in the Centennial State. His current activism is a blending of all of his prior experiences, he says. “It’s kind of all blending back together from all the careers in the past,” he says of the marriage of social progress, agriculture and environmentalism represented by his current work pulling together a hemp coop. For Althouse, Colorado is in a unique position to lead the country in hemp production and application, even though the stifling power of prohibition has put domestic producers at least ten years behind those in places like Europe, he estimates. The agricultural and biotech powerhouse that is Colorado State University could be the epicenter of the hemp movement, he says, provided researchers aren’t threatened by a loss of federal funding as a result of working with the cannabis plant. “CSU’s the killer asset,” says Althouse. “There are some smart boys over there and they’re in chains.” As it stands now, Althouse says he sees some serious deficiencies hindering progress in domestic hemp, perhaps most notably in access to viable seeds. But with unfettered access to resources like CSU’s Foundation Seed Lab, Colorado could leapfrog over the mistakes of others. It’s issues like this that Althouse hopes to raise awareness for during his tenure as THC’s Hemp Editor. Along with access to viable seed, Althouse says he hopes to bring awareness to the myriad applications of hemp, and the market for these applications, establishing Colorado as a forerunner for an industry that would be unknowably larger and more important had it not been derailed 80 some years ago. Stay tuned to future issues of THC to see just what this maverick will bring to the magazine. Welcome aboard Bill.
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