Is it legal to grow hemp in Colorado? Like, right now?
That’s a complicated question — and one that the Colorado Department of Agriculture is trying to clear up in a statement issued this week: “Amendment 64 did not authorize the immediate cultivation of hemp. It instead directed the General Assembly to enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing and sale of industrial hemp. This they have now done.”
So can farmers start planting? Not yet. Melanie Asmar with the Denver Westword has more.

Wikipedia commons.

Vermont farmers will likely have one more option of what to cultivate this summer after the state legislature Monday gave final approval to Senate Bill 157 which lifts a state ban on hemp farming.
The bill still has to be signed by the governor, but so far he hasn’t made any indications that he will veto it.

Industrial hemp.

Did Henry Ford really make a car out of hemp? Was the Declaration of Independence written on hemp paper? Did Abraham Lincoln use hemp oil in his lamps?
The hemp plant, a variety of Cannabis sativa that’s the subject of this week’s cover story “Green Acres,” is steeped in lore. Some hemp legends are true. Others are half-true, and some are completely false. Denver Westword presents ten hemp myths culled from the Internet — and attempt to separate the fact from the fiction.

Tim Gabor for Westword.com

Last week, Denver Westword writer Melanie Asmar took a closer look at what recent marijuana legalization laws have done for industrial hemp in Colorado and what that could mean for the rest of the country.
In it, she details “a merry band of hempsters, a small but dedicated group of supporters that includes a retired Yellow Pages saleswoman, a self-described mad scientist, the victorious defendant in one of Colorado’s landmark medical marijuana cases and a handful of stone-cold sober lawmakers who represent the type of places where people have dirt under their fingernails and make their living off the land. Together, this group is determined to create a hemp industry and position the state at the leading edge of an agricultural boom.”
Read Asmar’s story “Can hemp escape the role of marijuana’s sober stepsiter” in its entirety over at Westword.com