This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 8, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The most vocal opponents of legalizing hemp, the fibrous plant useful for everything from

oils to building materials, seem to be drug warriors

and some marijuana growers.

Eric Steinsstra is president of Vote Hemp and advocacy group working to draw that

clear distinction between hemp and its psychoactive relative marijuana.

We spoke today.

In the early 90s a friend of mine shared a book with me called The Emperor Wears No Clothes.

I may have seen it read that.

I think I had a copy of that book in high school.

Exactly.

So it was a real eye-opener for me that I had been somewhat familiar with cannabis from, you know,

college years and whatnot, but I didn't really know much of the history at all.

And when I read the book, it it was fascinating a lot of it was about

you know focusing on hemp and kind of uncovering some of this history and it just

really surprised me that that I had you know lived all those years and had no clue about it.

And so, anyways, he and I started talking more about it,

and he was very interested in pursuing potential business opportunity.

We ended up starting a clothing company together called

Eglution and so and that produced that produces hemp cloth

Exactly. I've owned genes that were made of hemp and they were among the most

...