Across the political spectrum, from the Greens to the National Party, there is a growing appreciation that low-tetrahydrocannabinol, or non-drug, hemp could help to provide the solution to the some of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including replacing logging and helping to regenerate exhausted farmland.
While the debate rages over the decriminalisation of hemp with a high-THC content, conservative politicans as well as mainstream businesspeople and scientists are also recognising that low-THC hemp has an economic potential which could far outstrip its illicit cousin.
Those wanting to see hemp use examined as part of the broader question of alternative crops to timber include groups as diverse as the National Farmers Federation, the timber industry's own association, the National Association of Forest Industries and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
In a world in which global demand for timber is expected to double in the next 20 years, the humble (non-drug) hemp plant is being rediscovered- not just for its use as a paper alternative but also for its use in building materials, clothing fuel and even as an alternative to plastics, according to its most fervent supporters.
But its most pressing use will be for paper, with world-wide demand for paper and paper-based products set to explode because of the industrialisation of East Asia.
Data supplied by the National Association of Forest Industries, based on figures complied by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, estimate that Four times the entire production of Australia's timber industry each year will be needed in another two decades to satisfy the yearly incremental increase in the world-wide demand for timber-based products.
Demand for paper and paper products is closely tied to the level of gross national product per head. India now comsumes about 3kg a head of paper products, compared with about 160kg in Australia and 350kg in the United States.
Interestingly, the Australain Newsprint Mills at Hobart has been at the forefront of the hemp-for-paper research in Australia. Trial crops have been grown- under careful police supervision- in Tasmania for the past three years and that is where the research is the most advanced about using hemp as an alternative to the softwood-based (and imported) kraft used to strengthen newsprint.
Shaun Lisson, a doctoral student, is researching the use of industrial hemp for newsprint at the University of Tasmania.
While he is confident about the potential of hemp to replace the kraft used in strengthening newsprint and in recycled paper, he remains sceptical about whether hemp could eventually replace all the timber.
"While nothing's entirely impossible, in Tasmania there is already a very well established timber industry and I don't think you could replace it just yet from a financial point of view," he says.
However, NSW Upper House Greens MP Ian Cohen, a long time supporter of hemp reform, says hemp is the one issue missing from the forest debate. He says alternative crops to timber must be included in any strategy on forest-use policy.
Cohen, a newcomer to the NSW Parliament, is dismayed by the apparent ignorance about the plant. He says that many members cannot differentiate between hemp plants for recreational smoking and hemp for industrial use.
The difference between the two plants lies in the amount of THC- or Tetrahydrocannabinol- the psycoactive ingredient. For drug use, the plant's THC content is ususlly between 5 and 8 per cent by weight, compared with less than 0.35 per cent for industrial-use hemp.
"Basically you could smoke a field of the stuff (low-THC hemp) all day and not get high," according to West Australian Federal Liberal backbencher Eoin Cameron.
Cameron, a self-described Liberal green who is deeply worried about woodchipping, wants alternatives to timber developed.
He plans to introduce a motion into the House of Representatives at its next sitting calling for the recognition of low-THC hemp as not being a drug.
Cameron's motion, which has generated interest from both sides of politics, also calls for the Federal Government to co-ordinate efforts into research for the industrial uses for hemp, now under way in several States.
Fellow Liberal backbencher Tony Abbot is also keen to examine the hemp issue but says the name hemp itself has to be changed as it has too many connoations with marijuana as a drug.
Labor backbencher John Langmore, chairman of the federal parliamentary commitee for the environment, recreation and the arts, agrees the issue warrants attention, but will not have time to examine hemp as an alternative to timber in the life of the current Parliament.
In NSW, the normally conservative National Party also wants hemp made legal for industrial use.
The independent State member for Tamworth, Tony Windsor, a former National Party member, sees merit in undertaking further research into the plant.
Windsor says that a lot more work needs to be done to verify many of the claims about hemp being an environmental saviour.
However, Windsor, whose electorate has been at the sharp end of rural dislocation, can see the economic potential of the crop, especially in its use in land care, because it is quick growing and puts nitrogen back into exhausted soils.
A Sydney-based registrar in pathology, Dr Andrew Katelaris, wants to test the first legal hemp crop in NSW in the State's north-west and sees its first use as an alternative to cotton, which is a major consumer of water and pesticides.
Despite trial crops now underway in Tasmania and South Australia, and the announcement of last week that Victoria is also to test the plant, Katelaris is being thwarted in NSW by a bureaucratic runaround between the police and the departments of Health and Agriculture in his efforts to get a licence.
Timing is crucial. If Katelaris does not get a licence in the next few weeks he will miss this year's spring planting and will have to wait another year before he can plant a low-THC (and legal) crop in the State's north-west.
Katelaris, a keen bushwalker, first became interested in hemp when his favorite section of forest in the State's south-east was woodchipped.
"Hemp was the most traded commodity until the middle of last century. Ignoring hemp and its history of uses would be like not writing about the importance of the oil industry in another 50 years time," he said. Katelaris's research on hemp led him to team up with the film producer Barbara Chobocky, whose documentary about the history of hemp and its prohibition, Billion Dollar Crop,was aired on ABC televsion last year.
Katelaris says paper made from hemp is just one potential use. Another is builing materials. In the US, hemp has been used to make particle-board-like material that is as strong as Douglas fir, as timber used frequently by the building industry.
Katelaris says all parts of the hemp plant can be used effectively for either paper or building materials but it will take time for the industry to grow before its uses outside of cloth-making can be fully explored. He also plans eventually to make a cellulose-based plastic.
The title Billion Dollar Crop refers to a 1938 Popular Mechanics article which valued the economic potential of hemp. That figure in today's dollars would obviously be much more.
Chobocky, whose documentary has not been repeated despite its popular acclaim, says that as well as examining the history of hemp use it also explored the reasons for the eventual ban on hemp.
She says that in the 1930s a series of events led to the Marijuana Transfer Tax Act, which effectively put the industry out of business.
Chobocky points out that hemp in the 1930s was a competing fibre to Du Ponts' then newly invented nylon. She also says there was a strong connection between Du Ponts' banker, Mellon Bank, and the cheif of the drug enforcement agency at that time, Harry Anslinger, who was instrumental in the Reefer Madness anti-hemp campaigns in the 1930s.
