Got hemp? (Wait, don’t answer that.)

Well, can you have a license tag with that word on it?

Not
in Oklahoma, you can’t! State officials denied a request by Tom Walker
to have the words “FRE HEMP” (yup, that’s the spelling) on his
personalized tag, according to KFOR.com.

“It’s not about getting high,” Walker told KFOR.com. “It’s about saving the environment.”

Good
to know. Why was the tag denied? State officials said the word “hemp”
also reefers — er, refers — to marijuana and “may be offensive to the
general public.” (They didn’t mention anything about the munchies.)

“Radical”
Russ Belville, the outreach coordinator for the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), opined Dec. 22 on the Opposing
Viewpoints website that our state previously sentenced a medical
marijuana patient named Will Foster to 93 years in the hoosegow.

“I
certainly hope Oklahomans don’t discover the ‘Oklahoma Sooners Nike
Hemp Polo Shirt’ or the ‘Oklahoma State Cowboys Men’s Hemp Necklace,’”
Belville wrote, providing links to said wares just in time for
last-minute Christmas shopping. “And who knows what Oklahomans will do
when they discover they were part of (the) nefarious plot to cultivate
the plant for our efforts in World War II.”

Walker, who
claims he’s a political activist and not a pothead, planned to appeal
the state’s decision. And he wasn’t the only one upset. The state
reportedly shot down defense attorney Chad Moody’s similar request for
his groovy Volkswagen van.

“Anything that questions the
government does not get to be placed on a license tag,” Moody told
KFOR.com. “If they’re going to let certain people have certain political
viewpoints expressed on their license tag and not let other political
viewpoints be expressed, then that’s discriminatory by way of the 14th
Amendment.”

In 2008, the Oklahoma Gazette published
the Oklahoma Tax Commission’s list of license plates “unacceptable for
issue.” For some reason, “DRUGDLR” did not make the cut.