In Switzerland hempers call the plant Swiss petrol and tell you how Hitler l iterally ran his

In Switzerland, hempers call the plant "Swiss petrol", and tell you how Hitler l iterally ran his tanks on hemp. Now you hear such talk all over Europe from disciples of the Hemp Movement. You can also make birdseed and food for livestock; it cures asthma, it helps insomnia; there are medical uses for Aids and cancer patients..." It used to be only ageing hippies who raved about marijuana as if it was the Philosopher's Stone. You can make clothes from it, edible oil and other foods - we're working with one of Switzerland's top restaurants to put ona go urmet dinner with dishes made of hemp. And Swiss farmers will have the monopoly of the raw material." Egger, who has been called "the apostle of cannabis" by Swiss newspapers, adds: "The only thing this plant can't do is talk. They quickly launched into a passionate des cription of hemp. "There's an enormous potential market," Patterson enthused, "for paper, clothing, food and fuel made from hemp; products for creams and shampoos and other personal care items; sun blocks, construction materials - you can build houses with this stuff.

Egger is 46, clean-cut and square-jawed, with a resemblance to the American movie star Tom Berenger Patterson, 39, is quiet and elfin. Although she's Swihtco's owner and sole financier, "she is doing whatever Jean-Pierre is saying", as Andy Stafforte from Friends of Hemp puts it.When I met them at Stocker's farm, they arrived on a big BMW touring bike. Whenever hespea ks, Patterson, who must have heard it all a thousand times, falls silent and stares at him as if mesmerised. He's a sort of modern-day Danton, an all-purpose provocateur with the character of a trial lawyer, only comfortable on the attack. Egger talks in diatribes, which usually involve the Yankees polluting the planet. The daughter of a wealthy American anaesthetist who had worked in Iran (hence her Persian name), she was looking for a business to start when she met Egger, heard about the Swiss loophole and founded Swihtco withhim.They make an odd couple.

He was becoming known for his command of Swiss drug law, as well as his constant provocations of authority, when Friends of He mp sent Shirin Patterson to see him. He turned to defending pot-smokers,lat er earning himself a three-month jail sentence in Geneva (which he is appealing) for passing out cannabis leaves in the street. Egger qualified as a lawyer in 1973 but never practised conventionally. He toured Asia by motorbike, became an environmental activist, and then worked for the World Wildlife Fund in Geneva. But, he says, he tried to expose a money-laundering scam and, as a result, the WWF got rid of him Then he was disbarred in Geneva. This would be a tall order for a multi-national corporation, let alone two obscure individuals with limited private incomes and interesting pasts. Together with an adventurous American woman, Shirin Patterson, he has f ormed the Swiss Hemp Trading Company (Swihtco).

It was Swihtco which placed the advertisement Bernie Stocker read, and Swihtco which later sold Stocker and his fellow farmers their seeds and contracted to buy their harvests. To the farmers, hemp maybe a crop like any other, but, for Swihtco, their conversion is highly significant. Swihtco has two objectives: to create a multi-million dollar hemp industry, and to blow wide open the issue of legalising cannabis. Under Swiss law, Ackermann explains, "you have to look that you don't produce hemp for drugs, which is forbidden, but not if you produce hemp for anything else." The man who discovered this remarkable legal loophole is Jean-Pierre Egger, a renegade Swiss lawyer and self-appointed "people's tribune", for whom hemp is the latest of many causes. "Until two years ago, nobody noticed." Switzerland is not part of the EC or a signatory to the relevant international conventions.

"Ja, ja, this is it exactly," admits Josef Ack ermann, vice-director at the Swiss Ministry of Agriculture. In Amsterdam, the high-tech American growers - whose dope, with brand-names like "skunk", "bubblegum" and "Northern Lights", is exceptionally strong - have to conduct their experiments indoors. But the Hemp Movement needs the great outdoors, and it has always been stymied by the image of illegality - until now. In Switzerland, hemp is an old tradition: Swiss farmers grew their own until the early Sixties, when the custom died out with the start of global panic over drugs Now, it appears, the law was never changed. While police in many European countries have become less willing to prosecute smokers, they are keen to pursue the cultivators, whether amateur or professional. In Britain, says Mike Goodman, there has been "an enormous increase" in prosecutions forcult ivation. They point out that, if farmers are allowed to grow marijuana willy-nilly, the cannabis laws will become a farce.