Pro-Pot Group to Help Clean the Road : Marijuana: Virginia Friends of Hemp fought to adopt a state highway. State officials balked but then backed down when threatened with lawsuit.

In this area of white clapboard houses, rolling farmland and wooded hills, keeping the roads pretty has become a nasty subject.

It’s because of marijuana, although no one’s proposed growing it along the roadway for greenery. Rather, the Virginia Friends of Hemp fought and won the right to join the ranks of Lions clubs, Boy Scout troops and Sunday school classes who adopt a state highway. They’ve even got one picked out, and it happens to be a main drag through Burkeville.

In return for keeping Route 621 clear of trash, the group, which advocates legalization of marijuana, will have its name splashed on an official sign as public appreciation of its civic-mindedness.

Some in this hamlet of 535 residents, about 55 miles southwest of Richmond, don’t think that’s where the Virginia Adopt-a-Highway program should be headed.

“I’m not for it,” said Gloria Dooley, whose insurance office sits along the road. “Drug dealers can go out here and show people they can clean up the neighborhood. It has a connotation to me that is negative. I as an individual would not want to be associated with it.”

But what started as a cheap way to maintain many of the state’s roads now faces First Amendment considerations.

A gay group in Hampton Roads is tending a road in front of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Its sign has been vandalized several times, state officials said.

In Arkansas, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan recently were awarded a mile of one of that state’s busiest highways. NORML, another group that lobbies for legalized marijuana, also maintains a road there.

Such groups often admit that they are participating for publicity or an image boost. “We wanted to let people know we were solid citizens,” said Sandra Hayer, president of Virginia Friends of Hemp. “Our second thought was there might be controversy and we could use it to educate people through the media.”

In fact, the group’s proper name is the Virginia Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp, but its several hundred members realized that might be abbreviated to Virginia BACH on a highway sign and then motorists wouldn’t really know what it was about.

Hayer, 37, an administrative aide in Richmond whose license plate reads “HEMP N,” said she smokes marijuana every evening to relax and ease back pain from a horseback-riding accident. She said her group wants greater awareness of its efforts to decriminalize marijuana, especially as it relates to medical treatment.

Last year, the organization tried to claim a highway near its headquarters in Crewe, just east of Burkeville, but the request was denied because the state highway department felt the group “had a controversial message to legalize hemp,” said Chuck Hansen, spokesman for the Adopt-a-Highway program.

After a year of wrangling with the state, the Friends of Hemp called in the American Civil Liberties Union, which told the state that its policy violates the First Amendment and would spur a lawsuit. Officials mulled things over and finally agreed this fall.

So now the Friends of Hemp are awaiting word on when they can clean up Route 621. “This is the smallest town in the county, but we chose that road because of lots of businesses there,” Hayer said. “We hope for a lot of visibility.”