.

Starting in 2015, opponents of the marijuana industry decided to use the strategy against companies producing or selling marijuana products, along with investors, insurers, state regulators and other players. Cannabis companies immediately saw the danger of high legal fees or court-ordered payouts.

That concern only grew when a Denver-based federal appeals court ruled in 2017 that the Reillys could use anti-racketeering law to sue the licensed cannabis grower neighboring their property. Insurance companies and other entities originally named in the Reillys’ suit have gradually been removed, some after reaching financial settlements out of court.

The case focuses on property in Pueblo County, where local officials saw marijuana as an opportunity to boost an area left behind by the steel industry. Most Colorado counties ban outdoor grows, forcing pot cultivators to find expensive warehouse space.

Pueblo officials positioned their sunny, flat plains as the alternative. They created financial incentives in hopes of drawing growers to outdoor fields or cavernous buildings left vacant by other industries.

Parker Walton was among the early comers, buying 40 acres in the rural town of Rye in 2014.

Barnes said the Reillys made three separate land purchases between 2011 and 2014, gradually reaching more than 100 acres. They learned about plans for the marijuana business bordering their final purchase four months after completing the sale, he said.

Walton put up a 5,000-square-foot (465-square-meter) building to grow and harvest marijuana plants indoors. The Reillys filed their lawsuit in early 2015. A year later, Walton announced the company’s first harvest via Instagram, snapping a photo of a strain dubbed “Purple Trainwreck” hanging to cure in a dim room.

Fewer than five people including Walton work for the company, which sells its products to retail stores, his attorney, Matthew Buck said.

Buck said he’s confident jurors will decide the Reillys’ property has not been harmed. Buck warned, though, that defending against a similar lawsuit comes at a high cost for marijuana businesses while plaintiffs with support from a large law firm have little to lose.

Cooper & Kirk, the firm handling the couple’s suit, has a conservative reputation, including a founding partner who worked for the U.S. Justice Department during the Reagan administration. Barnes said members of the firm were “troubled” as states began legalizing the adult use of marijuana because of the inherent conflict with federal law, and they brainstormed legal strategies.

Walton created a website this month to raise money for his defense. He wrote that a loss could jeopardize “all legal cannabis operations in all states.”

But some lawyers who have defended companies in similar lawsuits said those fears are overhyped.

Adam Wolf, a California attorney, said he believes the suits are primarily intended to scare third-party companies into cutting ties with marijuana firms or persuading cannabis companies to shut down. But long-term, Wolf said the U.S. Supreme Court has curtailed lawsuits making civil racketeering claims against other industries.

Courts could apply the same logic to cannabis, he argued.

“What the plaintiffs seemed to be saying is anybody who touched, in any matter, any marijuana business is potentially liable,” Wolf said. “And that is a soundly rejected argument by the courts.”

Barnes, though, said the number of racketeering lawsuits awaiting action suggests attorneys with no ties to his firm believe in the strategy.

That’s a jump from chemicals found at about 75 percent of illegal growing operations discovered on public land last year, and it’s six times as high as in 2012.

Federal and state officials launched a summer-long crackdown driven in part by new concern over the increase in the use of the highly toxic pesticide carbofuran.

Researcher Mourad Gabriel, one of the few researchers studying the ecological impact of illicit grow sites, said the pesticide is so powerful that a quarter-teaspoon can kill a 300-pound bear.

He and fellow researchers at the Integral Ecology Research Center in northwestern California found 89 percent of sites this year have been confirmed or are strongly suspected to be contaminated with what he called “highly deadly toxic chemicals.”

The crackdown aided by $2.5 million in federal money led to 95 growing sites and the removal of more than 10 tons of fertilizer, pesticides and chemicals.

U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said federal authorities are concentrating their efforts on hazardous illegal grows on public land instead of targeting California’s new recreational marijuana industry.

“This isn’t about the marijuana, it’s about the damage that’s being done,” he said in an interview before a news conference to announce the findings. “What is happening here is illegal under anybody’s law.”

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who leads the nation’s largest marijuana eradication program, said state drug agents last week found gallons of carbofuran being added to irrigation water at an illegal site in northwestern California. The water ultimately makes it into the water supply in a rugged, mountainous area near the city of Redding.

Investigators suspect some illegal grows are now being moved into agricultural areas where they blend in alongside legitimate marijuana and other crops. For example, they raided two illegal marijuana farms south of Sacramento this summer based on information on a cellphone found at an illegal grow in the Mendocino National Forest last year, Scott said.

“Because of the legalization, our operating theory is that it’s a whole lot easier to go set up a greenhouse in the valley somewhere than it to have to pack all of this stuff into the national forest,” he said in the interview.

The pot is mostly headed out of state and could not pass California’s stringent standards for legal weed because traces of the toxic chemicals are often found in the plants, officials said.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Forester Vicki Christiansen estimated that 1.2 billion gallons of scarce water are diverted to illicit grows in California national forests each year. And

California is not alone, with illegal drug traffickers found in 72 national forests in 21 states, she said, calling it “a major national problem.”

Authorities seized nearly 640,000 plants, more than 25,000 pounds of processed pot, more than 80 firearms, $225,000 in cash and made nearly 80 arrests in California. They hauled out nearly 60 tons of trash, including nearly 84 miles of irrigation hose.

Work crews cleaned up 160 toxic sites, but have a waiting list of 830 contaminated sites, some found eight years ago and still awaiting their turn.

Part of the problem is the lethal pesticides pose a danger to cleanup crews, Scott said in the interview.

“If they go in and there’s a certain level of toxicity, they just have to back away and then let time go by before they can safely go in and try to do the reclamation,” he said.

For those people that don’t comply, the county is already beginning enhanced enforcement efforts through the help of state, local and satellite enforcement.

“We’re also working on expanding our efficiency with code enforcement and looking at bringing in some new specialized people to help us with some elements of that, so that’s pretty exciting to have a little more bandwidth there,” county Planning and Building Department Director John Ford said.

The county is now one month into its newly expanded cannabis industry, which allows for people to apply for cannabis permits for an expanded catalogue of business types including farms, processing, testing, tourism, bud-and-breakfasts and all-in-one microbusinesses, to name a few.

Prior to these new rules taking effect, nobody was able to submit an application for a cannabis business since Dec. 30, 2016, which was the cutoff date under the county’s first and more limited cannabis rules that took effect in February 2016.

Ford, who oversees the department’s cannabis division, said it has about 1,600 applications from the first round of permitting to sort through, with about 250 permits having been issued — mostly for cannabis farms.

The county received more than 2,300 cannabis business applications by the December 2016 deadline, about 1,500 of which were received two weeks before the deadline. More than 2,000 applications were incomplete.

“That’s the normal process for most other planning applications and it is a lesson learned from the last round that when we don’t get complete applications, it’s very hard to try to get them complete and to process them, basically,” Ford said.

So now anyone wanting to turn in application under the county’s new marijuana rules must first complete an application assistance training, with training sessions ongoing. All applications must be complete prior to them being submitted. No applications under the new cannabis rules have been turned in to the department yet, according to Ford.

Ford said they are also making internal changes.

“Basically, what we’re going to do is move away from the process we’ve been doing things and we’re going to go ahead and assign all active permits to planners,” Ford said. “There will be planners assigned to every project that has been deemed complete.”

Before this, permit applications went through an “assembly line” process in which they were handed off to different cannabis planners throughout the process.

Terra Carver, executive director of the cannabis trade organization Humboldt County Growers Alliance, said her organization does not have a position on the changes, but said the reaction from its members is varied. Carver said some members have raised concerns about latecomers to the legalized industry having an easier time getting through legalization when those who paved the way had to work through a brand new regulatory system.

“I have membership that would be upset because they feel they have paved the way and the road was hard to pave,” Carver said.

Other members are happy they signed up earlier, Carver said.

“Those who did sign up now are happy that they did because the transition is going to be much more difficult for those who sat on the fence,” Carver said.

With Humboldt County being the first county in the state to pass its own cannabis industry rules, Carver said it has allowed local producers and businesses to participate in the growing statewide market. With new state rules that took effect July 1 only allowing for pre-tested, pre-packaged products to be sold to customers, Carver said that there has been a “massive uptick in requests for compliant product from distributors” in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego and San Francisco.

“We’re starting to really see the supply chain connect and our compliant Humboldt product is in demand,” Carver said.

The county has also extended the expiration date for up to 600 temporary permits that were issued to local farmers last year. These temporary permits allowed pre-existing marijuana farmers — defined as farmers who had been operating prior to Jan. 1, 2016 — to receive temporary permits that limited them to growing what they were in 2016. The reason for this was to allow these farmers to apply for a state cannabis license and be able to operate once the statewide market opened at the start of 2018.

These temporary permits were set to expire on June 30, but that was pushed back to Sept. 30.

“Our hope and intention is to take action on all those applications by Sept. 30,” Ford said.

Carver said that most of their organization’s members are using temporary permits currently and “are sitting fairly pretty in the process right now.”

To address the thousands of illicit farms estimated to remain within the county, Ford said the department with the aid of the sheriff’s office and Department of Fish and Wildlife plan “to hit at least 500 this season,” with about 250 notices of violation having been sent out.

Farmers who do not comply face up to $10,000 per day fines, but can enter into compliance agreements with the county and only pay a one-day penalty for each violation. These plans would allow farmers to bring their farm back up to code within a certain time frame.

Ford previously said that these enforcement notices had resulted in many people working to come into the legal market, and he said last week that there is still a “fairly positive response.”

The county also has a contract in place that will give it access to frequently updated satellite images, which will be able to determine whether a farm has remained in compliance. Ford said there has been concerns about invasion of privacy and that the county now has access to super high-resolution images.

“It’s not that at all. The resolution is not better than what we already have,” Ford said. “The key is the frequency at which the images are collected. Five different images a year allows us to see what’s going on. That’s the key thing.”

At the same time, state and federal law enforcement officials have stated they will increase pressure against conspiracy crimes and cartels associated with the illicit cannabis market.

About $14 million of state budget went to creating five investigative teams in the state Attorney General’s Office to look into those crimes and marijuana mail deliveries.

Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504.