Another mill closes, just before Christmas. Another large number of people are out of work. Maine has seen the demise of the paper industry, the fabric industry, and the shoe industry, three of our mainstays, over the last half-century, when the answer to many of these problems may be growing around us like … well, weeds.

First, let’s talk about industrial hemp. It’s illegal in many states.

That’s even though it grows in a single season, rather than the 20 years it takes to reproduce a tree, and can be used for a lot more than paper. Although it is related to the cannabis strain that can get people high, the hemp strains can’t be used for that purpose. They do, however, make strong fibers for everything from fabric to paper to rope. Their oil can be be used for fuel, wax, and resin. They can be made into food products for humans and animals. They can be made into panels for building materials that are both durable and breathable. Hemp can be grown to clear impurities out of wastewater, can be grown by organic farmers trying to keep down weed growth, and still be used for other purposes later.

In short, it’s a miraculous plant. But a nasty set of events in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to hemp being banned in the U.S. Among them was William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empire who used yellow journalism to demonize the plant. Hearst owned not only the newspapers themselves, but also much of the redwood forests in Northern California, which was used to make newsprint. Not wanting to lose his other income stream, Hearst’s papers relentlessly connected the innocent hemp with the more narcotic strains of cannabis, and by 1937, the federal government criminalized it.

The law was “improved” in 1965, called the “Controlled Substance Act,” but marijuana and industrial hemp were still linked, keeping hemp illegal in the U.S.

Some states began on their own to circumvent the hemp portion of the Act, and indeed, even the narcotic strains of marijuana. Maine, however, is not among them. Maine does have a hemp cultivation law, but it requires that the federal definition of marijuana exclude hemp. In the 2014 Farm Bill, Maine had the option of having some funding for pilot programs by the state department of agriculture or an institution of higher learning. Maine’s Attorney General said that the Farm Bill provision did not negate Maine’s law about requiring a new definition for marijuana. So even though there is money available for pilot projects, Maine can’t access them.

According to Sarah Scally at the Department of Agriculture, Mainers would require a license to plant, grow, harvest, possess, process, sell, or buy hemp. But the Department will not issue licenses until the triggers — a change in the definition of marijuana or the U.S. Department of Justice taking affirmative steps toward issuing permits for hemp cultivation — takes place. So far, neither has occurred.

But should we continue to allow poor, turn-of-the-century science and yellow journalism to prevent the cultivation of a plant that could lift Maine out of its industrial malaise, establish new farms, and develop new markets for new materials that until now we could only obtain from overseas?

It is unlikely that the federal government will deal with this issue in anything approaching a timely way.

But Maine’s legislature can and should change its law so that hemp cultivation is legal in the state, as it is in several other states where hemp is being cultivated commercially.

If we are truly “open for business,” a positive attitude toward industrial hemp will pay dividends for Mainers, from the farms to the mills, from energy production to food production to paper production to clothing and shoe manufacturing, to the production of rope needed by our boatbuilding industries.

It’s time for Maine to lead the way toward this important, renewable resource.